Antiquites, Curiosities, and Latter-day Saint Museums Glen M. Leonard The collecting of antiquities for institutional uses in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began when Michael Chandler’s four Egyptian mummies were presented to Joseph Smith in 1835. Chandler had been touring the mummies as a traveling exhibition. The Prophet removed the papyrus scrolls for study, and then his wife, Emma, showed the mummies to inquisitive visitors at their home. For a time, Joseph Coe exhibited both the mummies and the scrolls in a rented room in John Johnson’s Inn at Kirtland. The Prophet later transferred custody of the Egyptian materials to his mother, Lucy Mack Smith. She exhibited them at ten cents per view for a time in Quincy, Illinois, in 1839. Five years later, in Nauvoo, visitors were paying twenty-ve cents to gaze at these ancient curiosities, displayed in the widowed Lucy Mack Smith’s upstairs room in the Mansion House. The Prophet’s younger brother William obtained the mummies from his mother in 1847 and toured them for a time. Within a decade they were part of a museum collection in St. Louis, and by 1863 they had found their last known resting place in the Chicago Museum.1 This small collection of Egyptian antiquities managed by the Smith family marked the beginning of a museum tradition among Latter-day Saints. During the Nauvoo years that nascent interest grew and expanded. It soon included both the curiosities of nature and the products of human manufacture, or, as one writer put it, “the great things of God, and the inventions of men.”2 The escalating attention in Nauvoo included more than an attempt to create a collection and nd a place to display it. More important, proponents established a way of thinking about museums. Their words and ideas set the pattern of discourse for half a century. Nauvoo discussions dened the educational purposes of museums, established a way to build a collection, and identied the church as an appropriate sponsor. When late twentieth- century advocates sought links with the past to demonstrate a continuity of church support for museums, they referred to the ideas and continued the patterns of the 1840s. From Nauvoo to Winter Quarters to Salt Lake City, notions about the whys and hows of museums contained a mix of secular and sacred worldviews to serve the purposes of education and faith. The Nauvoo Revelation In May 1843 Nauvoo’s Times and Seasons published a notice dening museums as part of the religious responsibility of Latter-day Saints. Editor John Taylor followed the brief announcement with an editorial commentary. In it he dened the scope of collecting for the proposed Nauvoo museum and enlisted the help of missionaries in gathering items of every kind from all parts of the earth. The initial announcement, delivered to the editor by one of Joseph Smith’s clerks, was published as follows: According to a Revelation, received not long since, it appears to be the duty of the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, to bring to Nauvoo, their precious things, such as antiquities, and we may say, curiosities, whether animal, vegetable or metal[l]ic: yea, petrifactions as well as inscriptions and hieroglyphics, for the purpose of establishing a Museum of the great things of God, and the inventions of men, at Nauvoo. We have just received the rst donation at the ofce of President Joseph Smith. Who will come and do likewise?3 The published announcement raises several questions: Who authored and authorized the notice? What do we know about the recent revelation mentioned as the authorization for a museum? And what was the rst donation received at the President’s Ofce? On the announcement’s authorship, the Times and Seasons is silent. A third-person reference in the note to “the ofce of President Joseph Smith” seems to eliminate the Prophet as author. John Taylor’s commentary allows us to conclude only that a clerk in Joseph Smith’s ofce in the Red Brick Store walked the note a short block down Water Street to the frame building that housed the printing shop and handed it to Taylor or one of his assistants while typesetters mocked up the forms for the bimonthly publication. The carrier may have written the message on behalf of the Prophet. That courier-author may have been Willard Richards, the Prophet’s principal clerk and historian and an apostle since 1840. Other possibilities include another clerk in the ofce or William W. Phelps, recently conrmed mayor’s clerk and author of a poem about the Nauvoo Temple (quoted below).4 Whoever the scribe, it seems plausible to suggest that Joseph Smith sanctioned the announcement. This would be particularly expected since the note does not refer to a specic museum revelation but rather expands the meaning of an existing revelation on a related subject.5 Because no specic revelation referring directly to a museum is known to exist, we are left to assume that when the author says that a revelation was “received not long since,” this could possibly reach back twenty-eight months to Joseph Smith’s January 1841 revelation on the Nauvoo Temple (D&C 124).6 How did a revelation calling upon the Saints to build a temple (and a hotel) in the City Beautiful lend its divine sanction to a third project, that of a museum? That it did so seems likely because certain language in the temple revelation is echoed in the 1843 Times and Seasons invitation to contribute to a museum in Nauvoo. Ideas from both sources are cited by John Taylor and subsequent museum advocates. Three ideas in the 1841 temple revelation appear consistently in other revealed instructions for building temples. Because these ideas have an indirect inuence on discussions about museums, the parallels are worth noting. Both ancient and modern scriptural texts directing the construction of temples consistently mention (1) precious building materials, (2) the means of gathering these materials, and (3) specially skilled workmen called to assist in the project. The building materials specied by the Nauvoo Temple revelation include gold, silver, and precious stones; wood from box, r, and pine trees; and iron, copper, brass, zinc, and other “precious things of the earth” (D&C 124:27). The revelation sets forth a plan to send “swift messengers”7 to instruct the Saints to gather to Nauvoo with these materials for the Lord’s House and “with all your antiquities,” presumably as offerings or for use in beautifying the Lord’s dwelling place. The revelation also invites persons with “knowledge of antiquities”—that is, skills in fashioning precious woods and metals using ancient methods—to help build the Nauvoo Temple (see D&C 124:26–27). It was clear from these instructions that the new temple at Nauvoo was to reect in its building style, construction, and decoration the temples of earlier times. As was typical of Joseph Smith’s revelations restoring the practices of earlier dispensations, references to old and rare materials echoed the words and meaning of ancient scripture. King David planned a house for the Lord using gold, silver, brass, iron, wood, onyx, precious stones, and marble. His intent in using these valuable materials for the Lord’s palace was to acknowledge God as the source of all riches and honor, “for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine” (1 Chronicles 29:2, 8, 11). David’s heir, Solomon, realized the plan. Solomon reissued the call for these expensive materials and specied Lebanon as a source for cedar, r, and algum trees. He appointed an agent to collect donations from the people and called for skilled craftsmen to work the precious metals and woods (see 2 Chronicles 2:7–9). Not surprisingly, the Book of Mormon contains a similar reference. Nephi taught his people to work in wood, iron, copper, brass, steel, gold, silver, and precious ores. The Nephites built a temple “after the manner of the temple of Solomon save it were not built of so many precious things” (2 Nephi 5:15–16). This scriptural language, ancient and modern, contains a consistency of content applied to temple construction. William W. Phelps summarized the message in a poem, “The Temple of God at Nauvoo,” which begins: Ye servants that so many prophets foretold, Should labor for Zion and not for the gold, Go into the eld ere the sun dries the dew, And reap for the kingdom of God at Nauvoo. Go carry glad tidings, that all may attend, While God is unfolding “the time of the end;” And say to all nations, whatever you do, Come, build up the Temple of God at Nauvoo. Go say to the Islands that wait for his law, Prepare for that glory the prophets once saw, And bring on your gold and your precious things, too, As tithes for the Temple of God at Nauvoo. Go say to the great men, who boast of a name; To kings and their nobles, all born unto fame, Come, bring on your treasures, antiquities, too, And honor the Temple of God at Nauvoo.8 After the martyrdom, the Twelve issued their own more practical version of the call to collect building materials for the Nauvoo Temple. In an epistle in January 1845, they invited “all the young, middle aged, and able bodied men who have it in their hearts to stretch forth this work with power, to come to Nauvoo, . to bring with them teams, cattle, sheep, gold, silver, brass, iron, oil, paints and tools.”9 Of interest is the scriptural language used in the call for a Nauvoo museum, including references to “precious things” and “antiquities,” and the use of “swift messengers” to encourage the gathering of the Saints with their treasures.