Merry Christmas, everyone! At this wonderful season, we thought we would share an odd story about something that happened to Daniel earlier this year. As you know, the point of this blog is to share our studies and also to contact others who are interested in this information.
Some months ago, Daniel was contacted by someone in Panama; we'll call him José. He said he had found a post on our blog about a new discovery of gold items buried in a stone box in Mexico City. According to this individual, there was a museum in Panama called the Fort David Museum. It was somehow associated with an ancient nearby site called Barriles. After a bit of research, we found some information on this site and it appears to be legitimate. But it is on property owned by people that are looking to get publicity for it by making some outrageous claims.
José wanted Daniel to come to Panama to see the artifacts and get his opinion on them. He was even willing to pay his way to fly and stay there. What made this interesting was that he claimed that ancient steel swords and gold plates had been found in a tomb in Panama. While things like this are always intriguing, caution is paramount. LDS hopefuls have been misled in the past by bad archaeology. The story being presented to Daniel was that this site contained the tomb of a chief or powerful leader named El Quibián Malchía. This Malchía supposedly left the Old World around 600 b.c. and sailed with Phoenicians to Panama. The purpose of this journey was to save the Ark of the Covenant from Babylonian capture. Once in the New World, he set himself up as a king. His tomb containing these artifacts was accidentally discovered a few years ago. This image is from one of the museum's videos and purports to be the actual Ark of the Covenant from his tomb. If only Indiana Jones had known!
Many details about this story are unlikely, not the least of which is the poor quality of this 'artifact.' But when José finally sent photos of their gold plates, we knew there was a real problem. The first surprising detail to notice here is that the hieroglyphics engraved on them are exact copies of the 'Charactors' facsimile, even down to their sequence. José even tried to convince Daniel that these were the actual plates guarded by Moroni and used by Joseph Smith to translate the Book of Mormon. When Daniel sent him an image of the 'Charactors' and asked him to explain how it was exactly the same, José demanded to know where he had obtained this image, as they had been careful at the museum not to let let out any information on their plates. Daniel then had to explain to him that this image had been around since the early 1800s and was widely available. In fact, all the information needed to make this low quality replica of the plates could be found in posts on our blog.
From there, the communication just got even stranger, with José making some bizarre accusations and personal admissions. We don't know if he was complicit in this fraud or if he was fooled by it. We don't see much purpose in this whole affair, except maybe to scam LDS tourists into visiting this site and spending money there, and using Daniel to spread the word. While a free trip to Panama did sound tempting, Daniel did eventually decide against it and cut off all contact with José, after trying to convince him to give up on this hopeless fraud. Not wanting to be part of an obvious hoax, Daniel was also somewhat concerned for his own safety. Who was involved in this scheme and what did they really hope to achieve? Why did they want him to come, of all people? That is still a mystery to us. But if anyone is going through that area of Panama, it might be worthwhile to stop by the Fort David Museum and see what they have. We haven't seen anything there except very modern, crudely made fakes without any hint of authenticity or antiquity. They are about the quality that you would find as trinkets being sold to foreign tourists.
Click here to watch a video on some of the Fort David Museum's claims.
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