Latter Day Saint movement and engraved metal plates

Latter Day Saints believe that other engraved metal plates exist, many of which are mentioned in the Book of Mormon.

Smith said he discovered the plates on September 22, 1823, on Cumorah hill, Manchester, New York, where he said they had been hidden in a buried box and protected for centuries by the angel Moroni, a resurrected ancient American prophet-historian, who had been last to write on them.

Joseph Smith, in this theory, would have either encountered "plates" or similar objects, possibly even on the Hill Cumorah, and believed them to be ancient artifacts.

[5] In a similar vein, Ann Taves argues that the belief of Joseph Smith and others in the plates contributed to them perceiving a physical object.

[6] Peter Ingersoll, a contemporary of Smith, was quoted by Eber D. Howe as saying that the brass plates were in fact a bag of sand.

As Richard Bushman has written: "Joseph may not have detected the fraud, but he did not swing into a full-fledged translation as he had with the Egyptian scrolls.

"[13] Strang equally claimed to have discovered and translated the Plates of Laban spoken of in the Book of Mormon.

[15] Evidence of this tradition is the stone boxes of large gold and silver plates covering the Apanada hoard (515 BCE) excavated in 1933.