Accessing Nephi’s Bountiful: A New Proposal for Reaching Irreantum

Abstract: Many Latter-day Saint scholars recognize that an excellent candidate for Nephi’s Bountiful is found at the inlet Khor Kharfot in southern Oman at the end of the lengthy Wadi Sayq. Many researchers have reasonably assumed that Lehi’s eastward travel from Nahom must have led to Wadi Sayq, which then leads directly to Khor Kharfot. However, there is a second route, through Wadi Kharfot, that leads to Khor Kharfot, joining Wadi Sayq near the inlet. Although almost unknown, this second wadi could also have offered a plausible route with some advantages to travelers arriving from the interior desert plateau. Specifics and details of terrain, distances, and directions are presented to support seriously considering this new proposal.


Since its discovery in the mid-1980s during a multi-year ground search of the entire southeastern coast of Arabia, the inlet of Khor Kharfot in Dhofar, southern Oman, has been the candidate favored by most Book of Mormon researchers for the ease in which it uniquely meets all the detailed descriptors of Bountiful embedded in Nephi’s text.1 Nephi was very clear in the directions he gave—most importantly, that Bountiful lies “nearly eastward” from Nahom:
And it came to pass that we did again take our journey in the [Page 430]wilderness; and we did travel nearly eastward from that time forth. And we did travel and wade through much affliction in the wilderness. . . . And we did come to the land which we called Bountiful. . . . And we beheld the sea, which we called Irreantum, which, being interpreted, is many waters. And it came to pass that we did pitch our tents by the seashore. (1 Nephi 17:1, 5–6)
Figure 1 is an overview of the proposed area in which the final stage of the Lehite journey took place. It illustrates that both Wadi Sayq and Wadi Kharfot lead directly into Khor Kharfot, the leading candidate for Bountiful. It also shows the plateau from which both wadis originate. This penultimate leg of the Lehite group’s difficult journey across Arabia—plausibly around two years of travel to cover the approximately 2,100 miles (3,400 km) from Jerusalem—was also its main directional change.2 Following Ishmael’s burial at Nahom, the group headed “nearly eastward from that time forth” (1 Nephi 17:1), eventually bringing them to Irreantum, the great ocean, where the place they named Bountiful awaited.