Culture: During his service as chief judge, it would have been important for Nephi to be centrally located in the city and also have a residence sufficiently large for him to hear cases on the premises. (See commentary accompanying Helaman 2:7.) It is also highly likely that he lived in a residence structure that had been in his family for generations, perhaps having once been inhabited by Alma1, the first chief judge.
Archaeological investigations have uncovered internal roads in Mesoamerican cities of this period, matching the mention of “the highway which led to the chief market.” Retired businessman and researcher Wallace Hunt notes:
Significantly, this is the only place in the Book of Mormon where the word “market” appears.
One hardly notices the words “chief market” in this particular chapter, and upon deeper perusal of the verse, the use of the two words at first seems unnecessary. Why add this description? If Joseph Smith were authoring the book, there would be no need to include such a description. In fact, any unusual word or description could jeopardize the integrity of the work. After all, the native Americans with whom he was familiar had no marketplaces!
We can, however, draw several conclusions from Mormon’s inclusion of the phrase “chief market.” First, the description was important to include, since he was limited for space and therefore would have included only words, phrases, and events that he felt were significant. Also, this description signifies that cities in this time period not only had more than one market, but that one of the markets was either larger or more significant than the others.
Welch corroborates Hunt’s conclusions with additional information on the Mesoamerican context for multiple market places:
Cortez and his fellows were amazed by the market in Tlatelolco in the Valley of Mexico, by its diversity of goods, and by the complexity of its organization. Yet until recently, only little attention has been given to the fact that a number of these cities had multiple markets.
The evidence, however, seems quite clear. Blanton and Kowalewski, for example, have noted that Monte Alban had both a chief market and subsidiary ones. For Teotihuacán, René Millon identifies one location as “the principal marketplace” and suggests that other markets existed for special products, such as kitchen wares. George Cowgill, the other leading expert on Teotihuacán, concurs. The Krotsers point out the same phenomenon at El Tajín. Meanwhile Edward Calnek’s reexamination of documentary evidence on the organization of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, has established that each major sector of the city had its own market, in addition to the giant central one. Apparently Zarahemla was no different.
Nephi’s residence was a compound surrounded by a wall in which there was a gate. This wall enclosed at least the “garden of Nephi” and the “tower.” Presumably, the wall also enclosed, or was attached to, the residence itself. These features have also been established by Mesoamerican archaeology for elite residences. Welch comments:
Garden areas were cultivated immediately adjacent to single habitation complexes. At the archaeological site of El Tajín near the coast of the Gulf of Mexico east of Mexico City are the remains of a city that occupied at least five square kilometers at its maximum period, probably between A.D. 600–900. At that time, the houses of its middle-class people were surrounded by gardens and fruit trees. Likewise, the famous city of Tula, north of the capital of Mexico, was even larger, up to fourteen square kilometers around A.D. 1000–1100, and gardened houselots were common there too.
Nephi’s tower was almost certainly one of the many low pyramidal structures that archaeologists have found in the majority of Mesoamerican sites from Book of Mormon times on. Those attached to private compounds were lower than the stepped pyramids in public squares used for public rituals, but they were nevertheless similarly constructed, if not nearly so high. Nephi’s tower was low enough to allow easy conversation with the crowd (Hel. 7:12–13). In a family compound, such towers would have been suitable for prayer and communion with God. Sorenson notes:
In Old Testament times Israelites and surrounding nations built and used such holy elevations. The Canaanite “high places” (bamoth) to which the backsliding Israelites resorted were strongly condemned by the prophets (for example, in Ezek. 43:7). Archaeologists now know that those structures were earthen platforms quite like those found by the thousands in Mesoamerica. In Israelite thought, they stood for mountains or hills just as elsewhere in the Near East. On them, it was felt, heavenly powers were especially accessible; this was a divine contact point, “the navel of the earth.” The underworld (not necessarily conceived as hell) was thought accessible at the same “world axis.” The Baal worshippers of Canaan believed that El, progenitor of the gods, dwelt at Aphaca, a spot on the coast where a mountain rises immediately above a huge cave. So this great deity of theirs was connected not only with the mountain but also lived in “aqueous and subterranean environs.” That sounds perfectly Mesoamerican. Teotihuacán’s Pyramid of the Sun, it was recently discovered, was built over a cavern and spring of obvious sacred significance.
This business may all sound thoroughly pagan, but worship upon elevations was orthodox in Israel if done right. Moses’s experience in Sinai comes to mind, as well as Nephi’s vision on a mountain (1 Ne. 11:1). The temple seen in vision by Ezekiel was “upon a very high mountain” (Ezek. 40:2–5). One of the Hebrew names of God was Sur, “Mountain” (for example, 1 Sam. 2:2 literally reads, “There is no Mountain like our God”). Chapter 32 of Deuteronomy uses this name for deity eight times. Among the Nephites we find expectable sacred significance for mountains. Nehor was carried to “the top of the hill Manti… between the heavens and the earth” to be executed (Alma 1:15). The prophet Nephi got upon his private tower in his garden that, he said, “I might pour out my soul unto my God” (Hel. 7:10, 14); to him a tower was a special place to pray, and like the natural hilltop, it was considered “between heaven and earth.
To summarize, all details in this short description of Nephi’s residence conform to what is known of elite residences in the center of Mesoamerican cities. Of course, a farmer’s home outside the town would not necessarily be by a road, would not have a tower, and would not have a wall. It would probably have been a compound and would certainly have some type of kitchen garden near the house that was different from the field crops.