In calling the Nephites to repentance, Samuel the Lamanite warned that "the time cometh that [the Lord] curseth your riches, that they become slippery, that ye cannot hold them; and in the days of your poverty ye cannot retain them" (Helaman 13:31). More than three centuries later, Mormon recorded that, in fulfillment of Samuel's prophecy, the Gadianton robbers
"did infest the land, insomuch that the inhabitants thereof began to hide up their treasures in the earth; and they became slippery, because the Lord had cursed the land, that they could not hold them, nor retain them again" (Mormon 1:18).
According to Kevin Barney, some critics have suggested that these passages reflect beliefs prevalent in Joseph Smith's day. One such belief was that guardian demons moved buried treasures to different locations when people dug for them. Because the general idea of slippery treasures appears in the Book of Mormon, critics see it as evidence of the book's supposed 19th-century origin. However, the concept of slippery treasures is found to have existed in the ancient Near East of Lehi's time.
One example comes from the Instructions of Amenemope, an Egyptian text dating to between the 11th and 13 centuries B.C. and believed by many to have been the source for a portion of the biblical book of Proverbs. Proverbs 23:4-5 closely parallels chapter 7 of Amenemope. Compare the first lines of each passage:
Do not wear yourself out to get rich; be wise enough to desist. (Proverbs)
Do not strain to seek an excess, when thy needs are safe for thee. (Amenemope)
Compare also the end of each passage:
When your eyes light upon it, it is gone; for suddenly it takes wings to itself, flying like an eagle toward heaven. (Proverbs)
(Or) they [riches] have made themselves wings like geese and are flown away to the heavens. (Amenemope)
[Kevin L. Barney, "'Slippery Treasures' in the Book of Mormon: A Concept from the Ancient World," FARMS Update Number 135 in Insights: A Window on the Ancient World, June 2000, p. 2]