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According to Joseph Smith, Jr, the founder of Mormonism, and his associates, he translated Reformed Egyptian characters engraved on Golden Plates into English through various means including the use of an ancient device called the Urim and Thummim which, like the plates, were said to have been eventually returned to the angel named Moroni who originally gave them to Smith.
Some Mormons have suggested that Reformed Egyptian was Hebrew written in an adaptation of Egyptian hieroglyphics similar to demotic or hieratic script. Like many other things dealing with the Book of Mormon, people claim that there is no evidence for a such thing as reformed Egyptian, simply because they don't look and see. However, there are other adaptations of Egyptian, Hebrew, and Arabic scripts that have been found all across the Middle-east, which makes it perfectly logical that a "reformed" Egyptian could have been used by the Nephites.
A small sample of the original Book of Mormon writing provided by Smith is shown below:
