Hugh Nibley
“The success of any conspiracy against such watchful royalty depends therefore on secrecy and surprise before all else, and so we have as the unfailing adjunct and nemesis of Asiatic kingship the secret society, investing all life with a paralyzing sense of insecurity…overthrowing dynasties and empires in a single night…Even Jenghiz Khan, the mightiest of them all, was nearly pushed from his throne by an ambitious high priest, and at the dawn of history more than one such high priest seized the rule for himself. The case of the brother of Shared, whose ‘high priest murdered him as he sat upon his throne’ (Ether 14:9), is, then, thoroughly typical, and that by no mere coincidence. For we are…told that the system was inherited ‘from them of old’ and perpetuated by the same methods of secret societies, family compacts, bribes, oaths, assassinations, etc., as in the Old World.” (Lehi in the Desert & the World of the Jaredites, p. 203)