Map of the Roman Empire - Mt. Sinai
Mt. Sinai
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Ancient Mt. Sinai has been traditionally identified with Jebel Musa or Jebel Helal the holy mountain where the Law was given. The Bible records Mount Sinai in Exodus 19:1, 11ff.; 19:20 etc., and so in later tradition, Ps. 68:8, 17; Neh. 9:13; Acts 7:30; Gal. 4:24, 25 ('Arabia' in Paul's time included the area of the Sinai Peninsula); traditionally Jebel Musa in the South of the Peninsula, but Jebel Helal is another possible alternative.
Exod. 19:1 - In the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they [into] the wilderness of Sinai.
Exod. 19:11 - And be ready against the third day: for the third day the LORD will come down in the sight of all the people upon mount Sinai.
Exod. 19:20 - And the LORD came down upon mount Sinai, on the top of the mount: and the LORD called Moses [up] to the top of the mount; and Moses went up.
Mount Sinai Sinaď or Sina. Now Jebel-et-Tur. A cluster of dark, lofty, rocky mountains in the southern angle of the triangular peninsula enclosed between the two heads of the Red Sea, and bounded on the north by the deserts on the borders of Egypt and Palestine. The name, which signifies “a region of broken and cleft rocks,” is used in a wider sense for the whole peninsula, which formed a part of Arabia Petraea, and was peopled, at the time of the Exodus, by the Amalekites and Midianites, and afterwards by the Nabathaean Arabs. Sinaď and Horeb in the Old Testament are both general names for the whole group, the former being used in the first four books of Moses , and the latter in Deuteronomy. The summit on which the Law was given was probably that on the north, or the one usually called Horeb. There are a good many Nabathaean inscriptions dating from the early centuries of our era carved on the rocks of Sinaď. See Hull, Mount Seir, Sinai, and West Palestine (London, 1885); and Euting, Sinaitische Inschriften (1892). - Harry Thurston Peck. Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. New York. Harper and Brothers. 1898.
Mount Sinai (Arabic: طور سيناء, Ṭūr Sīnā’) (Hebrew: הר סיני, Har Sinai), also known as Mount Horeb, Mount Musa, Gabal Musa (Egyptian Arabic accent), Jabal Musa (standard Arabic meaning "Moses' Mountain") by the Bedouin, is the name of a mountain in Saint Katherine city, in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. In Arabic the words jabal and ṭūr have similar meanings, and Mount Sinai is mentioned many times in the Quran; for example chapter 'The Fig' (Sūrat al-Tīn) as "Ṭūr Sīnīn". According to Jewish and Christian tradition this is the mountain where Moses received the Ten Commandments. It is mentioned in the Bible primarily in the Book of Exodus.Mount Sinai SINAI
SINAI, the celebrated mountain of Arabia Petraea. It, however, lent its name to
the whole peninsula in which it was situated, which must therefore first be
described. It is formed by the bifurcation of the Red Sea at its northern
extremity, tremity, and is bounded by the Heroopoliticus Sinus (or Sea of Suez)
on the west, and the Aelaniticus Sinus (the Gulf of Akaba) on the east, ending
in the Posidium Promontorium (Ras Mohammed). At the northern extremity of the
Sea of Suez stood Arsinoe (Suez), and Aelana (Akaba), at the extremity of the
gulf that bears its name. The caravan road of the great Haj, which joins these
two towns, traverses a high table-land of desert, now called Et-Tih= “the
Wilderness of the Wandering,” part of ancient Idumaea. To the south of this
road, the plateau of chalk formation is continued to Jebel Tih, the µ??a?a ???
of Ptolemy, extending from the eastern to the western gulf, in a line slightly
curved to the south, and bounded in that direction by a belt of sandstone,
consisting of arid plains, almost without water or signs of vegetation. To this
succeeds the district of primitive granite formation, which extends quite to the
southern cape, and runs into the Gulf of Akaba on the east, but is separated by
a narrow strip of alluvial soil called El-Kâa from the Seat of Suez. The
northern part of the Tih is called in Scripture “the wilderness of Paran” (Numb.
12.16, 13.3, 32.8, &c.), in which the Israelites abode or wandered during great
part of the forty years; although Eusebius and St. Jerome, as will be presently
seen, identify this last with the wilderness of Sin. This wilderness of Sin is
commonly supposed to be connected, in name and situation, with Mount Sinai; but
as the Israelites entered on the wilderness of Sin on leaving their encampment
by the Red Sea, the next station to Elim (Exod. 16.1; Numb. 33.10, 11), and
traversed it between Elim and Rephidim, where they had apparently left it (Exod.
17.1),--for Dophkah and Alush are inserted between the two in Numbers
33.12--14,--and yet had not arrived at Sinai (ver. 15; Exod. 16.1), it may be
questioned whether the identification rests on solid ground. Eusebius and St.
Jerome, who distinguish between the deserts of Sin and Sinai, yet appear to
extend the former too far eastward. “The desert of Sin,” they say, “extends
between the Red Sea and the desert of Sina; for they came from the desert of Sin
to Rephidim, and thence to the desert of Sinai, near Mount Sina, where Moses
received the dispensation of the Law; but this desert is the same as that of
Kaddes according to the Hebrew, but not according to the LXX.” The confusion
indicated by this last remark may be explained by the observations, 1st, that
Zin, which is a synonym “for the wilderness of Kadesh” (Numb. 20.1, 33.36), i
identical in Greek with the Sin (i. e. S??); the S representing both the HEBREW
(tsadi) of HEBREW and the HEBREW (samech) of HEBREW; and, 2dly, that instead of
making Zin identical with Kadesh, as it is in the Hebrew, the LXX. read so as to
make “the desert of Paran,” which they identify with “the desert of Kadesh,” an
intermediate termediate station between Sin and Mount Hor (Numb. 33.36, in LXX.)
The wilderness of Sin, then, must be fixed to the northwest part of the granite
district of the peninsula between Serbal and the Red Sea, while Zin is north of
Ezion Geber, between it and Mount Hor,--chief the southern extremity in fact of
Wady Műsa, or the Arabah, north of Akaba.
With respect to Sinai, it is difficult to decide between the rival claims of the
two mountains, which, in modern as in ancient times, have been regarded as the
Mountain of the Law. The one is Serbal above-mentioned, situated towards the NW.
extremity tremity of the granite district, towering with its five sharp-pointed
granite peaks above the fruitful and agreeable oasis of Wady Pharan, still
marked by extensive ruins of the churches, convents, and buildings of the old
episcopal town of Paran; the other between 30 and 40 miles south-east of Serbal,
in the heart of the granite district, where native traditions, of whatever
value, have affixed to the mountains and valleys names connected with the
inspired narrative of the giving of the Law, and where the scenery is entirely
in unison with the events recorded. Emerging from the steep and narrow valley
Nakba Hawa, whose precipitous sides rise to the perpendicular height of 1000
feet, into the wide plain called Wady Műsa, at the northern base of the
traditionary Horeb, Russegger describes the scene as grand in the extreme. “Bare
granite mountains, whose summits reach to a height of more than 7000 Paris feet
above the level of the sea; wonderful, I might say fabulous, forms encompass a
plain more than a mile in length, in the background of which lies the convent of
St. Catharine, at the foot of Jebel Aűsa, between the holy Horeb on the west,
and Ebestimmi on the east.” In this valley, then, formed at the base of Horeb by
what may be called a junction of the Wady-er-Rahâh and Wady-esh-Sheikh, but
which, according to Russegger's express testimony, bears in this place the
native name of Wady Műsa, must the children of Israel have encamped before Jebel
Műsa, whose rugged northern termination, projected boldly into the plain, bears
the distinctive name of Ras Sasâfah. Jebel Műsa rises to the height of 5956
Paris feet above the sea, but is far from being the highest of the group.
Towering high above it, on the south, is seen the summit of Horeb, having an
elevation of 7097 Paris feet, and south of that again Jebel Katherina, more than
1000 feet higher still (viz. 8168 Paris feet), all outtopped by Jebel-om-Shomer,
the highest of this remarkable group, which attains an altitude of 8300 Paris
feet. Over against Jebel Műsa on the north, and confining the valley in that
direction, is the spur of a mountain which retains in its name, Jebel Sena, a
memorial of the ancient Scripture appellation of the Mountain of the Law. To
attempt anything like a full discussion of the questions at issue between the
advocates of the conflicting traditions or hypotheses, would be as inconsistent
with the character of such an article as this, as with the limits which must be
assigned it: a very few remarks [2.1004] must suffice. There seems, then, to be
no question that the site of Horeb was traditionally known to the Israelites for
many centuries after the Exodus (1 Kings, 19.8); and if so, it is improbable
that it was subsequently lost, since its proximity to Elath and Ezion Geber,
which were long in their possession, would serve to ensure the perpetuity of the
tradition. It is worthy of remark that Josephus nowhere uses the name Horeb, but
in the passage parallel to that above cited from the 1st book of Kings, as
uniformly throughout his history, substitutes t? S??a??? ????,--so far
confirming the identity of locality indicated by the two names, learnedly
maintained by Dr. Lepsius, who holds Horeb to be an Amalekite appellative
equivalent in signification with Sin, both signifying “earth made dry by
draining off the water,” which earth he finds in the large mounds of alluvial
deposit in the bed of Wady Faran, at the northern base of Serbal, his Sinai.
Buxtorf, however, cites rabbinical authorities for another etymology of Sinai,
derived from the nature of the rock in the vicinity. (See Shaw's Travels, 4to.
p. 443, and note 7.) Josephus does not in any way identify the site; but
Eusebius and St. Jerome have been erroneously understood to describe Serbal
under the name Sina, when they say that Pharan was south of Arabia, next to the
desert of the Saracens, through which the children of Israel journeyed when they
decamped from Sina (Onomast. s. v. Pharan.); for they obviously confound the
city of Paran with the wilderness mentioned in Numbers (12.16, 13.3); and the
description is so vague as to prove only their ignorance, if not of the true
site of the city Pharan (which they place 3 days east of Aila), at least of the
utter want of all connection between this and the desert of Zin, which is Paran;
and in this, as in other passages, on which much reliance has been placed in
this discussion, it is clear that they are not writing from any local knowledge,
but simply drawing deductions from the Scripture narrative (see e. g. Onomast.
s. v. Raphadim), which we are perhaps equally competent to do. The earliest
Christian writer, then, who can be quoted as a witness to the true site of the
“Mountain of the Law” is Cosmas Indicopleustes (circ. A.D. 530), who undoubtedly
describes Mount Choreb, in the Sinaic (desert?), as near to Pharan, about 6
miles distant; and this Pharan must be the Pharan of the ecclesiastical annals,
whose ruins at the foot of Mount Serbal have been noticed above. This then is
direct historical testimony in favour of a hypothesis first started by
Burckhardt in modern times, advocated by Dr. Lepsius, and adopted by Mr. Forster
and others. But then it appears to be the only clear historical evidence, and
must therefore be compared with that in favour of the existing tradition, which,
as it is accepted in its main features by Drs. Robinson and Wilson, Ritter, Mr.
Stanley, and other eminent scholars, is obviously not unworthy of regard. That
the present convent of St. Catharine was originally founded by the emperor
Justinian (about A.D. 556), is as certain as any fact in history; and it is
equally difficult to imagine that, at so short an interval after the journey of
Cosmas, the remembrance of the true Sinai could have been lost, and that the
emperor or the monks would have acquiesced in what they knew to be a fictitious
site; for the mountain had long been regarded with veneration by the monks, who,
however, had erected no monastery before this time, but dwelt in the mountains
and valleys about the bush in which God appeared to Moses (Eutychii Annales,
tom. ii. p. 163; comp. Procopius, De Aediffciis Justiniani, 5.8); so that when
their monasteries are mentioned in earlier times, it is clear that the monastic
cells only are to be understood. On the whole, then, the testimony of Cosmas can
hardly avail against a tradition which was not originated, but only perpetuated,
by the erection of Justinian's monastery. To this historical argument in favour
of the existing traditions a topographical one may be added. If Rephidim is
correctly placed by Dr. Lepsius and others at Wady Faran, at the foot of Serbal,
it seems to follow incontestably that Serbal cannot be Sinai; for what occasion
could there be for the people to decamp from Rephidim, and journey to Sinai, if
Rephidim were at the very base of the mount? (Exod. 19.1, 2). Dr. Lepsius feels
the difficulty, and attempts to remove it by insinuating that the sacred
narrative is not to be implicitly trusted. That Horeb is mentioned in connection
with Rephidim is certainly a palpable difficulty (Exod. 18.1--6), but in a
choice of difficulties it is safer to adopt that which does least violence to
the sacred text.
By far the strongest argument in favour of the identity of Serbal with Sinai is
to be found in the celebrated inscriptions with which the rocks on that mountain
and in the surrounding valleys are covered. Not that anything can be certainly
determined from these mysterious records, while the art of deciphering them is
still in its infancy. The various theories respecting them cannot here be
discussed; the works containing them are referred to at the end of the article:
but it may be well to put on record the whole of the earliest testimony
concerning them, and to offer for their elucidation an observation suggested by
an early writer which has been strangely overlooked in this discussion. It is an
interesting theory of Cosmas Indicopleustes, that the Israelites, having been
instructed in written characters in the Decalogue given in Horeb, were practised
in writing, as in a quiet school, in the desert for forty years: “from whence it
comes to pass,” he proceeds, “that you may see in the desert of Mount Sinai, and
in all the stations of the Hebrews, all the rocks in those parts, which have
rolled down from the mountains, engraven with Hebrew inscriptions, as I myself,
who journeyed in those parts, testify; which certain Jews also having read,
interpreted to us, saying that they were written thus. ‘The pilgrimage (?pe?s??)
of such an one, of such a tribe, in such a year, and such a month,’ --as is
frequently written in our hostelries. For they, having newly acquired the art,
practised it by multiplying writing, so that all those places are full of Hebrew
inscriptions, preserved even unto this time, on account of the unbelievers, as I
think; and any one who wishes can visit those places and see them, or they can
inquire and learn concerning it that I have spoken the truth.” (Cosmas
Indicopleustes, de Mundo, lib. v. apud Montfaucon, Collectio Nova Patrum, tom.
ii. p. 205.) On this it may suffice to remark, that while it is certain that the
characters are neither the original nor later Hebrew,--i. e. neither Phoenician
nor Chaldaic,--still the Jews in Cosmas's company could decipher them. We know
that they are for the most part similar to the ancient Arabian (the Hamyaritic
or Hadraműtic) character, with which the whole region in the south of the
Arabian peninsula teems. If, then, Mr. Forster's ingenious and very probable
conjecture of the identity of the rock-hewn inscription of Hissn Ghorab with
that [2.1005] copied by Abderakhman from the southern coast of Arabia, preserved
and translated by Schultens, be correct, it will follow that the old Adite
character was decipherable even two centuries later than the date assigned to
Cosmas, who could scarcely have failed to discover the Christian origin of these
inscriptions, if they had been really Christian. Indeed it may well be
questioned whether any Christians could have been sufficiently conversant with
this ancient character to use it as freely as it is used on the rocks of the
peninsula. Certainly if the hypothesis of this place having been resorted to as
a place of pilgrimage by the pagan tribes of Arabia, and so having acquired a
sanctity in the very earliest times, could be established, the fact might
furnish a clue to the future investigation of this deeply interesting subject,
and, as Ritter has suggested, might serve to remove some difficulties in the
Sacred Narrative. Now the journal of Antoninus Placentinus does in fact supply
so precisely what was wanting, that it is singular that his statement has
attracted so little notice in connection with the Sinaitic inscriptions; which,
however, he does not expressly mention or even allude to. But what we do learn
from him is not unimportant, viz., that before the time of Islâm, in “the ages
of ignorance,” as the Mohammedans call them, the peninsula of Mount Sinai was a
principal seat of the idolatrous superstition of the Arabians; and that a feast
was held there in honour of their miraculous idol, which was resorted to by
Ishmaelites, as he calls them, from all parts; the memorial of which feast seems
still to be preserved by the Bedawin. (Burckhardt, Syria, pp. 566, 567.) Now
when it is remembered that the eastern commerce of Greece and Rome, conducted by
the Arabs of Yemen and Hadramant, must have brought their merchants and sailors
to the vicinity of this ancient sanctuary at Arsinoe or at Elana, the pilgrimage
becomes almost a matter of course; and the practice which we know prevailed in
their own country of graving their memorials with an iron pen in the rock for
ever, was naturally adopted by them, and imitated by the Christian pilgrims in
after times. Undue stress has been laid on the frequency of the inscriptions
about Serbal, contrasted with their rarity about Jebel Műsa; but it should be
remembered that they are executed almost entirely in the soft sandstone which
meets the granite on and around Serbal, but which is scarcely found in the
interior, where the hard, primitive rock did not encourage the scribbling
propensities of the travellers, as the softer tablets in the more western part,
where the blocks of trap-stone (which are also largely interspersed with the
granite, and which present a black surface without, but are lemon-coloured
within) were studiously selected for the inscriptions, which, in consequence,
come out with the effect of a rubricated book or illuminated manuscript, the
black surface throwing out in relief the lemon-coloured inscriptions.
This account of the peninsula must not be concluded without a brief notice of
the very remarkable temple of Sarbut-el-Chádem, and the stelae which are found
in such numbers, not only in the temple, but in other western parts of the
peninsula, where large masses of copper, mixed with a quantity of iron ore, were
and still are found in certain strata of the sandstone rocks along the skirts of
the prime-val chain, and which gave to the whole district the name still found
in the hieroglyphics, Maphat, “the copper land,” which was under the particular
protection of the goddess Hathor, Mistress of Maphat. The temple, dedicated to
her, stands on a lofty sand-stone stone ledge, and is entirely filled with lofty
stelae, many of them like obelisks with inscriptions on both sides; so crowded
with them in fact, that its walls seem only made to circumscribe the stelae,
although there are several erected outside it, and on the adjacent hills. The
monuments belong, apparently, to various dynasties, but Dr. Lepsius has only
specially mentioned three, all of the twelfth. The massive crust of iron ore
covering the hillocks, 250 yards long and 100 wide, to the depth of 6 or 8 feet,
and blocks of scoriae, prove that the smelting furnaces of the Egyptian kings
were situated on these airy heights; but the caverns in which the ore was found
contain the oldest effigies of kings in existence, not excepting the whole of
Egypt and the pyramids of Gizeh.
The chief authorities for this article, besides those referred to in the text,
are Niebuhr (Voyage en Arabie, vol. i. pp. 181--204); Seetzen (Reisen, vol. iii.
pp. 55--121). For the physical history and description of the peninsula,
Russegger is by far the fullest and most trustworthy authority (Reisen. vol.
iii. pp. 22--58). Dr. Robinson has investigated the history and geography of the
peninsula, with his usual diligence (Travels, vol. 1. § § 3, 4. pp. 87--241);
and Dr. Wilson has added some important observations in the way of additional
information or correction of his predecessor (Lands of the Bible, vol. i.
chapters vi.--viii. pp. 160--275). Lepsius's Tour from Thebes to the Peninsula
of Sinai (Letters, pp. 310--321, 556--562), which has been translated by C. H.
Cottrell (London, 1846), argues for Serbal as the true Mountain of the Law; and
his theory has been maintained with great learning and industry by Mr. John Hogg
(Remarks on Mount Serbal, &c. in Transactions of the Royal Society of
Literature, 1849). The graphic description of the country from Mr. A. P.
Stanley's pen is the latest contribution to the general history of the peninsula
(Sinai and Palestine, 1856). The decipherment of the inscriptions has been
attempted by the learned Orientalists of Germany, Gesenius, Roediger, Beer, and
others (Ch. Bunsen, Christianity and Mankind, vol. iii. pp. 231--234); and Mr.
Forster has published a vindication of his views against the strictures of Mr.
Stanley on his original work (The Voice of Israel from the Rocks of Sinai, 1851;
The Israelitish Authorship of the Sinaitic Inscriptions, 1856).
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Geography (1854) William Smith, LLD, Ed.