Читать бесплатно онлайн книгу автора  A History of Sinai

Lina Eckenstein

A HISTORY OF SINAI

BY

LINA ECKENSTEIN

AUTHOR OF “WOMAN UNDER MONASTICISM”

WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING
CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE
NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C.
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
1921

PRINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.

FOREWORD

In the winter of 1905-6 Professor Flinders Petrie undertook the examination of the Egyptian remains in Sinai. After working at Wadi Maghara he removed into the Wadi Umm Agraf to copy the inscriptions and excavate the temple ruins at Serabit. His work is described in “Researches in Sinai, 1906,” and the inscriptions are in course of publication by the Egypt Exploration Fund. Among the workers at Serabit was myself. I had long been interested in the hermit life of the peninsula and in the growing belief that the Gebel Musa was not the Mountain of the Law. The excavations at Serabit and the non-Egyptian character of the ancient hill sanctuary supplied new material for reflection. In the hours spent in sorting fragments of temple offerings and copying temple inscriptions it occurred to me that we might be on the site which meant so much in the history of religion. Studies made after our return suggested further points of interest. The outcome is this little history which will, I trust, appeal to those who take an interest in the reconstruction of the past and in the successive stages of religious development.

LINA ECKENSTEIN

Easter, 1920.

APPROXIMATE DATING OF EGYPTIAN DYNASTIES

DYNASTY

I.

b.c.

5500.

Monument of

Semerkhet

in Sinai

IV.

”

4800.

”

Khufu

”

VI.

”

4300.

”

the Pepys

”

XII.

”

3600.

Amen-em-hats and Sen-userts

XV.

”

2500.

Hyksos Conquest

”

”

Time of Abraham and Joseph

XVIII.

”

1580.

Amen hotep and Tahutmes

”

1380.

Akhen-aten (Amen-hotep IV), (?) time of Moses

XIX.

”

1328

—

1202.

Ramessides

”

1300

—

1234.

Ramessu II.

RULERS OF PHARAN AND THE CONVENT OF SINAI

LIST TENTATIVELY ENLARGED FROM CHEIKHO

Bishops of Pharan—
Moses.
Natyr.
Macarius.
Photius.
Theodor.

Bishops of Sinai—
Constantine, 869.
Marcus I, 869.
Jorius, 1033.
John I, 1069.
Zacharias, 1103 or 1114.
George, 1133 or 1143.
Gabriel I, 1146.
John II, 1164.
Simeon (Archbishop), 1203-53.
Euthymius, 1223.
Macarius I, 1224.
Germanus I, 1228.
Theodosius, 1239.
Macarius II, 1248.
Simeon (? II), 1258.
John III, 1265.
Arsinius, 1290.
Simeon, 1306.
Dorotheus, 1324-33.
Germanus II, 1333.
Marcus II, 1358.
Job.
Athanasius.
Sabbas.
Abraham.
Gabriel II.
Michael.
Silvanus.
Cyrillus.
Solomon.
Macarius of Cyprus, 1547.
Eugenius, 1565-83.
Anastasius, 1583-92.
Laurentius, 1572-1617.
Joasaph, 1617-58.
(Nectarius)
Ananias (1667-77), 1658-68.
Joannicus I. (1677-1703), 1668-1703.
Cosmas, 1705.
Athanasius of Bari, 1706-18.
Joannicus II of Mytilene, 1718-29.
Nicephorus Mortales, 1729-49.
Constantius I, 1749-59.
Cyrillus II, 1759-90.
Dorotheus of Byzantium, 1794-96.
Constantius II, 1804-59.
Cyrillus III, 1859-67.
Callistratus, 1877-85.
Porphyrius, 1885.

CHIEF AUTHORITIES

For other works and writers see Alphabetical Index and page referred to.

Breasted, J. H., “Ancient Records of Egypt, 1906.”

“Perigraphe of Holy Mount Sinai, 1817.” (In Greek.)

Petrie, W. M. Flinders, “Researches in Sinai, 1906.”

Weill, Raymond, “La Presqu’île de Sinai, 1908.”

Wilson & Palmer, “Ordnance Survey, 1870-71.”

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE Foreword iii Approximate Dating of Egyptian Dynasties v Rulers of Pharan and the Convent of Sinai vii Chief Authorities ix List of Illustrations xiii

I.

Introductory 1

II.

Sinai a Centre of Moon-Cult 8

III.

The Sanctuary at Serabit 17

IV.

The Egyptians in Sinai. I. 30

V.

Early Peoples and Place Names 41

VI.

The Egyptians in Sinai. II. 52

VII.

The Israelites in Sinai. I. 64

VIII.

The Israelites in Sinai. II. 74

IX.

The Nabateans 83

X.

The Hermits in Sinai 94

XI.

The Writings of the Hermits 106

XII.

The Building of the Convent 121

XIII.

Mohammad and St. Katherine 134

XIV.

Sinai during the Crusades 143

XV.

The Pilgrims of the Middle Ages. I. 155

XVI.

The Pilgrims of the Middle Ages. II. 165

XVII.

The Convent between 1500 and 1800 173

XVIII.

Sinai in the Nineteenth Century 183 Alphabetical Index 195

ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. page

1.

Situation of Sanctuaries 9

2.

Figures of Baboons 11

3.

Sneferu ravaging the Land 13

4.

Khufu smiting the Anu before Thoth 14

5.

Amen-em-hat III, Thoth and Hathor 15

6.

Sanctuary Surroundings at Serabit 19

7.

Figure with Semitic Script 23

8.

Plan of Caves at Serabit 27

9.

Upper Half of Stele of Amen-em-hat III 37

10.

Temple Ruins at Serabit 53

11.

Plan of Temple 55

12.

Amen-hotep III offering to Sopd 59

13.

Queen Thyi 61

14.

Men in Burning Bush 69

15.

Ayun Musa 71

16.

View of the Convent 123

17.

Chapel on Gebel Musa 141

18.

El Arish 145

19.

Zigiret el Faraun 149

20.

Sketch of Convent Surroundings about 1335 159

21.

Ritter von Harff and St. Katherine 169

22.

Sulyman abu Sīlm, a Bedawy 187

23.

Map of the Peninsula 193

A HISTORY OF SINAI

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY[1]

SINAI is the peninsula, triangular in form, which projects into the Red Sea between Egypt and Arabia. The name used to be applied to the mountainous region of the south, now it is made to comprise the land as far north as the Mediterranean.

Sinai is famous for the part which it has played in the religious history of mankind. It was at one time a centre of moon-cult, before it became the seat of the promulgation of the Law to the Jews at the time of Moses. In Christian times it was one of the chief homes of the hermits, and the possession of the relics of St. Katherine in the great convent of the south, caused Sinai to be included in the Long Pilgrimage throughout the Middle Ages.

A history of Sinai deals with the people who visited the peninsula at different times, rather than with its permanent inhabitants, who, in the course of centuries, seem to have undergone little change. They still live the life of the huntsman and the herdsman as in the days of Ishmael, sleeping in the open, and adding to their meagre resources by carrying dates and charcoal to the nearest centres of intercourse, in return for which they receive corn.

The country geographically belongs to Egypt, ethnologically to Arabia. It falls into three regions.

In the north, following the coast line of the Mediterranean, lies a zone of drift sand, narrowest near Rafa on the borders of Palestine, widening as it is prolonged in a westerly direction towards Egypt, where it is conterminous with the present Suez Canal. This desert was known in Biblical days as Shur (the wall) of Egypt. “And Saul smote the Amalekites from Havilah (north Arabia), until thou comest to Shur that is over against Egypt” (1 Sam. xv. 7). The military highway from Egypt to Syria from ancient times followed the coast line of the Mediterranean, the settlements along which were modified on one side by the encroachment of the sea, on the other by the invasion of sand.

Adjoining this zone of drift sand, the land extends south with increased elevation to the centre of the peninsula, where it reaches a height of about 4000 ft., and abruptly breaks off in a series of lofty and inaccessible cliffs, the upper white limestone of which contrasts brilliantly in some places with the lower red sandstone. This region is, for the most part, waterless and bare. It is known in modern parlance as the Badiet Tîh (the plain of wandering). Its notable heights include the Gebel el Ejneh and the Gebel Emreikah. This plain is drained in the direction of the Mediterranean by the great Wadi el Arish and its numerous feeders, which, like most rivers of Sinai, are mountain torrents, dry during the greater part of the year, and on occasion like the fiumare of Italy, flowing in a spate. The Wadi el Arish is the River of Egypt of the Bible (Gen. xv. 18; Num. xxxiv. 5), the Nahal Muzur of the annals of King Esarhaddon.

The Badiet Tîh is crossed from east to west by the road from Akaba to Suez, along which the Holy Carpet, which is made at Cairo, was annually conveyed to Mecca. Halfway between Suez and Akaba, at Kalaat el Nakhl, the road is crossed by one coming from Gaza, which is prolonged south in several directions down precipitous passes. Kalaat en Nakhl is an important watering place, and was for a time a military station. It was known in the Middle Ages as a puteus Soldani (well of the Sultan).

The roads coming from Nakhl lead down the escarpment of Tîh to a belt of sand and gravel, varying in width, which, with the arid stretches adjoining it, covers an area of some thirty square miles. This is the Gebbeter Ramleh (belt of sand). Its western parts including the Wadi Jarf is the wilderness of Sin of the Bible (Exod. xvi. 1).

South of this great belt of sand, red sandstone reappears in shelving masses leading up to the great mountainous district which forms Sinai proper, the third region of the peninsula. These mountains are traversed by many river-beds or wadies. Some of them, according to the ways of the country, do not bear the same name throughout their course, but the main stream frequently takes another name when it is joined by a tributary. Thus the Wadi Nasb after its junction with the Wadi Beda becomes the Wadi Baba, and so forth.

This sandstone district is cut into by deep gorges and canyons, that have sheer falls of several hundred feet in places. It comprises the mountains which yielded turquoise and copper, products that brought the neighbouring people into Sinai. Beads of turquoise were found in the pre-dynastic tombs of Egypt which probably came from Sinai, while there was an increasing demand for copper in the surrounding countries from the close of the Neolithic Age. If the name Milukhkha of the Babylonian records refers to Sinai, these people also came there several thousand years before our era.

Turquoise appears in a ferruginous layer in the sandstone at the height of about 2650 ft. at Serabit, and at the height of about 1170 ft. at Maghara above sea-level. The copper ore occurs in the Wadi Nasb, and in the Wadi Khalig, somewhat extensively in the latter, together with iron and manganese. Enormous slag heaps lie at the head of the Wadi Nasb and near the outlet of the Wadi Baba, which bear evidence to former smelting activity. Again, in the Wadi Sened, a dyke rich in copper traverses syenite for a distance of nearly two miles.

The district which was worked by the ancient Egyptians was comprised between the valley system of the Wadi Baba on the north, and that of the Wadi Sidreh on the south, both of which have their outlet in the direction of the coastal plain of El Markha. It was from this side that the ancient Egyptians approached Sinai. The chief height of the district is the Tartir ed Dhami (black cap), so called from the dark basalt that forms its summit, which rises to a height of 3531 ft. There is also the double-peaked Umm Riglên (mother of two feet) which rises to the south of the Wadi Umm Agraf and dominates the height of Serabit.

To the south of the ancient mining district the sandstone is connected in a manner highly interesting to the geologist with the plutonic rock which gives its imposing character to the mountains of the south. Here lies the Wadi Feiran, one of the best watered and fruitful valleys of the peninsula, to the south of which Mount Serbal rises abruptly from a comparatively low elevation to the height of 6734 ft. This mountain has been described as one great lump of diorite, and its majestic appearance led some recent travellers, including Lepsius[2] and Bartlett,[3] to identify it as the Mountain of the Law. Further south lies the great group of mountains which include the Gebel Musa, 7359 ft. high, and the Gebel Katrîn with its three peaks, the highest of which rises to 8527 ft. The Gebel Musa from early Christian times was generally looked upon as the Mountain of the Law. At its foot lies the great convent of Sinai, at one time known as the Bush, which has carried on to the present day the traditions of the early Christian hermits, who settled in the peninsula. The Gebel Katrîn lying further south, was looked upon during the later Middle Ages, as the height on which the angels deposited the body of St. Katherine. Another imposing height of the group is the Ras Safsaf, 6540 ft. high, which has been put forward in recent times as a possible Mountain of the Law.

These mountains of the south contain many natural springs and fruitful valleys, which were formerly the home of Christian ascetics. They are divided from the Gulf of Suez on the west by the desert of El Kaa, which drains a large amphitheatre of hills, and becomes a coastal plain that extends as far as Ras Mohammad, the southernmost point of the peninsula. The desert of El Kaa has a harder subsoil which is so tilled that the accumulated moisture is thrown up at the coast near Tur, the chief harbour of the peninsula, and possibly an ancient Phœnician colony. Near it lay Raithou, a place of many oases and large date-palm plantations which were carefully tended by the monks during the Middle Ages.

The south-eastern parts of the peninsula are rarely visited by Europeans. There are some high mountains, including the Gebel Thebt (7883 ft.), the Gebel Umm Shomer (8449 ft.), and the Gebel Umm Iswed (8236 ft.), in districts that were recently explored by Dr. Hume.[4] The eastern coast-line of the peninsula is relatively inaccessible. There are some creek ports at Sherm, some ten miles north of Ras Mohammad, and some palm trees with a good supply of water at Nakhb. From here it is less than eight miles across the sea to Ras Fartak, the nearest point of Arabia. Further north, opposite the coastland of what is now reckoned the land of Midian, lies Dahab and, beyond it, Ain en Nuêbeh, where the road that leads from the convent to Akaba at the head of the Gulf of Akaba, reaches the coast. From Akaba the mountains are prolonged in the direction of Palestine on both sides of the Wadi el Arabah, the great depression that extends northwards to the Dead Sea. This is “the land of Seir, the country of Edom” of the Bible (Gen. xxxii. 3). Edom signifies red in Hebrew, and the land may have been so called owing to the red sandstone of the district.

Sinai, generally speaking, is a country of stern desolation. Its mountains are bare, its plains are swept by the wind, its river beds are to all appearance waterless. But clusters of bushes that follow the valley floors or rise from the plains, show that moisture percolates the soil beneath the surface, and is procurable by digging down to the harder subsoil, (i.e. “striking the rock”) as was done at the time of the passage of the Israelites. Such digging is done by the Bedawyn at the present day, the holes for water being called hufrah in Arabic. In some places, however, the water along the valleys is thrown up and forms natural oases as in the Wadi Gharandel, the Wadi Feiran, and at Tur. In others, it is raised by means of the mechanical device of a water-wheel and by a shaduf.

Rain falls in the peninsula in sudden downpours, often in connection with a thunderstorm. When we camped in the Wadi Umm Agraf in January of 1906, it rained without ceasing for two days and a night, creating rivulets and a waterfall down the mountain slope. A week later the valley floor was carpeted with verdure and flowers, and the thorny bushes were masses of bloom. Rainstorms may result in a spate, the dreaded seil of the Bedawyn, which often appears several miles below where the rain has actually fallen. In the winter of 1914-15 the Wadi el Arish was twice in spate, and left extensive pools of water behind. The effect of a spate, seen on Dec. 3, 1867, in the Wadi Feiran by the Rev. F. W. Holland, was described by him. In little more than an hour, the Wadi Feiran, at this point about 300 yards wide, was filled with a raging torrent from eight to ten feet deep. Men, animals, and trees were swept past upon the flood, and huge boulders ground along the wady bed with a noise of a hundred mills at work. In this spate perished thirty persons, scores of sheep and goats, camels, and donkeys, and it swept away an entire encampment that had been pitched at the mouth of a small valley on the north side of Mount Serbal.[5]

Disasters of this kind are in part attributable to the reckless deforestation of the country which has gone on unchecked for thousands of years, and continues at the present day. To this is attributable also the calamitous invasion of sand along the shores of the Mediterranean recorded by Arabic writers. In ancient times wood was extensively used for smelting purposes in different parts of the peninsula, as is shown by enormous slag-heaps in the Wadi Baba and in the Wadi Nasb. A great bed of wood ashes beneath the temple-floor at Serabit showed that wood was freely used in offering the holocaust in a district that is now entirely denuded of trees. According to the Mosaic Law, charcoal was used in early times at the Temple service as we gather from “a censer full of burning coals” (Lev. xv. 12).[6] For domestic use it was exported during the Middle Ages, and was regularly delivered by the Bedawyn as tribute to the Pasha in the nineteenth century. Its export continues to this day.

The heathen past tried to stem the ravages of deforestation by marking off certain valley floors, the use of which was reserved to the sanctuaries. Inside this holy ground, the hima, no animal might be hunted and no tree might be cut down. Many valleys of Sinai to this day contain one tree of great age and often of prodigious size, which is accounted holy and is therefore left untouched.[7] But the mass of the trees and with them the hope of a copious undergrowth, has gone. At the time of the passage of the Israelites, there must have been extensive tamarisk groves, since it is the tamarisk which yields manna, a product well-known in ancient Egypt. Its abundance must have made an appreciable difference in their food-supply. Only a few tamarisk groves remain in the more southern mountains at the present day, chief among them the groves of Tarfat el Gidaran. Again neglect has destroyed the palm groves of which enormous plantations existed in the Middle Ages. We read of a plantation of over 10,000 date-palms at Tur, and the date since the earliest times was a staple article of diet. According to Arab tradition the land along the shores of the Mediterranean was of great fruitfulness before it was invaded by sand drifts. It was the same with the numerous fruit and vegetable gardens which were once cultivated by the monks and the hermits. With the exception of the garden belonging to the convent, they have passed away. Journeying across the wide stretches of the country which were formerly a wilderness and are now a desert, one wonders if a wise government could not impose restrictions which would stop the destruction of the undergrowth and regulate the water-supply. This would extend the cultivation of the date-palm, the tamarisk and of other food products, for the Bedawyn, the present inhabitants of the peninsula, live in a state of semi-starvation. Their various means of subsistence have steadily grown less with the centuries. Deforestation has influenced the fauna to the detriment of the huntsmen. The herds of gazelles which were numerous as late as the Middle Ages, are few and far between. Pasture lands which formerly fed sheep and goats were encroached upon by the introduction of the camel. The transport of goods and of pilgrims which gave occupation to the owners of camels during the Middle Ages has practically ceased. The convent formerly helped to tide over difficult times by means of its resources, but the advent in the east of the Turk reduced these resources to a minimum, and the convent is nowadays hardly able to satisfy its own needs. In the face of this state of things, it seems worth recalling the different periods in the past when Sinai held the attention of the outside world and helped in the making of history. For the recognition of her solitary ruins, and of her literary wealth still enshrined in the convent, taken with the needs of her people, may stimulate effort to inaugurate a new era to the profit of Christian and of Moslim alike.

CHAPTER II

SINAI A CENTRE OF MOON-CULT

THE name Sinai is first mentioned in the Song of Deborah (Judges v. 5), which is dated to about b.c. 1000, and in the story of Exodus. It perpetuates the early form of belief of the inhabitants of the peninsula. For the word Sinai together with Sin (Exod. xvi. 1) and Zin (Num. xiii. 21), all date back to Sin, a name of the moon-god in ancient Babylonia.

The word Sin appears as part of the name of Naram-Sin, king of Accad in Babylonia (c. b.c. 3700), whose great stele of victory, now in the Louvre, represents his conquest of Elam (Persia). The acts of Naram-Sin were considered in the light of lunar influence, for his Annals state that “the moon was favourable for Naram-Sin who at this season marched into Maganna.”[8] Maganna, otherwise Magan, was frequently named in early annals and inscriptions, notably on the great statues of King Gudea (b.c. 2500). It was the place where the diorite came from out of which the statues were made. The same inscriptions mention Milukhkha.[9] An ancient fragment of Assyrian geography which was engraved about the year b.c. 680, but the original of which is considered much older, names side by side: “The country of Milukhkha as the country of blue stone, and the country of Maganna as the country of copper.”[10] Of these names Maganna may refer to Sinai while the word Milukhkha recalls the Amalekites who dwelt in the peninsula. In any case the name Sin goes back to Babylonian influence, probably to the Semites who were powerful in the land of Arabia in the days of Khamurabbi.

Fig. 1.—Situation of Sanctuaries. (Petrie: Researches in Sinai.)

The constant recurring changes of the moon caused this to be accepted as the ruler of times and seasons by the huntsman and the herdsman generally. The Hebrews came from a stock of moon-worshippers. It was from Ur of the Chaldees, a centre of moon-cult, that Terah and Abraham migrated to Haran on the way to Canaan about b.c. 2100.[11] The Arab writer Al Biruni (c. a.d. 1000) in his Chronology of the Ancient Nations, noted the connection of Haran with the moon-cult, and stated that near it was another place called Selem-sin, its ancient name being Saram-sîn, i.e. Imago lunæ, and another village called Tera-uz, i.e. Porta Veneris.[12]

The acceptance of moon-worship among the ancient Hebrews is confirmed by Artapanus, some of whose statements were preserved by Alexander Polyhistor (b.c. 140). Artapanus described the Syrians who came to Egypt with Abraham as “Hermiouthian” (i.e. worshippers of Hermes), and stated that Joseph’s brethren built Hermiouthian sanctuaries at Athos and Heliopolis.[13] Heliopolis, the city On of the Bible (Gen. xli. 45), was near the present Cairo; followers of Abraham were held to have settled there. Athos has been identified as Pithom. More probably it was Pa-kesem, the chief city of Goshen. The word Hermiouthian indicates moon-worshippers, as Hermes, the Greek god, was reckoned by the classic writers the equivalent of the Egyptian moon-god Thoth, as is shown by the place-name Hermopolis, (i.e. the city of Thoth), in Lower Egypt.

Another name for the moon-god was Ea or Yah, who was accounted the oldest Semitic god in Babylonia, to which his devotees were held to have brought the cultivation of the date-palm, an event that marked a notable step in civilisation.[14] The emblem of Sin was the crescent moon, the emblem of Ea was the full moon, who, in the Assyrian Creation story is described as “Ea the god of the illustrious (i.e. lustrous) face.”[15] On Babylonian seal cylinders Ea is shown standing up as a bull, seen front face, with his devotee Eabani (i.e. sprung from Ea), a man seen, front face also, who wears the horns and hide of a bull.[16] This representation perpetuates the conception of the horned beast as a sacrosanct animal that was periodically slain. We shall come across this conception later in the emblem worn by the Pharaoh, and in the story of the Israelites and the Golden Calf.

Sandstone Baboon from Serabit

Glazed Baboon from Hierakonpolis

Glazed Baboon from Abydos

Fig. 2.—Figures of Baboons. (Ancient Egypt, a periodical, 1914, Part i.)

The monuments found in Sinai contain information which points to the existence of moon-worship there at a remote period of history. These monuments consist in rock-tablets which were engraved by the Pharaohs from the First Dynasty onwards over the mines which they worked at Maghara, and of remains of various kinds discovered in the temple ruins of the neighbouring Sarbut-el-Khadem or Serabit. Maghara more especially was associated with the moon-god and was presumably the site of a shrine during the period of Babylonian or Arabic influence which preceded the invasion of the peninsula by the Egyptians (Fig. 1).

Among the Egyptians, Thoth, the moon-god, had shrines at Hierakonpolis and at Abydos in Upper Egypt, and in both these places he was worshipped under the semblance of a baboon. He was worshipped also at Hermopolis in Lower Egypt, but here he was represented as ibis-headed. In Sinai we find him represented sometimes as a baboon and sometimes as ibis-headed.

Thus the excavations of the temple-ruins at Serabit in 1906 led to the discovery of several figures of baboons. One was the rude figure some three inches high which is here represented; it was found in the cave that was the treasure-house of the sanctuary. This little figure is similar in appearance and in workmanship to figures found at Hierakonpolis and at Abydos, the centres of moon-worship in Upper Egypt. Several of these figures were found at Hierakonpolis.[17] At Abydos more than sixty were discovered in the winter of 1902 in a chamber at the lowest temple level, where they were apparently placed when the later cult of Osiris superseded the earlier cult of Thoth. This took place in pre-dynastic times.[18] The figure of the baboon who stood for the lunar divinity in Egypt, was doubtless deemed a suitable offering to the sacred shrine at Serabit in Sinai, because of the nearness of this shrine to the centre of moon-worship of the country. If the figure was carried to Sinai at the time when similar figures were offered in Egypt, the establishment of the moon-cult in the peninsula dates back to the pre-dynastic days of Egypt.[19]

Fig. 3.—Sneferu ravaging the land. (Ancient Egypt, a periodical, 1914, Part i.)

Another baboon, carved life-size in limestone with an inscription around its base, came out of one of the chambers of the adytum to the sacred cave at Serabit, the work and inscription of which dated it to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. The presence of this figure suggests that the Egyptians associated their moon-god with the moon-worship of the peninsula.

Fig. 4.—Khufu smiting the Anu before Thoth.

The chief shrine or sanctuary of the moon god in the peninsula probably lay in Wadi Maghara where mining on the part of the Arabs preceded that of the Egyptians, for the Egyptians here fought for the possession of the mines. This is shown by the tablets carved in the living rock, which commemorate the Pharaohs from King Semerkhet (I 7) of the First Dynasty onwards. They are represented as smiters of the enemy above the mines which they worked. One of these tablets represents Sneferu, the ninth king of the Third Dynasty, who wears a head-dress that consists of a double plume which rises from a pair of horns as is seen in the illustration. The double plume is well known, but the horns are foreign to Egypt, and recall the lunar horns that are worn by Eabani, the devotee of the moon-god Ea or ancient Babylonian seal cylinders. The adoption of horns by the Pharaoh of Egypt seems to indicate that he has usurped the authority of the earlier ruler of the place (Fig. 3).

Fig. 5.—Amen-em-hat III, Thoth and Hathor. Maghara. (Petrie: Researches in Sinai.)

Other monuments found at Maghara point to the same conclusion. Thus one rock-tablet represents King Khufu (IV 2), the great pyramid builder, smiting the Anu in front of the ibis-headed figure of Thoth who stands holding out his sceptre facing him (Fig. 4). Other Pharaohs are represented as smiters. But after the Fifth Dynasty the opposition which the Pharaohs encountered in Sinai must have come to an end, for later Pharaohs were no longer represented as smiters, but are seen in the double capacity of lord of Upper and of Lower Egypt standing and facing the ibis-headed figure of the moon-god Thoth, who now holds out to them his sceptre supporting an ankh and a dad, the Egyptian emblems of life and stability. Among the Pharaohs so represented was Amen-em-hat III, sixth king of the Twelfth Dynasty, who is shown facing the god Thoth behind whom the goddess Hathor is seen (Fig. 5). The interpretation is that the Pharaoh is now acting in complete agreement with the divinities of the place. Of these Thoth stands for the moon-god who originally had his shrine at Maghara, and Hathor stands for the presiding goddess who had her shrine at Serabit. This shrine or sanctuary at Serabit is of special importance in the religious associations of the peninsula.