Appendix

Note A

Since Procopius, in the sixth century, tradition had evermore exclusively decided the Gebel Mûsa to be the Mount of the Law, without doubt on account of the church founded at its foot by Justinian. I am unacquainted with any late travellers or scholars who have doubted the truth of this. Burckhardt, also, does not do this, although he conjectured, from the numerous inscriptions at Serbâl, that that mountain had once been erroneously taken for Sinai by the pilgrims. The words of this illustrious traveller (Trav. in Syria, p. 609) are as follows:—“It will be recollected that no inscriptions are found either on the mountain of Moses or on Mount St. Catherine; and that those which are found in the Ledja valley, at the foot of Djebel Catherine, are not to be traced above the rock, from which the water is said to have issued, and appear only to be the work of pilgrims who visited that rock. From these circumstances, I am persuaded that Mount Serbal was at one period the chief place of pilgrimage in the peninsula; and that it was then considered the mountain where Moses received the Tables of the Law; though I am equally convinced, from a perusal of the Scriptures, that the Israelites encamped in the Upper Sinai, and that either Djebel Mousa or Mount St. Catherine is the real Horeb. It is not at all impossible that the proximity of Serbal to Egypt may at one period have caused that mountain to be the Horeb of the pilgrims, and that the establishment of the convent in its present situation, which was probably chosen from motives of security, may have led to the transferring of that honour to Djebel Mousa. At present neither the monks of Mount Sinai nor those of Cairo consider Mount Serbal as the scene of any of the events of sacred history; nor have the Bedouins any tradition among them respecting it, but it is possible, that if the Byzantine writers were thoroughly examined, some mention might be found of this mountain, which I believe was never before visited by any European traveller.”

At a later period, the excellent travels of E. Robinson form a decided epoch in our acquaintance with the peninsula, as well as with Palestine. With reference to the position of Sinai, he mentions, for the first time, the favourable vicinity of the great plain of Râha to the north of Gebel Mûsa, on which the camp of the people of Israel would have had plenty of room (Palestine, vol. i. pp. 144, sqq.). In defining the position of the actual Mount of the Law, he departs from the previous tradition, and endeavours to prove that Moses had not ascended the Gebel Mûsa, but the mountain ridge rising over the plain from the south, which is now called Horeb by the monks, and the highest peak of which is named Sefsâf (vol. i. p. 176). Unfortunately, he has not visited Wadi Firân and the adjoining Serbâl. In a later essay (Bibl. Sacra, vol. iv. No. XXII. May, 1849, pp. 381, sqq.) the learned author returns to the question in respect of my hypothesis, with which he had become acquainted, and opposes to it his already published arguments for Gebel Sefsâf. He comprehends this under three points, which he particularizes from the Mosaic history, and which must therefore also be mentioned here:—“1. A mountain-summit, overlooking the place where the people stood. 2. Space sufficient, adjacent to the mountain, for so large a multitude to stand and behold the phenomena on the summit. 3. The relation between this space where the people stood and the base of the mountain must be such, that they could approach and stand at the nether part of the mount; that they could also touch it, and that further bounds could appropriately be set around the mount, lest they should go up into it, or touch the border of it.” The first of these three points would militate rather against Gebel Mûsa than Serbâl. Robinson says that the latter is excluded by the second and third points. As to the second, I will only call to mind that the encampment of the children of Israel is not otherwise described than at all their earlier stations. If, therefore, the idea of a camp was to be carried out so exclusively as that writers should be solicitous about space for the occupation of so large a people, it would be necessary to find a plain of Râha for all former stations, particularly at Raphidîm (which, according to almost general belief was situated at the foot of Serbâl). As there was a somewhat lengthy stay at that place, Moses was visited by Jethro, and by his advice divided the whole people into divisions of ten men each, and organized them methodically; from which we must conclude that there was a certain local position for all. Whoever thinks of a mass of two millions,—therefore about the number of the inhabitants of London or the whole of modern Egypt—encamped in tents (of which they would have required one for each ten persons, therefore 200,000), as in a well-ordered military camp, to him even the plain of Râha would appear much too small; but whoever allows that but a proportionately small number could group themselves round the principal quarter of Moses, and that all the rest would seek the shady places and caves of the rocks, he will be able to understand the camp of Wadi Firân as easily as at any other place. Wadi Firân also offers—even if we only think of its most fruitful portion, which must have been the most inviting for repose—down as far as El Hessue, in connection with the broad Wadi Aleyât, just as much extent, and, at any rate, a far more inhabitable space for a connected camp than the plain of Râha. Indeed, if minute particulars allow of any deductions, such position of the camp would make it more understandable, why the people were led out of the camp toward God to the foot of the mountain in Wadi Aleyât. The command not to ascend the mountain, which is given more expressly in the words that no one was to touch the ends of the mount, suits any mountain that rises before the eye, and is closed in by bushes. Just behind the bushes is the end of the mountain. Robinson refers to my own map of Serbâl as to this last point, and also the description of the Wadi Aleyât by Bartlett (Forty Days in the Desert, pp. 54-59). But it would be difficult to prove, from my sketch-map, that the people could not stretch out at the foot of the mountain; and Bartlett seems also to be of my opinion. As this traveller, so well known by his excellently-illustrated, and as sensible as interesting, descriptions of countries, is just one of those few who have seen those localities with reference to the question agitated by me, without previously formed opinions, the citation of the place referred to by Robinson would be more fitting here, and the rather as I cannot bring forward the principal points of the argument in a better manner. I may remark that italicised passages are mine, the wide words were originally emphaticised by the author:—

He says (p. 55): “If we endeavour to reconcile ourselves to the received but questionable system, which seeks to accommodate the miraculous with the natural, it is impossible, I think, not to close with the reasoning advanced in favour of the Serbal. There can be no doubt that Moses was personally well acquainted with the peninsula, and had even probably dwelt in the vicinity of Wadi Feiran during his banishment from Egypt, but even common report as to the present day, would point to this favoured locality as the only fit spot in the whole range of the Desert for the supply, either with water or such provisions as the country afforded, of the Israelitish host: on this ground, alone, then, he would be led irresistibly to fix upon it, when meditating a long sojourn for the purpose of compiling the law. This consideration derives additional force when we consider the supply of wood, and other articles, requisite for the construction of the tabernacles, and which can only be found readily at Wadi Feiran, and of its being also, in all probability, from early times, a place visited by trading caravans. But if Moses were even unacquainted previously with the resources of the place, he must have passed it on his way from the sea-coast through the interior of the mountains; and it is inconceivable that he should have refused to avail himself of its singular advantages for his purpose, or that the host would have consented, without a murmur, to quit, after so much privation, this fertile and well-watered oasis for new perils in the barren desert; or that he should, humanly speaking, have been able either to compel them to do so, or afterwards to fix them in the inhospitable unsheltered position of the monkish Mount Sinai, with the fertile Feiran but one day’s long march in their rear. Supplies of wood, and perhaps of water, must, in that case, have been brought, of necessity, from the very spot they had but just abandoned. We must suppose that the Amalekites would oppose the onward march of the Israelites, where they alone had a fertile territory worthy of being disputed, and from which Moses must, of necessity, have sought to expel them. If it be so, then in this vicinity and no other we must look for Rephidim, from whence the Mount of God was at a very short distance. We seem thus to have a combination of circumstances which are met with nowhere else, to certify that it was here that Moses halted for the great work he had in view, and that the scene of the law-giving is here before our eyes in its wild and lonely majesty. The principal objection to this is on the following ground, that there is no open space in the immediate neighbourhood of the Serbal suitable for the encampment of the vast multitude, and from which they could all of them at once have had a view of the mountain, as is the case at the plain Er Rahah, at Mount Sinai, where Robinson supposes, principally for that reason, the law to have been given. But it this objection conclusive? We read, indeed, that Israel ‘camped before the mount’ and that ’the Lord came down in sight of all the people’ moreover, that bounds were set to prevent the people from breaking through and violating even the precints of the holy solitude. Although these conditions are more literally fulfilled at Er Rahah, yet, if we understood them as couched in general terms, they apply, perhaps, well enough, to the vicinity of the Serbal. A glance at the view, and a reference to this small rough map [here follows a sketch of the plan] will show the reader that the main encampment of the host must have been in Wadi Feiran itself, from which the summit of the Serbal is only here and there visible, and that it is by the lateral Wadi Aleyal that the base of the mountain itself by a walk of about an hour is to be reached. It certainly struck me, in passing up this valley, as a very unfit, if not impracticable, spot for the encampment of any great number of people, if they were all in tents; though well supplied with pure water, the ground is rugged, and rocky, towards the base of the mountain awfully so; but still it is quite possible that a certain number might have established themselves there, as the Arabs do at present, while, as on other occasions, the principal masses were distributed in the surrounding valleys. I do not know that there is any adequate ground for believing, as Robinson does, that because the people were warned not to invade the seclusion of the mount, and a guard was placed to prevent them from doing so, that therefore the encampment itself pressed closely on its borders. Curiosity might possibly enough lead many to attempt this even from a distance, to say nothing of those already supposed to be located in the Wadi Aleyat, near the base of the mountain, to whom the injunction would more especially apply. Those, however, who press closely the literal sense of one or two passages, should bear in mind all the difficulties previously cited, and the absolute destitution of verdure, cultivation, running streams, and even of abundant springs, which characterise the fearfully barren vicinity of the monkish Sinai, where there is indeed room and verge enough for encampment, but no resources whatever. If we take up the ground of a continual and miraculous provision for all the wants of two millions of people, doubtless they may have been subsisted there as well as in any other place; otherwise it seems incredible that Moses should ever have abandoned a spot, offering such unique advantages as Feiran, to select instead the most dreary and sterile spot in its neighbourhood.”

This was the clearly felt, and unhesitatingly expressed impression that the companionship of those places with the Biblical narrative made upon a man, who yet finally remains in doubt, whether, notwithstanding all the cited grounds, it would not be better to follow the other “systems,” according to which the whole is regarded as an uninterrupted wonder from beginning to end, if it indeed be not so called in the Bible (see p. 19 of Bartlett’s work), in which case all the researches into the human probability of that great historical event become meaningless. The author then proceeds to some specialities, which he only mentions as such, in which he departs from my feeling, as he places the attack of the Amalekites farther down the valley towards El Hessue. The many ways in which such specialities can be explained, only point out the fact to us, that the general bearing of the most important circumstances of the question can alone produce positive conviction, and that where those are concerned the objections arising from the petty variations must recede.

Soon after Robinson, in 1843, Dr. John Wilson travelled through Palestine and the Petraïc peninsula, and published his comprehensive work on the subject (“The Lands of the Bible,” 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1847). Though he does not approach in the most remote degree the high position of his learned predecessor, I cannot but coincide in some remarks which he throws out against Robinson’s hypothesis, that the Sefsâf is the Mount of the Law (vol. i. pp. 222, sqq.). He again shows its connection with the tradition of Gebel Mûsa. In Serbâl, on the contrary, he believes he identifies the Mount Paran of the Bible (p. 199), an idea which could only be entertained if the name of Mount Paran was found to be another denomination of Sinai, and the latter be also identified with Serbâl. At the conclusion of the second volume (pp. 764, sqq.), the author adds a note, in which he defends himself from my contrary opinion concerning the position of Sinai. The most important reasons, however, which I have everywhere placed in the foreground, he does not at all touch upon, but only enlarges on specialities, some of which could easily be confuted, and the rest not bearing on the principal question. He places Daphka, not even mentioned in the principal history, and, therefore, certainly less considerable, in Wadi Firân, and Raphidîm, “the resting places,” in the bare sandy Wadi e’Sheikh, because there is no water there. But in that case, to use his own weapons, where is the fountain of Moses? “Few in the kingdom of Great Britain, at least,” says the author, “will be disposed to substitute the Wadi Feiran, with clear running water, for Rephidim, where there was no water for the people to drink.” I believe he does his countrymen wrong, if he considers them to diverge so generally from the almost univoce traditions, and to consider the feelings of learned fathers of the church, who place Raphidîm in Firân, and take the fountain there for the Fountain of Moses, as a rationalistic explanation of it; and, besides H. Bartlett, several others of his countrymen, among whom I particularise Mr. Hogg (see below for a notice of his essay), the Rev. Dr. Croly, and the author of the Pictorial Bible, have expressly declared in favour of my opinion. If he mean to say I had overlooked the fact that the wilderness of Sin, and the wilderness of Sinai, signified two different things, I will refer him to p. 47 of my work, where the contrary is distinctly stated. The words, “out of the wilderness of Sin,” I have also not left unnoticed (p. 39), as little as it was done by Eusebius and St. Jerome, who also allow the wilderness of Sin to stretch as far as that of Sinai. The strife with Amalek, as it is related in Exodus, gives the impression of a general and stubborn fight; that the principal attack in front was supported by an attack in the rear, as it is added in Deuteronomy xxv. 18, is not contradicted; the double attack, too, seems to be alluded to there in the words ἀντέστη σοι έν τῇ ὁδῷ, καὶ ἔκοψε σου τὴν οὐραγίαν.157 Near Elim twelve springs not wells, are named; but this does not change the matter here, as twelve running springs, like those in Wadi Firân, cannot be thought of, but as the author (vol. i., p. 175) himself remarks, only standing ground waters, which must be dug out, and, therefore, in fact, wells. The great number of these is alone important, from which the size of the place can be calculated. The Sheikh Abu Zelîmeh I was well acquainted with, but that would not hinder a connection of the word with the place, although I do not lay the slightest stress on such coincidences.

The author does not bring forth other grounds, which he believes would militate against my opinion; these may, perhaps, have touched the principal points of the whole question, which were still unconfuted. Perhaps the author may now find it necessary to add them with respect to the investigations of a countryman of his, Mr. John Hogg, who took up the inquiry first in the Gentleman’s Magazine, March, 1847, and then in the transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, second series, vol. iii. pp. 183-236 (read May, 1847, January, 1848); subsequently extending it considerably under the title of “Remarks and Additional Views on Dr. Lepsius’s proofs that Mount Serbal is the true Mount Sinai; or the Wilderness of Sin; on the Manna of the Israelites; and on the Sinaitic Inscriptions.” This learned writer collates the earliest traditions, and seeks to prove from them that, before the time of Justinian, they referred to Serbâl, and not to Gebel Mûsa. Indeed he seems to have succeeded, and we shall return to the question hereafter.

Since that time the comprehensive and masterly work of my honoured friend Carl Ritter: Vergleichende Erdkunde der Sinai-Halbinsel, von Palästina und Syrien, erster Band, Berlin, 1848—(Comparative Geology of the peninsula of Sinai, of Palestine, and Syria, volume one),—has appeared. The exhausting use and employ of all sources from the oldest down to the most recent, for an as grandly conceived, as circumstantially executed, general picture of the peninsula in its geographical relations and in the relative history of its population, has also not left the question under discussion, in which history and geography are in closer connection than in any other, unillustrated. Sinai is for the peninsula what Jerusalem is to Palestine, and it is ascertained that the building of the church at Gebel Mûsa, in the sixth century, brought about by the belief that it was founded at the place where the Law was given, caused the historical centre of the peninsula,—which formerly was undoubtedly identical with the city of Pharan and its palm-forest, as the natural geographical centre,—to be parted from it, and removed several days’ journey further south; just as certain must the determination of the question, whether a first or second parting of the historical and geographical centre could be of considerable influence in the exposition of the earliest history of the peninsula, and could even exercise some influence on the future tone, not only of Sinaitic literature, but even on some of the relations of the place itself which not unfrequently subject, to some extent, the destinations of the continually increasing number of travellers. Ritter’s work, of course, had at once to choose one of the two opinions. And, naturally, after the final examination of the considerable previous works, the new opinion which first stepped forth against the view undoubted for a thousand years, and accepted by all the later travellers, in an incidental form, in a necessarily imperfect report of a journey, could make the less demand for preference, as it was not critically examined in any way, nor taken into consideration by later travellers. I know how to value the equally careful as impartial recognizing examination which Ritter has given in his work to the grounds in favour of Serbâl being Sinai.

This he does at pp. 736 seq. Here he at once rebuts the opinion, that the tradition of the convent on Gebel Mûsa, only known to us since the sixth century, can decide anything; “the tradition of the still more ancient convent of Serbâl, and the Serbâl-city of Wadi Firân, it might be said, was just as much existing, and has only been lost, as far as we are concerned.” Therefore, other grounds taken from nature and history ought to vouch for it. Then he brings up the opinion of Robinson, who places Raphidîm in the upper part of the Wadi e’ Sheikh, but forcibly instances against it, that it would then have been visited and mentioned on the continuation of the journey, and in another place just as appositely, that one cannot, in that case, understand how the people could have grumbled about water, only one day’s journey beyond the well-watered Firân, while this is easily explained on the long way from Elim to the vicinity of Firân. Ritter therefore takes, with me and the old tradition, the curious brook of Firân to be the fountain of Moses. He only objects that, if Moses struck the fountain from out of the rocks, it must have been at the beginning, not at the end of the present rivulet, and he therefore places Raphidîm in the uppermost part of the Wadi Firân, the fertility of which could not have existed before the fountain was made. As to the situation of the Mount of the Law, he declines at present to pledge himself to any distinct decision. “We see,” he says, “already in the almost contemporaneous historians, Jerome (Procopius?) and Cosmas, the variation of opinion concerning these localities, of which no one appears definitely settled before another, even in the latest double views by according and sufficient grounds, to us at least. As both these modes of explanation of a text so obscure in topographical matters, as a but imperfectly known locality, can only use hypothetical probabilities, as briefly for a more certain explanation; so let it be permitted to state our hypothetical view on this probably never-to-be quite settled matter.”

This is to the effect that the “Mountain of God,” where Moses was encamped, when he was visited by Jethro in Raphidîm, “could not in any case be the convent Mount of Sinai, (i. e. Gebel Mûsa,) although this is so named at a subsequent period, as that of the true God, from which one was then in every case far distant, but might indeed be a denomination of the high, much nearer Serbâl, as one was yet in camp at Raphidîm.” He, too, perceives an interruption of the connection at the beginning of the nineteenth chapter with the previous chapters, but seeks for the cause in a chasm in the text, while I would rather perceive a short interpolation. In this chasm falls the departure of the people from the valley of Firân for the upper Sheikh valley and to that of Gebel Mûsa, the true Sinai. This was first simply “the mountain,” (Exodus, xix. 2,) and only obtained the name of a “Mountain of God,” after the giving of the law (which, however, is already contradicted by the next following verse, xix. 3), while Serbâl might have received the denomination of “Mountain of God” from a heathen idol there worshipped.

“Both mountains, the Mount of God (Serbâl) in Raphidîm, and the Mount in the desert of Sinai, are therefore just as various in name, as they are separated by the last journeys between both camps.” The general features of nature round about Gebel Mûsa, he considers more fitting for a longer stay of the people on account of the greater security, coolness, and the Alp-like pasture land. Only the name Horeb, already comprehended in Raphidîm, could be an objection, yet there seems to him to be no sufficient grounds existing, why this name, already considered as a general term by Robinson, Hengstenberg, and others, should not be extended to the outer ranges of Serbâl.

The acceptation of two mountains of God, Serbâl and Gebel Mûsa, is, as far I can tell, here attempted for the first time. It is certainly, the necessary, only not yet enounced consequence, for all those who place Raphidîm in Firân. In this there seems to me to lie an evident proof with reference to the critical examination of the text, that both mountains are again to be found in Serbâl. The greater security of the plain of Râha would not be very high for a “harnessed” (Exodus xvi. 18,) host of 600,000 men, after they had taken a firm footing, and Serbâl would also have always offered a safe place of retreat. The cold in the lofty mountains, causing water to freeze (Ritter, p. 445-630) in February in the convent (5,000 feet above the sea), according to Rüppell and Robinson, would alone have made an open camp on the plain of Râha impossible during the winter, for a population accustomed to the Egyptian climate, to the vegetation of those districts, which is certainly differently described by the different travellers; the thought there is no doubt of the Israelites having at one period been there, may partially have induced several to accept more shrubs in the neighbourhood than they actually saw at the time, partly there, no question that the season of the year may make some difference; I therefore willingly observe, that I visited the peninsula at about the same season of the year in which, according to the Mosaic account, the Israelites came thither.

Finally, Ritter has again spoken upon the Sinai question in a more popular essay: “The Sinaitic Peninsula, and the Route of the People of Israel to Sinai,” in the Evangelischen Kalender, for 1852, edited by F. Piper, pp. 31, sqq. Here, too, he places Raphidîm in Firân, and perceived the mountain of God at Raphidîm, in Serbâl. Against the identity of Serbâl and Sinai, he brings these two chief objections. As it has now been perfectly settled that the so-called Sinaitic inscriptions are of heathen origin, and prove Serbâl, to which they chiefly point as the “centre of an ancient worship,” this remarkable mountain could not be “a mountain of Jehovah, if it were already a sacred mountain of the idolaters” (p. 51). And further on (p. 52):—“The holy mountain of Israel did not lie in the territory of Amalek, like Serbâl, but in the east and south parts of the territory of Midian,” for it is expressly said in Exodus (iv. 19):—“And the Lord said unto Moses, in Midian, Go, return into Egypt,” in order that they should sacrifice to him on these mountains, Horeb and Sinai, in Midian (Exodus iii. 1-12).” Of these two points, however, the first seems to me a very important argument for Serbâl-Sinai. Serbâl was also a holy mountain for the tribes in the peninsula at a later period, as it is not called “Idol Mountain,” before the giving of the Law, but “Mountain of God” (Exodus iii. 1, iv. 27, xviii. 5), just as it was after the giving of the Law (Exodus xxiv. 13; 1 Kings xix. 8), and a subsequent appropriation of the mountain to a heathen worship is much less remarkable. No reason is to be found, however, in the fact, that when the Lord spoke to Moses he lived in Midian with Jethro, to warrant the placing of the mountain of the Law in Midian, for that it nowhere said. We only know, that Raphidîm, where Jethro visited Moses from Midian, lay in the territory of the Amalekites, as they here made the attack. Eusebius, who (s. v. Ῥαφιδίμ) expressly refers Raphidîm and Choreb to Pharan, says (s. v. χωρήβ) that this mountain of God lay in Madian. Also in Itinerar. Antonini, c. 40, Pharan is placed in Madian.

Would that these observations, in which I believe I have touched upon almost all the more important grounds of their esteemed author, may prove to him, how high a value I set upon each of his opinions, as those of a more competent judge in this field of research than any other. Ritter’s long, well-known tact for the truth in such questions would have caused me to have less faith in my own view than all the grounds he produces, which are generally to be confuted, as it appears, if I had not in this case the advantage of a personal inspection of the localities, unprejudiced by any former opinion, which could make it less independent of former writers, than it is possible for him to have.

NOTE B.

(Letter XXXIII. p. 354.)

Robinson gives the distances from Ayûn Mûsa to the crossing point of Wadi Shebêkeh, and Wadi Taibeh (vol. iii. Part II. p. 804); these correspond tolerably well with Burckhardt (pp. 624, 625), who continues the distances up to Wadi Firân; these last, if we take his round across Dhafari into consideration, are confirmed by my own. The calculation in Robinson (p. 196), however, does not comprehend the four or five hours’ longer way round from the convent, through Wadi e’ Sheikh; for Burckhardt went over the Nakb el Haui in eleven hours to Firân, while we required sixteen, subtracting the little way through the Ktesse valley. From this the distances are thus proportioned:—From Ayûn Mûsa to Ain Hawârah, eighteen hours and thirty-five minutes; thence to Wadi Gharandel, two hours, thirty minutes (not an hour and a half to two hours, as it is calculated in the text, from the camp of Robinson); to the end of the valley, near Abu Zelîmeh, seven hours, twelve minutes; thence to the sea, one hour; to Wadi Shellâl four hours, fifteen minutes; to Firân, thirteen hours, forty-five minutes; to the convent, sixteen hours. The camp in the Wilderness of Sin, Robinson cannot refer more to the south than to the end of the Wadi Shellâl; because the people, according to him, here left the Wilderness of Sin, as necessarily Alus falls with him beyond Firân. On the other hand, according to my opinion, the camp at the sea is not only not different from that at the entrance of the valley near Abu Zelîmeh, but the Wilderness of Sin of Exodus, which reached to Sinai, and ended with Raphidîm, is also the same with the two stations, Daphka and Alus, in Numbers, and therefore should have no more been mentioned at the latter place as particular camp stations than the Red Sea. The Wilderness of Sin comprehended, accordingly, like the Wilderness of Sur, three days’ journey. The stations and their distances may be thus reckoned:—

According to Robinson:—

I.	6	hours	12	minutes	}	three stations from Ayûn
II.	6	“	12	“	}	Mûsa to Ain Hawârah =
III.	6	“	12	“	}	Marah.
IV.	2	“	30	“		to Wadi Gharandel = Elim.
V.	8	“	12	“		to the sea.
VI.	4	“	15	“		to Wadi Shellâh, = Desert of Sin.
VII.	7	“	—	“	}	two stations to Firân = Daphka
VIII.	7	“	—	“	}	and Alus.
IX.	8	“	—	“	}	two stations to the plain of Râha
X.	8	“	—	“	}	= Raphidîm and Sinai.

According to my researches:—

I.	7	hours	—	minutes	}
II.	7	“	—	“	}	three stations to Wadi Gharandel=Marah.
III.	7	“	—	“	}
IV.	7	“	12	“		to the end of the valley near Abu Zelîmeh = Elim.
V.	6	“	—	“	}	three stations to Firân, i.e. by
VI.	6	“	—	“	}	Daphka and Alus to Raphidîm
VII.	6	“	—	“	}	at Sinai.

That the last stations are somewhat shorter than the first, may be understood from the greater difficulties of the way. Why had the people murmured, so near to the twelve springs of Elim? How could the particularly long journey of more than eight hours from Elim to the sea have passed without being mentioned? And how could the day’s journey have become continually longer in the high mountains and heavy ground?

NOTE C.

(Letter XXXIII. p 364.)

The commentators on this passage take the words “In the third month,” as if it were written: “On the first day of the third month,” and thus make the succeeding words, “on this day,” also relate to the first day of the month. Vide Gesenius, Thesaur. p. 404, b.:—“tertiis calendis post exitum,” and p. 449, b.:—tertio novilunio, i.e. calendis mensis tertii. Ewald, Gesch. des v. Israels, vol. ii. p. 189:—“The day (?) of the third month (which is, however, of the new moon, therefore the first day).” But the Seventy did not understand it thus, in any case, as they translate:—“τοῦ δὲ μηνὸς τοῦ τρίτου τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ταύτῃ.” The Jewish tradition seems also not to have taken its meaning thus, as the Jews celebrated the Giving of the Law, which, according to Exodus, xix. 11, 15, occurred on the third day after their arrival, upon the fifth or sixth day of the third month, together with that on the fiftieth day after the harvest-feast (Leviticus, xxiii. 15, 16), subsequent to the Exode, according to which the arrival at Sinai must fall on the third day of the third month. It is not to be understood how without any suffix should be used for “new-moon day,” though it has lost that analogical meaning in all the different places, and only signifies month, even in such places where the “day of the new moon” is intended (such as Exodus xl. 2, 17; Numbers i. 1; xxxiii. 38), where it is particularly added “on the first (day) of the month,” against which passages like Numbers, ix. 1, and xx. 1, cannot be produced, because there is as little ground to understand the first of the month, as in Exodus xix. 1, and the Seventy do not translate ἐν ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ, or νουμηνίᾳ, as in the other passages, but only as the simple sense of the words is:—“ἐν τῷ μηνὶ τῷ πρώτῳ”. There would only thus remain one passage, xix. 1, from which one might conclude such an ambiguous use of, because here certainly the following words, “on this day,” point to a certain single day which is not, however, now to be guessed from our text. But this, in my opinion, is no unimportant reason for supposing a transposition or a later interpolation of these two verses. The latter idea is also accepted by Ewald, as he (Gesch. v. Isr. vol. i. p. 75) refers the narrative xix. 3, 24, to the oldest source, but not the two first verses. It has been already mentioned that Josephus (Ant. iii. 2, 5), who also does not understand the words as referring to the first day of the months, transposes the passage, and, indeed, to the same place whither I, without knowing it, had placed it in my former report (p. 48), i.e. immediately after the battle of the Amalekites, to which “this day” most naturally refers. If this be true, the original text also expressed that the Israelites were not only by Horeb but by Sinai, near Raphidîm in Wadi Firân, where they fought the battle, i.e. that both the holy mountains are one, and that Moses received the visit of Jethro first at Sinai; and, as it would seem, in natural course of events, first organized his people at Sinai, with which, however, it is also said, that Sinai, or Horeb, was no other mountain than Serbâl.

Granted that we have in this way understood the original connection, no naming of the month would be necessary; this was probably added at the isolation of the succeeding section, referring to the giving of the law. Under these circumstances, there would only be three exact dates for the whole journey. The people departs from Ramses on the fifteenth day of the first month in the first year; it proceeds from Elim, half the distance, and just one month, on the fifteenth day of the second month of the first year. The resting days at the stations are unknown; but if it be taken for granted that the people proceeded without staying, it came to Raphidîm on the third day from Elim, obtained the water on the fourth, and was attacked by Amalek, fought on the fifth until after sunset to the beginning of the sixth day, and on the same day (for the Hebrew day began at sundown) encamped at Sinai. This would have occurred on the twentieth day of the second month in the first year. Now, as the departure from Sinai took place on the twentieth day of the second month of the second year, the stay at Sinai would have been exactly one year. This coincidence was probably originally just as accidental as the lapse of exactly one month between the first departure from Ramses and the second from Elim.

NOTE D.

(Letter XXXIII. p. 369.)

There are yet two marble inscriptions in the wall of the convent towards the garden referring to the founding of the place, one Greek and one Arabic. Burckhardt (Trav. p. 545) says:—“An Arabic inscription over the gate, in modern characters, says that Justinian built the convent in the thirtieth year of his reign, as a memorial of himself and his wife Theodora. It is curious to find a passage of the Koran introduced into this inscription; it was probably done by a Moslem sculptor, without the knowledge of the monks.” Certainly the Arabic inscription is over the little door leading into the garden. But if Burckhardt saw it here, it is not to be understood how he did not see the Greek inscription beside it, with a similar border and covering. Robinson did not see either (vol. i. p. 205). Ricci had copied the Greek inscription, and it has been printed and translated by Letronne in Journ. des Savans, 1836, p. 538, with a few little variations. But another copy, which had escaped Letronne, had been published in 1823 by Sir F. Henniker (Notes during a Visit to Egypt, &c. pp. 235, 236), which is, however, very inaccurate, though it attempts to give even the manner of writing. The Arabic inscription has not, as far as I am aware, been made known at all. I have taken impressions in paper of both, and publish them here faithfully. The Greek is as follows:—

Ἐκ βάθρων ἀνηγέρθη τὸ ἱερὁν τοῦτο μοναστήριον τοῦ Σιναίου ὄρους, ἔνθα ἐλάλησεν ὁ Θεὸς τῷ Μωυσῇ, παρὰ τοῦ ταπεινοῦ βασιλέως Ῥωμαίων Ἰουστινιανοῦ πρὸς ἀἶδιον μνημόσυνον αὐτοῦ καὶ τῆς συζύγου τοῦ Θεοδώρας· ἔλαβε τέλος μετὰ τὸ τριακοστὸν ἔτος τῆς βασιλείας τοῦ, καὶ κατέστησεν ἐν αὐτῷ ἡγούμενον ὀνόματι Δουλᾶ ἔν ἔτει ἀπὸ μὲν Ἀδὰμ σκά, ἀπὸ δὲ Χριστοῦ φκζ.

“This holy monastery was erected on Mount Sinai, where God spake unto Moses, by the humble king of the Romans, Justinian, unto the everlasting remembrance of himself and of his wife Theodora. It received its completion in the thirtieth year of his reign, and he set a governor over it, Dulas by name, in the year from Adam, 6021, and from Christ, 527.”

Letronne read ἐν ᾦ πρῶτον instead of ἔνθα, and κατέστησε τὸν instead of κατέστησεν in the seventh line. The characters are those of the twelfth or thirteenth century. As the Emperor Justinian reigned from 527-565, it is judged by the writer that the decree for the erection of the convent and the placing of the abbot Dulas falls in the first year of the government of the emperor, although the completion of the building is first placed in the thirtieth year of the same, i. e. A.D. 556. The year of the world 6021 answers to A.D. 527, according to the Alexandrian era of Pandorus and Anianus.158

The Arabic inscription is thus:—

“The convent of the Tôr (mountain) Sinai, and the church of the conference, the pious king Justianus (instead of Justinianus), of Greek confession, yearning after God, and hoping for the summons of his Lord, for a memorial of himself and his wife Theodora against the passing of time, that God may inherit the earth and what is upon it, for he is the best of inheritors. And the erection was ended after thirty years of his government. And he set over it a chief, named Dhulas. And this took place after Adam 6021, which agrees with the year 527 of the era of the Lord Christ.”

The characters of the inscription certify, according to the information of the Consul, Dr. Wetzstein, who has kindly undertaken the copying and translation of the inscription, that they are not of a date previous to 550 of the Mahommedan era, which, therefore, brings us back to the time in which the Greek inscription was made. The passage of the Koran, mentioned already by Burckhardt, is in Surât, xxi., v. 18.

In the same wall, but much higher up, over a far greater door, now bricked up, at a place behind which the kitchen is now lying, another great stone is let in, the ornament of which might lead to the supposition that there is another old inscription there. Unfortunately, it was impossible to have a ladder brought thither, to examine the stone more carefully. May a later traveller succeed in this!

The history of the palm-wood of Pharan forms the centre-point of the history of the whole peninsula. The accounts of the Greeks and Romans give a new proof of this, though their geographical determinations have, for the most part, been incorrectly apprehended. Thus the Poseidion of Artemidorus, Diodorus, and Strabo, is generally put at the extremity of the peninsula now called Râs Mahommed, even by Gosselin, Letroune, and Groskura, who had certainly perceived the incorrect gloss of the manuscripts of Strabo (p. 776: τοῦ [Ἐλανίτου] μυχοῦ). As the Poseidion lay within (ἐνδοτέρω) the Gulf of Suez, and as the western coast of the peninsula is described, this altar of Poseidion necessarily lay either at Râs Abu Zelîmeh, the haven of Faran, or at Râs G’ehân, where there was a more southerly and shorter communication by Wadi Dhaghadeh with Wadi Firân. That the Palm-grove (Φοινικών) of that author is not to be found by Tôr, but in the Wadi Firân, has already been rightly seen by Tuch, (Sinait. Inschr., p. 35), although he still places the Poseidion at Râs Mahommed (p. 37). It was the Serb Bâl—the palm-grove of Baal—from which the mountain first obtained its name. It appears that at an earlier date the name of Faran was used with particular reference to the haven near Abu Zelîmeh, and a Pharanitic colony at the place of ancient Elim, in the neighbourhood of the present Gebel Hammân Faraûn, still called Farân by the Arabic historians; while the grove itself was yet called Serb Bâl by the inhabitants. Probably, also, it was here where Aristo landed under Ptolemæus Philadelphus, and founded the Poseidion.

By Artemidorus (in Strabo, p. 776), and Diodorus (III. 42), Mαρανῖται are mentioned, for which Gosselin, Ritter, Tuch, and others, propose to read Φαρανῖται. But as the Maranites lived on the eastern coast of the peninsula, and are reported to have been entirely destroyed by the Garindœans, I can find no support for this conjecture. The gorge Pharan, mentioned by Josephus in Judæa (Bel. Jud. iv. 9, 4), has no connection with anything here.

The name of the Pharanites on the west coast of the peninsula first occurs in Pliny (H. N. xxxvii., 40), for there is no reason to consider the Pharanitis gens, which he places in Arabia Petræa, to be other than the Pharanitai of Ptolemy. That the northern station Phara (circa ten hours west of Aila) on the table of Peutinger, has nothing to do with the Pharanitic palm-grove, has been placed beyond doubt by Ritter, (p. 147 sq.).

Ptolemy, in the third century, is the first who mentions a place called Pharan (κώμη φαράν); yet the grounds and the connection of his calculations so very different from the true relations of the peninsula, had remained obscure, so that the single comparison were useless. His construction of the peninsula is immediately intelligible, if it be considered that he has evidently taken the obtuse coast-angle at Râs Gehân,—whither he put Cape Pharan according to his latitudes, instead of Hammân Farûn,—for the most southern point of the peninsula, whence the more remote coast again runs up to the north-east. By this the peninsula becomes 50´ too short, although the longitude of his promontory agrees with that of the right one. The real point (Râs Mohammed) now answers to the place whither he places the round of the Elanitic Gulf (ἐπιστροφὴ τοῦ Ἐλανίτου κόλπου). The whole Elanitic Gulf (Gulf of Akaba) shrinks with him to a little angle (μυχός) of 15´, as everything is pushed up too much to the north. The coast, from “the term” up to Οννη answers in fact to that from Râs Furtak (Diodorus’s or Artemidorus’s ἀκρωτήριον τῆς ἡπείρου, before which the island of Phoke lay) to Ἀïn Uneh and the Elanitic Gulf, the northern end of which (ἐπιστροφή) he placed at 66° longitude, 29° latitude,159

now takes the form of the gulf, the undermost point of which is now denoted by Ἀïn Uneh. The ocean angle of Pharan (μυχὸς κατὰ φαράν) he imagines to extend from Cape Faran (ἀκρωτήριον φαράν) to the inland city of the same name, like the angle of Elana, and the inner angle of Heroonpolis to the north of Arsinoe. From the same construction of the peninsula it came that the Rhainthenians, who were placed along the same coast by Tôr (even now called Ῥαιθοῦ) below the Pharanites, had now to be placed on the coast turned towards Arabia (παρὰ τὴν όρεινὴν τῆς Εὐδαιμονος Ἀραβίas), therefore on the oriental and not the occidental coast of the peninsula; and finally, the primary mountain-chain (ὄρη μέλανα) extending from Faray to Râs Mohammed to Judæa, therefore to the N.E. instead of the S.E.

From all this it is clear that the place Pharan of Ptolemy is identical with the recognised Pharan in the Wadi Firân, and the φοινικών of Artemidorus and Strabo. And it is less to be doubted that also the Pharan of Eusebius (s. v. Ῥαφιδίμ) and Jerome, which is expressly (s. v. φαράν) called a city (πόλις, oppidum), and is placed at the distance of three days’ journey from Aila,—was the city in Wadi Firân, although by a confusion with the Biblical desert of Paran it is added, that the Israelites had returned by this Pharan on their return from Sinai (c. f. Ritter, p. 740).

According to the treatise of the monk Ammonius (Illustr. Chr. Martyr, lecti triumphi ed. Combefis, Paris, 1660,—whose history, undoubtedly fictitious, refers to A.D. 370, but can in no case be used as a historical authority for that time, but seems to rest on some passages of the romance of Nilus, and to have been written for a like praiseworthy purpose,—the city of Pharan was converted to Christianity in the middle of the fourth century, by the monk Moses, a native of the city. By Nilus, placed at about 390, but concerning whose era and writings much uncertainty exists, a Christian council (βουλή) of the city of Pharan is mentioned (Nili app. quædam, 1539, 4to.) Soon after, from the first half of the fifth century, Le Quien, but certainly from sources of very different value (Oriens. Christ., vol. iii., p. 571), cites a series of bishops of Pharan, who can be followed up into the middle of the twelfth century (vide Reland, Palæst, vol. ii., p. 220). The monks of the mountains were all subjected to these bishops.

As to what concerns the founding of the present convent at Gebel Mûsa, it is certainly ascribed to the twelfth or thirteenth year of the Emperor Justinian, as in the inscriptions, by Saïd ben Batrik (Eutychius), who wrote about 932-953 (d’Herbelôt, s. v.), but he is contradicted by the much more trustworthy, and here particularly important testimony of Procopius, the contemporary of Justinian, in the most express manner. He says, in his particular treatise on the buildings founded by Justinian (Procop. ed. Diod. vol. iii. de œdif. Just. p. 326), that the emperor built a church to the Mother of God, “not on the top of the mountain, but a good piece below it” (παρὰ πολὺ ἔνερθεν, which, according to the locality, can only mean on the platform half way down the mountain, where the chapel of Elias now stands). Separated from it, he also found at the foot of the mountain (ἐς τοῦ ὄρους πρόποδα) a very strong castle (φρούριον), with a good garrison, in order to prevent the incursions of the Saracens from the peninsula to Palestine. As Procopius just before and after, as in the whole treatise, makes a careful distinction between convents and churches, and military posts, it is evident, that according to him, Justinian did not found the convent with its church. Probably, however, the military fort was at a later period used as a convent, and built up anew. And the church above, built by Justinian, was not dedicated, like the present one, to St. Katherine (vide Le Quien, vol. iii. p. 1306), but to Maria. What Eutychius (cited first by Robinson, though placed by him somewhat too early in the tenth century) relates, as well regarding the founding of the convent as in direct contradiction to Procopius, concerning a church on the top of the mountain, is therefore no more worthy of credence than the conversation between the emperor and the architect. As little should the convents of Râyeh (near Tôr) and Kolzum (a bishop of Clysma, named Poemen, was present already at the Constantinopolitan council of 460; vide Acta Concil. ed. Harduin, vol. ii. p. 696, 786), be ascribed to Justinian, on the authority of Ben Batrik, as in such a case Procopius would undoubtedly have spoken of it. Pharan is not mentioned by Procopius. On the other hand, however, he informs us of the important fact (de bell. Pers. 1, 19, 164, de œdif. 5, 8), that the Saracen prince, Abocharagos, reigning there, presented the emperor Justinian with a great palm-grove (φοινικῶνα), situated in the middle of the land (ἐν τῇ μεσογαίᾳ). On a more careful examination of that narrative, there can remain scarcely a doubt, that the palm-grove of Pharan is intended here, not the place on the sea called φοινίκων κώμη by Ptolemy (vi. 7, 3), or a palm-grove quite unknown to us, also situate in the middle of a desolate waterless wilderness. According to Ammonius and Nilus, the whole population of Pharan was at that time Christian, and a church was certainly distinguished there; thus the present of Abocharagos, whom Justinian himself made phylarch of the Palestinian Saracens, is more easily comprehensible. Without doubt the founding of the fort in the higher mountains, for the guard against these Saracens, stood in connection with this.

Next to Procopius, Cosmas Indicopleustes is by far the most trustworthy source for that time. He was not only a contemporary of Justinian, but describes (about 540) what he had himself seen in the peninsula.160 This work is the only larger geography preserved from that age, and his unpretending narrative everywhere bears the character of uncoloured truthfulness. It is more remarkable, that he neither mentions a convent, nor indeed the localities round Gebel Mûsa, but only Pharan, although he had the route of the Israelites particularly in view.

That Antoninus Placentinus, who is considered by others to be St. Anthony martyr, in his Itinerarum (Ada Sanctor, May, vol. ii. p. x-xviii.), which is referred by Ritter to about six hundred, again speaks of a convent at the Thornbush (Procopius does not mention the Thornbush), between Horeb and Sinai; therefore, as the place of the present convent seems to lead us back to the opinion so decidedly expressed by the learned Papebrook, who first published the Itinerary, that this so learnedly defended, yet very doubtful, history belongs first to the eleventh or twelfth century. In any circumstances it would be desirable to submit the writings of Ammonius, Nilus, Antoninus, and some other of the productions of the first centuries of Christianity, to a more searching and connected criticism than has yet been done.

The earliest bishop of Mount Sinai referable to is found in the eleventh century; this is Bishop Jorius, who died in 1033 (Le Quien, vol. iii. p. 754). The Phronimus episc. Synnaii (Acta Concil. ed. Harduin, vol. iii. p. 53), or (Synai tunorum, p. 206), signed at the second Constantinopolitan Council (a. 553), and the Constantinus ep. Synai (Harduin, vol. v. p. 927), named at the fourth council (a. 870), have been referred hither incorrectly (Ritter, Abhand. der Berl. Akad, 1824, p. 216, Peninsula of Sinai, p. 26), as they belong to Synaus or Synnaus in Phrygia.

NOTE F.

(Letter XXXIII. p. 370.)

That, indeed, an uninterrupted and certain tradition, concerning the position of Sinai in the peninsula, has been preserved to Christian times, must be most decidedly questioned. The name Choreb, or Sinai, seems to have been taken, at a very early period, for the whole of the mountain region of the peninsula, which was generally considered one mountain at a distance. No one took any interest in fixing the name to any geographical idea, until the time of the Christian hermits there. We only read of Elias, that he fled to the “Mountain of God, Choreb,” and there went into that cave (1 Kings, xiii. 9), (for it is taken for granted as known) in which the Lord had already (Exod. xxiii. 22) appeared unto Moses. The native races of Arabs gradually moved, so that of the Biblical names none remained in its place. The Greeks and Romans knew only one place in the whole peninsula, the palm-grove of Pharan, just because this place and its port were alone of any importance, since the mines of the wilderness had been deserted. Also, for the Christian hermits—for which that mountain wild, even without reference to the sacred reminiscences of the place—must have seemed the most fitted of any region, as it provided them with the more necessary sustenance with the greatest solitude. Firan must have been the earliest centre-point; therefore, we also find here the oldest church of the peninsula. When they gradually commenced to seek more definitely for Scripture localities, they had no further materials for its discovery than we possess, with far less power to use these materials properly, as every sharp criticism to examine the passages of Scripture then lay very far off. The name Sinai was indefinitely taken for the whole mountain; if one looked round for any particular peak, that of Serbâl would instantly present itself. To that, everything which we read in the first centuries about it in trustworthy writings points, to which, however, the treatise of the monk Ammonius certainly does not belong, in the estimation of any one who examines it more narrowly, and the excellent Romany, of Nilus, is very doubtful. What Josephus (Aut. iii. 5) says of Sinai (τὸ Σιναῖον), agrees very well with Serbâl, but not at all with Gebel Mûsa, as Hogg has already shown. According to Eusebius, Choreb and Raphidîm lay near Pharan (ἐγγὺς Φαράν), and Sinai beside Choreb (παράκειται τῷ ὄρει Σινᾶ.) Jerome (s. v. Choreb) considers both mountains to be one, which he also places by Pharan, and, therefore, recognises in Serbâl. Also, the narrative of Nilus, concerning the Saracen attack at Sinai, either does not belong to the time in which it is dated (c. 400), or refers to Serbâl; for often (pp. 38-46) a church (ἐκκλησία) is mentioned, which did not then exist on Gebel Mûsa, and Nilus goes down, in the same night in which the murdered people were buried, to Pharan, which could not have been done from Gebel Mûsa. Cosmas Indicopleustes, finally, who travelled in the peninsula about the year 535, just before the building of the church by Justinian, goes from Raithu, i. e. Tor, which he takes for Elim, although he finds but few palms there (the plantations at that place are therefore younger) by the present Wadi Hebrân to Raphidîm, which is now called Pharan. Here he was at the end of his Sinai journey. Hence Moses went with the elders “to the Mountain Choreb,” i.e. Sinai, which was distant from Pharan about 6,000 paces (one and a half miles), and struck the water from the rock; here was the ark of the covenant built and the law given, by which the Israelites obtained writing, and had time to learn it at their leisure, from which the numerous rock inscriptions come which are still found in that wilderness, particularly at Serbâl. (Εἵτα κάλιν παρενέβαλον εἰς Ῥαφιδίν, εἰς τὴν νὔν καλουμένην Φαράν καὶ διψευσάντων αὐτῶν, πορεύεται κατὰ πρόσταξιν Θεοϋ ὁ Μωϋσῆς μετὰ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων καὶ ἡ ῥαβδὸς ἐν τῇ χειρὶ αὐτοϋ, εἰς Χωρὴβ τὸ ὄρος, τουτέστιν ἐν τῷ Σιναΐῳ, ἐγγὺς ὄντι τῆς Φαρὰν ὡς ἀκὸ μιλίων ἔξ.) (Barckhardt [Trav. in Syr. p. 611] required when he descended Serbâl, from its foot to west Faran, 2½ hours,) καὶ ἑκεϊ πατάξαντος τὴν πέτραν, ἐῤῥύησεν ὔδατα πολλὰ καὶ ἔπιεν ὁ λαὸς. Λοιπὸν κατεληλυθότος αὐτοϋ ἐκ τοϋ ὄους προστάττεται ὑπὸ τοϋ θεοϋ ποιεϊν τὴν σκηνήν, etc. Topograph. Christ. lib. V. in the Coll. nova patr. ed. B. de Montfaucon tom. ii. p. 195 sqq.

This testimony of the unpretending traveller is just as clear as it is certain and unsuspicious. In the beginning of the sixth century there was thus the belief after this eye-witness that the law was given on Serbâl. Cosmas is in so little doubt about it, that he does not mention the southern mountain at all. We must also conclude that the monks had extended themselves over the whole mountain, and particularly over the guarded region about the Gebel Mûsa. That among the monks of the place another opinion arose, according to which Moses turned southward, instead of northward, from the height of Wadi Hebrân (for, to take Elim for Raithu remained the decided opinion, as preserved by the convent there) is not at all to be wondered; such confusions are very frequent in Christian topography. But how narrowly Horeb and Sinai, Raphidîm and the Mount of the Law, are connected together, is again shown in the fact, that with Sinai the rock of water went southward. The monks did not allow themselves to be hindered, by the verses in the beginning of the nineteenth chapter, from transporting that rock of Raphidîm, and consequently Raphidîm itself, as also the thorn-bush of Horeb, to Gebel Mûsa, their new Sinai; there it is yet shown, for the astonishment of travellers in Wadi Lega (Robinson, vol. i. p. 184). Thus in this point the unlearned monkish notion that Raphidîm was near Sinai came closer to the truth than the new criticism.

The Legate of Justinian now found it necessary to erect his castle in that safe position, and to build a church there, for the hermits living in the neighbourhood. That this alone was sufficient to draw many new hermits thither, and to found a new belief as to the position of the Mountain of the Law, if this were not already there, is quite comprehensible. But as to how the two opinions in the next following centuries came together, we have no certain testimony whatever. Under any circumstances, one would have to take care, if, after the founding of Pharan, the mountain Sinai is often mentioned, to understand by it the Gebel Mûsa. As a rule, the whole range of mountains in the peninsula is intended by it. When, for example, already in the year 536, therefore probably before the building of the church, at the Concilium sub Mema, at Constantinople, a Theonas presbyter et legatus S. montis Sinai et deserti Raitha et S. ecclesiæ Pharan (Θεωνῦς ἐλεῷ Θεοϋ πρεσβύτερος καὶ ἀποκρισίάριος τοϋ ἁγίου ὄρους Σινᾶ καὶ τῆς ἐρήμου Ῥαιθοϋ καὶ τῆς κατὰ Φαράν ἁγίας ἐκκλησίας. Harduin, vol. ii. p. 1281) is signed, the Church of Pharan would probably be first named as undoubtedly the most important centre and bishop’s seat, if the monks all around the vicinity were not looked upon as the more important, and therefore put first. Le Quien (vol. iii. p. 735) mentions the Episcopi Pharan sive montis Sinai in one series, and as the earliest with the latter title the above-mentioned Bishop Jorius (†1033). Since then, and even since Eutychius (c. 940), the denomination of the single mountain of Gebel Mûsa as Sinai is certainly undoubted.

Footnotes

1 On the sudden death, soon after our departure from Palestine, of Bishop Alexander, Gobat was selected by H.M. the King of Prussia as the Protestant bishop of Jerusalem, which post he has filled with good success since 1846.

2 The firman of the Viceroy, with the most unlimited permission to carry on all excavations that I should think desirable, with a recommendation addressed to the local governments to support me, was given to me before my departure from Alexandria. All the work-people and tools that were necessary for the formation and transportation of our collection of antiquities, were demanded for wages by the Khawass given us by the government, under the authority of the firman, from the Sheîkh of the next village, and nowhere refused. The monuments from the southern provinces were transported in government barks from Mount Barkal to Alexandria, and to them were added three tombs from the neighbourhood of the great Pyramid of Gizeh, which, with the assistance of the four workmen purposely sent from Berlin, were carefully taken to pieces, and embarked opposite Old Cairo. At my departure from Egypt, a written permission was given me to export the collection, and the articles were formally presented to his Majesty the King of Prussia by the Viceroy.
These peculiar favours, at a time when all private travellers, antiquarian speculators, and even diplomatists, were especially interdicted by the Egyptian government from obtaining and taking away antiquities, did not fail to gain our expedition some unfavourable opinions. We were particularly blamed for having a destructive energy, which, under the ascribed circumstances, would have taken for granted a species of peculiar barbarism among our company. For, as we did not, like many of our rivals, dig out and remove the monuments, which had mostly been hidden below the surface, in haste by night, and with bribed assistance, but at our leisure, and with the open co-operation of the authorities, as well as under the eyes of many travellers—every carelessness with respect to these monuments left behind us, of which they had formed a part, would have been the more reprehensible, the easier such carelessness was to be avoided. But on the value of the monuments, we might esteem ourselves to have a more just judgment than the greater number of the generality of travellers or collectors usually possess; and we were not in danger of allowing it to be dulled by self-interest, as we did not select the monuments for ourselves, but as the agents of our government, for the Royal Museum at Berlin, and therefore for the benefit of science and an inquiring public.
The collection, which, principally by its historical value, may be compared with the most extensive in Europe, was, immediately upon its arrival, incorporated with the royal collections, without my being placed in any official connection with it. It is already opened and accessible to the public. A careful examination of it will conduce more than anything to place the remarks of later tourists,—among whom there are even Germans,—in their true light; who have even gone so far, as in the case of a Herr Julius Braun, in the General Augsburg Journal (Allgemeine Augsburger Zeitung), to ascribe to us the mutilation of the gods in the temple at El Kab, done 3,000 years ago! Besides, it would show a total ignorance of present Egyptian relations, or that which gives the actual interest to the monuments of antiquity, if any one did not wish to see the as precious as unestimated and daily destroyed treasures of those lands, preserved in European museums as much as possible.

4 [In the first edition of this work I lamented that due care was not bestowed upon this obelisk, and that “our own property” was abandoned to the wind and the rain, the sand, and—worse than all—the Arab. Now, however, I have the satisfaction to be able to state that the Crystal Palace Company are about to do what our Government, with a surplus of £1,600,000, could not afford.—K. R. H. M. 2nd edit.]

5 The diary of this Nile expedition has since been made public under the title of “Expedition to discover the Sources of the White Nile” (1840-1841), by Ferdinand Werne; with a preface by Carl Ritter. Berlin, 1848. [The work has since been published in English, under the auspices of Mr. Bentley, in two volumes.—K. R. H. M.]

6 Since Ibrahim Pasha’s death, in 1848, viceroy of Egypt.

7 This treatise, “Report of the River Goshop, and the countries of Enarea, Caffa, and Doko, by a native of Enarea,” has been translated by Ritter, read in the Geographical Society of Berlin, on the 7th of January, 1843, and printed in the monthly reports of that institution, in the fourth year, pp. 172-188.

8 At our departure for Upper Egypt we had examined 130 private tombs, and discovered the remains of 67 pyramids.

9 See my essay, “Sur l’Ordre des Colonnes-piliers en Egypte, et ses rapports avec le second Ordre Egyptien et la Colonne Grecque (avec deux planches),” in the ninth volume of the Annales de l’Institut de Corresp. Archéol. Rome. 1838.

10 See Letter XV., p. 117.

11 [The Athenæum, in a late review of this work, questions the word “prince,” and proposes to read “son;” now, in a subsequent letter (p. 39), Lepsius himself conjectures that this Prince Merhet was the son of Cheops, which the reviewer appears to have overlooked in his excellent remarks.—K. R. H. M.]

12 [As a further illustration of this scene, but briefly passed over by the originator of it, the following observations of Mr. Gliddon will be found very interesting. “Mr. Gliddon hoped, that besides the day view, the Prussians would add their night scene of New Year’s Eve, 1842, when the blaze of bonfires, lighted on the top of each of the three pyramids, cast a lurid glare on every side, bringing out the craggy peaks of the long desecrated mausolea of Memphite Pharoahs, tinting that drear wilderness of tombs with a light, emblematical of Lepsius’ vindication of their inmates’ memories, and leaving the shadows of funereal gloom to symbolize the fifty centuries of historic night, now broken by the hierologists:—
“‘Dark has been thy night,
Oh Egypt, but the flame
Of new-born science gilds thine ancient name.’”

—Gliddon’s Otia Egyptiaca; Lecture II. Burke’s Ethnological Journal, No. VI. p. 265.—K. R. H. M.]

13 [The reed; A initial, Bunsen, vol. i. p. 556, Alphabetic No. 3 = A: the sickle, M Alphabetic No. 2, p. 563 = M: the sieve, χ Alphabetic No. 1, p. 571 = χ: unknown object, p. 571, with U, the chicken, p. 570 = χU = AMCHU. This will give the uninitiated an idea of the way in which hieroglyphic words are formed.—K. R. H. M.]

14 [See Bunsen’s Egypt’s Place in Universal History, vol. i. p. 618.—K. R. H. M.]

15 [This has been done, and better than in any other museum in the world, see page 40.—K. R. H. M.]

16 Unfortunately the colours have now quite faded. The unequal surface of the stone had rendered it necessary to spread a thick groundwork of lime over the sculptures ere they could be painted upon; this lime has peeled off by its transportation and the moist sea air, so that only the rough sculpture is remaining. In the “Monuments of the Prussian Expedition,” Part II. Plate 19-22, the colours are faithfully given, as they were preserved by the covering of sand in their original freshness.

17 On our return from the south, two other perfect tombs, besides this one, were taken down and brought to Europe. All three have been re-erected, with the rest of the monuments, in the New Museum at Berlin.

18 [Bunsen, vol. i. p. 618.—K. R. H. M.]

19 An essay “On the Construction of the Pyramids” was transmitted by me to the Royal Academy of Sciences, and printed, in accordance with a decree of the 3rd of August of the same year.—See the Monthly Report of the Academy in 1843, pp. 177-203, with three plates. [The following summary of Dr. Lepsius’ discovery, obtained from various sources, may not be unacceptable to the reader. At the commencement of each reign, the rock chamber, destined for the monarch’s grave, was excavated, and one course of masonry erected above it. If the king died in the first year of his reign, a casing was put upon it and a pyramid formed; but if the king did not die, another course of stone was added above and two of the same height and thickness on each side: thus in process of time the building assumed the form of a series of regular steps. These were cased over with stone, all the angles filled up, and stones placed for steps. Then, as Herodotus long since informed us (Euterpe, c. cxxv), the pyramid was finished from the top downward, by all the edges being cut away, and a perfect triangle only left.—See, in addition to Lepsius himself, Letronne, Dicuil, pp. 90-115, 1814; Athenæum, Bonomi, 16th Sept. 1843; J. W. Wild, 15th June, 1844. Wilkinson’s Materia Hieroglyphica, Malta, 1830, p. 14; and last, though not least, Gliddon’s Otia Egyptiaca, Lecture IV. Ethnological Journal, No. VII. p. 294.—K. R. H. M.]

20 I have spoken more fully on this subject in my “Chronology of the Egyptians,” vol. i. p. 294. [See also Vyse, Pyramids of Gizeh, vol. iii. pp. 118, 119; Letronne, Inst. de l’Eg. vol. ii. pp. 460-466; and Wilkinson, Modern Eg. and Thebes, vol. i. p. 353.—K. R. H. M. 2nd edit.]

21 [See Bunsen’s Egypt’s Place in Universal History (Engl. transl.), vol. i. p. 515; Ideographics, No. 277.—K. R. H. M.]

22 [The more extended our acquaintance with ancient monuments or ancient writings becomes, the more simple and human do we find their signification to be. It has been the case with Egypt, Assyria, with Mexico, and indeed with most of those monuments that occur in connexion with the ancient world, in the popular acceptation of the word. If mystery and types possess a home anywhere, it must be in India, for even in Yucatan, the hieroglyphics seem very simple and the reverse of mysterious, when properly examined, as I hope to prove one day, in an extended investigation into Mexican antiquities, upon which the labour of some years has been bestowed. Instead of seeking for such remote causes, the reader will do well to consider the simple opinion of Gliddon, in his Otia, Lecture VIII. Burke’s Ethnological Journal, No. IX. p. 395, regarding the origin of animal worship. I should not have been led to this lengthy note if I did not feel that, while the earliest tenets of worship were indeed veiled in types (the result, however, as much of accident as design), animal worship is too recent to conceal any such mysterious dogmas. I do not wish to place my notion in competition with that of Lepsius; this is a mere suggestion.—K. R. H. M.]

23 [See a lively description of this ceremony in Bayle St. John’s Village Life in Egypt.—K. R. H. M. 2nd edit.]

24 [News have just been received from Egypt that most enterprising excavations have been commenced at Mitrahinneh, partly under the direction of Mr. A. Harris, of Alexandria.—K. R. H. M. 2nd edit.]

25 See my essay “On the general employment of the Pointed Arch in Germany in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,” as an Introduction to H. Gally Knight’s Progress of Architecture from the Tenth to the Fourteenth Century under the Normans, from the English; Leipsig, 1841; and my father’s treatise, “The Dome of Naumburg,” by C. P. Lepsius, Leipsig, 1840 (in Puttrich’s “Monuments of Architecture,” II. pt. 3, 4).

26 [In Catherwood’s beautiful work on Central America we find that at some of the cities a peculiar arch was employed. This consisted in an arch of which the point was destroyed by laying a beam across at the top. In the Polynesian islands we also find almost perfect approaches to the pointed arch.—K. R. H. M.]

27 [Indeed, we learn from Bayle St. John that the Fellahs are not only contented with this treatment, but proud of the number of times they have been thus used. It saves money, and that is quite enough reason.—K. R. H. M. 2nd edit.]

28 [From the labyrinth and the remains of lake Mœris.—K. R. H. M.]

29 [About two-pence halfpenny English.—K. R. H. M.]

³⁰ Asser = Evening.

31 It is to be remarked that even in the “Thousand and One Nights,” where occasionally æsthetic observations are to be found, there is nothing relating to music which would lead us to estimate the musical tastes of the Arabs at any higher standard than that manifested in the account of Lepsius and others.—K. R. H. M.

32 Lib. XVII. p. 789, ed. Parisii, 1620.—K. R. H. M.

33 [See Bunsen’s Egypt’s Place, &c. vol. i. p. 624-5, and also the comparative lists of Eratosthenes and Manetho at pp. 124, 125 of the same work. “ὃς τὸν ὲν Ἀρσινοἷτῃ λαβύρινθον ἑαυτῷ τάφον κατεσκεύασεν.”—K. R. H. M.]

34 Compare my “Chronology of the Egyptians,” vol. i. pp. 262 sqq.

35 [Bunsen, vol. i. pp. 640-641.—K. R. H. M.]

36 According to Linant the difference is 22^m, i.e. 70 feet Rhenish. In June, 1843, Nascimbeni, an engineer of the viceroy, visited us in our camp by the pyramid of Mœris, being at the time engaged on a new chart and levelling of the Faiûm. He had only found 2 metres fall from Illahûn to Medînet, but from thence to the Birqet el Qorn, 75 metres. I am not aware that anything has been made known regarding these widely different measures. Sir G. Wilkinson, Modern Egypt and Thebes, vol. ii. p. 346, states the lake niveau to be about 125 English feet below the Nile shore at Benisuef. [But see Bunsen’s observation in the (untranslated) second book of his Ægypten, p. 209.—K. R. H. M. 2nd edit.]

37 Mémoire sur le lac Mœris, présenté et lu à Société Egyptienne le 5 Juillet, 1842, par Linant de Bellefonds, inspecteur-général des ponts et chaussées, publié par la Société Egyptienne. Alexandrie, 1843, 4to. See my “Chronology of the Egyptians,” vol. i. p. 262 sq.

38 The same Domenico Lorda set out again in the same year to Abyssinia, and transmitted thence six other Abyssinian MSS. to Herr Lieder, who submitted them to me on my return to Cairo. These were also purchased for the Royal Library at my suggestion. They contain, according to the account of Heri Lorda:—
A. Abusher, Almanacco perpetuo civile-ecclesiastico-storico.
B. Settà Neghest, Codice dell’ imperadore Eeschias.
C. Joseph, Storia civile ed ecclesiastica(?)
D. Beraan, Storia civile ed ecclesiastica.
E. Philkisius e Marisak, Due opere in un volume che trattano della storia civile.
F. Sinodus, Dritto canonico.

39 [See Bunsen’s Egypt’s Place in Universal History, vol. i. p. 632.—K. R. H. M.]

40 [Bunsen, vol. i. pp. 400-402. Het-her signifies “the habitation of Horus.”—K. R. H. M.]

41 [Bunsen, vol. i. p. 620. Therefore, about the time of Nitocris.—K. R. H. M.]

42 [Bunsen, vol. i. p. 624. Coeval with the pyramid of the Labyrinth.—K. R. H. M.]

43 [Bunsen, vol. i. pp. 624-625. Ramses is the third king in Manetho’s twelfth dynasty.—K. R. H. M.]

44 This letter, addressed to Alexander von Humboldt, has been printed in the “Preussische Staatszeitung,” of the 9th of February, 1844.

45 The correction Ἀδελφῆς in this inscription, dated in the thirty-fifth year of Euergetes (136 B. C.), is of importance to some chronological determinations of that period. Letronne (Rec. des Inscr. vol. i. p. 33 sqq. 56) assumed that Cleopatra III. the niece and second wife of Euergetes II., was here mentioned. From this alone he judged that this king only added the name of his wife, Cleopatra III., to his own in the official documents, previous to his expulsion in the year 132 B. C., and therefore placed all the inscriptions, in which after the King, both Cleopatras, the sister and the (second) wife are named, in the period after the return of Euergetes (127-117), e. g. the inscriptions of the obelisk of Philae (Rec. vol. i. p. 333). In this he is followed by Franz (Corp. Inscr. vol. iii. p. 285), who places for the same reason the inscriptions C. I. No. 4841, 4860, 4895, 4896, between 127 and 117 B. C., although he was aware of my correction of the inscription of Pselchis (C. I. No. 5073).
It is always remarkable that only one Cleopatra is mentioned in the inscription of Pselchis, but as it is Cleopatra II., the first wife of the king, whom he always distinguishes from his second wife by the designation of “the sister,” it is not to be concluded that he should have expressly omitted mention of the latter in the documents from the beginning of his second marriage. This is confirmed in the decisive manner by two demotic Papyri of the Royal Museum, in which both Cleopatras are mentioned, although one is of the year 141 B. C., and the other of the year 136 B. C. All the inscriptions, which, according to Letronne (Rec. des Inscr. tome i. No. 7, 26, 27, 30, 31) and Franz (Corp. Inscr. vol. iii. No. 4841, 4860, 4895, 4896) fall between 127 and 117 B. C., for this reason, can therefore be referred with the same probability to the years between 145 and 135 B.C.

46 [See Bunsen, vol. i. pp. 393-395.—K. R. H. M.]

47 Compare Letronne Recueil des Inscription Grecques de l’Egypte, tome i. pp. 363 sqq. Ptolemaeus Eupator is not mentioned by the historians. The name was first discovered in a Greek Papyrus at Berlin, written under Soter II. in the year 105 B.C., and indeed foisted in between Philometor and Euergetes. Böckh, who published the Papyrus (1821), referred the surname of Euergetes to Soter II. and his wife, and held Eupator to be a surname of the deified Euergetes II. In the same year Champollion-Figeac treated of this papyrus, and endeavoured to prove that Eupator was that son of Philometer put to death by Euergetes II. on his accession. This view was afterwards accepted by St. Martin, Böckh, and Letronne (Rech. pour serv. à l’Hist. de l’Eg. p. 124). In the meantime the name Eupator had been found in a second papyrus of the reign of Soter II., as also in a letter of Numenius upon the Phileusian obelisk of Herr Bankes of the time of Euergetes II. Eupator was named in both inscriptions, but did not stand behind, but before Philometor, and therefore could not be his son. Letronne now conjectured (Recueil des Inscr. tome i. p. 365) that Eupator was another surname of Philometor. Then, however, it should have been καὶ Θεοῦ Εὐπάτορος τοῦ καὶ Φιλομήτορος, and not καὶ Θεοῦ Εὐπάτορος καὶ Θεοῦ Φιλομήτορος. In a letter to Letronne of the 1st December, 1844, from Thebes, which has been printed in the Revue Archéol. tome i. pp. 678 sqq., I informed him that I had also found in several hieroglyphical inscriptions the name Eupator, and always before Philometor. The same reasons that I alleged against Letronne’s interpretation of the Greek name (that portion of the letter was not printed in the Revue), i. e. the simple recurrence of the Θεοῦ, did also not allow Eupator to be considered another name of Philometor in the hieroglyphical lists. He must have been a Ptolemy recognized for a short time as king, but not mentioned by the historians; and as Franz (Corp. Inscr. vol. iii. p. 285) and Letronne (Rec. vol. ii. p. 536) have recognized an elder brother of Philometor, who died in a few months, and was therefore omitted in the Ptolemaic canon.
The son of Philometor and his sister Cleopatra II., however, mentioned by Justin and Josephus, in which it was formerly thought that the Eupator of the Berlin papyrus had been found, is particularly mentioned in the hieroglyphical inscriptions and of the other Ptolemies, in his place between Philometor and Euergetes, and we thus learn his name, which the historians had not added. He is sometimes called Philopator, sometimes Neos Philopator, and is therefore to be referred to in the series of reigned Ptolemies, as Philopator II. Of fourteen hieroglyphical lists which come down to Euergetes II., seven mention Philopator II.; in four other lists in which he might have been mentioned he is passed over, and these seem all to belong to the first year of Euergetes II., his murderer, which readily explains the cause. That he does not appear in the canon is quite natural, because his reign did not extend over the change of the Egyptian year; but, as might be expected, he is named in the protocolls of the Demotic Papyrus, where those Ptolemies receiving divine honours are enumerated, and in which Young had already properly seen Eupator. In fact, he is mentioned here in all the lists known to me (five in Berlin of the years 114, 103, 103, 99, 89 B.C., and one in Turin of the year 89 B.C.) which are later than Euergetes II., as also in a Berlin papyrus of the fifty-second year of Euergetes himself (therefore in 188 B.C.). A comparison of the Demotic lists manifests that the interchange of the names Eupator and Philometor in the Greek papyrus of the year 105 B.C. (not 106, as Franz, Corp. Inscr. p. 285 writes), is not only a mistake of the copyist, as these and similar interchanges are also not uncommon in the Demotic papyrus. The different purposes of the hieroglyphic and demotic lists render it comprehensible, that in the former such variations were not admissible, as in the latter.

48 Wilkinson (Modern Egypt and Thebes, vol. ii. p. 275) considers this Cleopatra Tryphæna to be the famous Cleopatra, daughter of Neos Dionysos; Champollion (Lettres d’Egypte, p. 110) to be the wife of Philometor; but the cartouche combined with her name belong neither to Ptolemæus XIV., the elder son of Neos Dionysos, nor to Ptolomæus VI. Philometor, but to Ptolemæus XIII. Neos Dionysos or Auletes, who is always Philopator Philadelphus, on the monuments. Cleopatra Tryphæna was therefore the wife of Ptolemæus Auletes.

49 The inscription referred to is in the rock-cave of Echmin, and was, without doubt, first engraved under Ptolemæus Philadelphus, with double cartouches and the usual royal titles, but without the surname of Soter; he is mentioned on a stele in Vienna which was erected under Philopator. Here, however, he has another cartouche than at Echmin, and moreover, in a remarkable manner, the same as that which Philippus Aridaeus and Alexander II., under whom Ptolemæus Lagus was Viceroy in Egypt, bore before his time. In like manner he is named on a statue of the king in the ruins of Memphis, where the Horus-name of the king may be found, and which may probably have been made during his reign. Finally, the Soters are sometimes only mentioned by their surnames, at the head of the honoured ancestors of later kings, as in the inscription of Rosetta, and in the bilingual Decrees of Philae written while Soter II. is always written p. nuter enti nehem, which would answer to the Koptic, deus servator. In the Demotic inscriptions, too, the first Soters are designated by nehem, and in the singular, by the Greek word p.suter.
Although it is not to be doubted that the Soters, who, according to the Demotic papyrus, had a peculiar cultus with the rest of the Ptolemies, not only in Alexandria and Ptolemais, but also in Thebes, were looked upon as the chiefs of the Ptolemaic dynasty, it is more remarkable that till now no building has been discovered which was erected under Ptolemæus Soter as king, although he continued twenty years in this capacity. To this must be added that the above-mentioned hieroglyphic lists of Ptolemies, without exception, do not begin the series with Soters, but with the Adelphi, as said at Echmin, his cartouches have no royal titles, and that in Karnak, under Euergetes II., Philadelphus is represented as King, and Soter, answering to the same period, not as king. Also in the Demotic king lists of the papyrus, the Alexandrian series passes over the Soters down to Philometor, and lets the Adelphi immediately follow Alexander the Great. The Soters have come before me at the earliest in a papyrus of the seventeenth year of Philopator (210 B.C.), the oldest in the Berlin collection; the Thebaic cultus of the Ptolemies seems to have excluded the Soters altogether. Although, therefore, the beginning of the royal government in the year 305 B.C., as the Canon asserts, is an ascertained fact, and is incontestably confirmed by the hieroglyphic stele in Vienna, which has been cited for it by my friend M. Pinder (Beitr. zur älteren Münzkunde, Band I. p. 201) in his instructive essay “On the era of Philippus on coins,” it seems to authorize another legitimate view, according to which, not Ptolemæus Logi, but Philadelphus, the eldest king’s son (even though not Porphyrogenitus), was the head of the Ptolemies. Thus it may also be explained, that we find under Euergetes I. an astronomical era employed, that of the otherwise unknown Dionysius, which took its beginning from the year 285 B.C. the first of Philadelphus, while the coins of Philadelphus neither count from his own accession, nor from the year 305 B.C., but from the year of the decease of Alexander the Great, or the beginning of the viceroyship of Ptolemaeus, as the beginning point of a new era. (See Pinder, p. 205).

50 [Manetho in Bunsen, Egypt’s Place, vol i. p. 620. Nitocris is the last of this dynasty. K. R. H. M.]

51 Denkmäler aus Ægypten und Æthiopien, Abth. II. Blatt. 123-133.

52 [Bunsen’s Egypt’s Place, vol. i. p, 45. K. R. H. M.]

53 Denkmäler, Abth. II. Bl. 134.

54 [I. e., the cartouches of contemporaneous kings.—K. R. H. M.]

55 [See Bunsen’s Egypt’s Place, vol. i. p. 373, where an account of this deity is given.—K. R. H. M.]

56 [This resembles, in fact, the system of calling parishes after the names of the Saints, to commemorate whose martyrdom the church was erected; as, for instance, the church and parish of St. Alphege, in the town of Greenwich.—K. R. H. M.]

57 [See Bunsen, vol. i. p. 400, for an account of this deity.—K. R. H. M.]

58 [Bunsen, vol. i. p. 470. Egyptian Vocabulary, No. 294, and Determinative sign, No. 58. p. 542, the author there refers to Champollion, Grammaire, and Rosellini, Monumenti Reali, cxlii. 1.—K. R. H. M.]

59 [Bunsen (vol. i. p. 434, n. 333,) says, “The discovery of the meaning of Harpocrates is mine; but I explained it as Her-pe-schre (Horus the child), and adopted Lepsius’s correction.” In the text it is given Her-pa-χruti.—K. R. H. M.]

60 Denkmäler, Abth. IV. Bl. 38, 39. A special essay is prepared on these inscriptions.

61 The first news of the discovery of this important inscription, which had also not been noticed by the Franco-Tuscan Expedition, made some commotion. Simultaneously with the more circumstantial account in the Preussische Staatszeitung, a careless English notice appeared, in which the discovery of a second specimen of the inscription of Rosetta was spoken of, and the place assigned was Meroe. Later, when M. Ampère had brought an impression of the inscription to Paris, the Academician, M. de Saulcy, contrariwise put forth an argument on the opposite side asserting that the inscription had some resemblance to that of Rosetta, and referred it to Ptolemæus Philometer. I therefore took occasion to prove, in two letters to M. Letronne (Rev. Archéol. vol. iv. p. 1 sqq. and p. 240 sqq.) as also in an essay in the Transactions of the German Oriental Society (vol. i. p. 264 sqq.), that the document in question was prepared in the twenty-first year of Ptolemæus Epiphanes, and contained a repetition of the Rosetta inscription, the provisions of which were extended to Queen Cleopatra I., who had come to the throne in the meantime.

62 The name Cleopatra, in place of Arsinoe, in the hieroglyphic inscriptions appears to rest wholly upon an error of the scribe, which is avoided in the Demotic, for Arsinoe is here correctly mentioned. The hieroglyphic text of the inscription of Rosetta is less correct than the Demotic. [If the hieroglyphic be the text, then it is decidedly the Demotic that is in error. The hieroglyphic seems to have been engraven first, and in that case it would be the text. Probably, however, at this late period, Greek was the language in which the inscriptions of the time were composed, thus the question would lie not between the hieroglyphic and Demotic, i.e. the archaico-Egyptian (but little understood) and the modern, but between the Greek and the hieroglyphic modes of expression.—K. R. H. M.]

63 [It is well to remark the structure of the word Ph-iah-uêb “the field of Jah, or Jao,” as the Rev. Charles Forster reads the Hamyaritic name of God, in the Wady Mokatteb inscriptions. It serves as a collateral proof of the Koptic origin of the language of the inscriptions deciphered by that learned investigator. The form of the letters being similar also proves a cognate origin.—K. R. H. M.

64 Similar designations occur at an earlier period; thus, in Thebes, an “Ammon of Tuthmosis (III.)” is mentioned; it would seem to infer a newly-instituted worship of those gods brought about by these kings. Ramses II. dedicated to the three highest gods of Egypt (see my essay “On the Primeval Circle of Egyptian Gods,” in the papers of the Berlin Academy, 1851), Ra, Phtha, and Ammon, three great rock temples, in Lower Nubia, at Derr, Gerf Hussén, and Sebuâ, and called the contemporaneously-founded places after these gods, this in Greek Heliopolis, Hephaistopolis, and Diospolis. A fourth mighty and fortified residence was founded by the same king in Abusimbel, and was named after himself, Ramessopolis, or “The Fortification of Ramessopolis,” as he also founded two cities in the Delta, and called them after himself. No doubt it is this new worship, in reference to which the gods honoured there were named Ammon of Ramses, and Phtha of Ramses. The king was himself adored in those rock temples, particularly in that of Abusimbel, in common with those deities.

65 [See Pickering’s Races of Man and their Geographical Distribution, chap. x. The Ethiopian race, Nubians, and Barabra of the Nile, p. 211-215.—K. R. H. M.]

66 A grammar and vocabulary of the Nubian language, and a translation of St. Mark into Nubian, is prepared for publication.

67 [The following are some of the terms for one hundred among the African tribes, Biengga, Island of Corisco, ’Nkama, Jedah, Jjeje; Joberra, Obere; Kanga country, Sy district, Mosulu bandi.—K. R. H. M.]

68 [Menekle signifies “great ear.”—K.R.H.M.]

69 [For a character of Ahmed Pasha, see Werne’s White Nile, vol. i. p. 33. The author was acquainted with him.—K. R. H. M.]

70 [Bunsen has given these forms and hieroglyphics at the end of the English translation of his excellent Egypt’s Place, of which it is much to be regretted that the first volume only has hitherto appeared.—K. R. H. M.]

71 [Had Lepsius remembered that, by the determination of this most important fact, he set at rest the half-witted theories of a race of Indo-philologic dreamers, he would have rather rejoiced at the result than have regretted. These men, of whom Higgins, Faber, and Dupuis are fine specimens, with no accurate knowledge of any of the languages they so sapiently decided on, will find their favourite Mount Meru, Meroë, Menu, Manu, &c., &c., &c., here overthrown by an evident chronological fact. Such investigations are, however, useful for two reasons:—1. That they collect an immense number of facts, and, in some degree, classify them, for the benefit of the race of investigators now arising, of whom Bunsen, Bopp, and others, are fine examples; and 2. They show us what false scents we must avoid in following up so intricate an inquiry as the Archæological history of the “origenes” of mankind. Let it be understood, however, that I do not mean to assert that men like Higgins and Pococke are totally wrong; far from it, they are often right, but the care which they should bestow on their researches is continually wanting,—the critical acumen to distinguish between nonsense and sense,—always. I can only repeat what I have said in another place, (Buckley’s Great Cities of the Ancient World, p. 314,) in a chapter on Scandinavian and general mythology, viz.:—That a new era is approaching in historical investigation, and, I may add, that we must not doubt, or we may never prove. There is plenty of time, and one fact established is worth many overthrown, when there is nothing to replace them. The great problem is susceptible of solution if we have only a little faith, at any rate, to preserve, even if only provisionally, what we cannot see in the full clear light, that yesterday’s occurrences are given in to-day’s Times. See, however, p. 226.—K.R.H.M.]

72 I have since heard of the decease of Herr Bauer, which ensued in the following year.

73 [The author refers to the inscription obtained at Tamaniât through the means of Mohammed Said. See p. 168.—K.R.H.M.]

74 [Werne, in his excellent work “Expedition to discover the sources of the White Nile,” vol. i. p, 146, mentions baobàb trees of the above dimensions, and states that, near Fazoql, there is said to be one 120 feet in circumference. I cannot too strongly call attention to this most able work, in the portable form in which it has been issued by my publisher, Mr. Bentley.—K. R. H. M.]

75 Russegger (Travels, vol. ii. Part II. p. 125,) found one of 95 feet in circumference. He erroneously calls the tree ganglès; this is homara, and the fruit gungulês.

76 [See an elaborate essay on the Berbers and their name, by Mr. Gliddon, in Burke’s Ethnological Journal, No. X. p. 439, as well as a paper by Mr. Nash on the Egyptian name of Egypt.—K. R. H. M.]

77 [See Werne’s Expedition, vol. i. p. 194, where he observes:—
“I do not call them handsome trees, because they stand there in the green wilderness; no, I find them really beautiful, for there is a peculiar charm in them. They rise like double gigantic flowers upon slender stalks, gently protruding in the middle, and not like those defoliated date-palms, which stand meagrely like large cabbage-stalks. It is impossible that the latter should delight my poor heart, full of the remembrance of shady trees,—the oaks and the beech trees of Germany; the palms near Parnassus; the cypress on the Bosphorus, and the chestnuts on the Asiatic Olympus.” The botany of these regions has been well treated by Werne.—K. R. H. M.]

78 [Bunsen in Egypt’s Place in Universal History, vol. i. p. 430, refers them all to Osiris, and ranges them thus:—1. The Genius with the Hawkhead, Kebhsen u.f. signifying “the refresher of his brothers.” 2. The Jackal-head Tua-mutf, “the adorer of his mother.” 3. The Apehead, Hepi (Apis) “Osiris the devoted.” 4. Amset, God, “Osiris the devoted.” The different arrangement of Lepsius is caused by his counting from right to left, while Bunsen begins from left to right.—K. R. H. M.]

79 The poems contain many unusual forms and expressions, and have been composed in very free and, it seems to me, incorrect forms.

80 [Compare Herodotus, Euterpe, c. 85, for the ancient Egyptian mode of mourning, which is, however, not very similar to this.—K. R. H. M.]

81 [The first Cartouche is as follows:—K (the bowl with a handle), Alphabetic No. 1, (Bunsen, vol. i. p. 561); N (the water,) Alphabetic No. 1, (p. 564); TA (bag and reed), Alphabetic No. 5, (p. 568); K = KNTAK. The reeds, Alphabetic No. 3, (p. 556,) occurs in the “Todtenbuch” (xxii. 63, 3,) as the sign for a noble, (Bunsen, p. 454), the heaven (p. 555) is the mark of the feminine gender, and the egg (Determinative No. 85, p. 545,) rank; = a Queen. The second Cartouche is the same, with the exception of the variant:—the sign of festivals (Determinative No. 110 p. 547,) HBI = KNTAHBI.—K. R. H. M.]

82 [A superstition exists among the Moravian Jews to this effect. At new moon a branch is held in its light, and the name of any person pronounced. His face will appear between the horns of the moon, and should he be destined to die, the leaves will fade. This is mentioned, as well as I can remember, in Beaumont’s Demonology.—K. R. H. M.]

83 [Compare Colonel Rawlinson’s Outline of Assyrian History, p. 23, where Sennacherib’s invasion of Meroe is mentioned.—K. R. H. M.]

84 [See Pickering’s Races of Man, p. 214, on the Ethiopian Race, and pp. 368 sqq., for further remarks on Egypt. This excellent work is well worthy the serious attention of the ethnologist in every way.—K. R. H. M.]

85 [I may here mention that an excellent term for the red-skinned race has been invented, though I forget by whom, though the person was an American archeologist, viz. cinnamon-coloured, applicable enough both to the red Mexican and the red Egyptian. In the picture chronicles of Mexican social life and history we also find that the women are painted yellow, a coincidence perhaps worthy of notice.—K. R. H. M.]

86 [Pickering states that he first met with a mixed race of Barâbra at Kenneh, thirty miles below the site of ancient Thebes, but he considers the boundary of the races to be at Silsilis. P. 212.—K. R. H. M.]

87 [Now standing for many years at the entrance of the Egyptian saloon in the British Museum.—K. R. H. M.]

88 All these monuments are now erected in the Egyptian Museum. See the Ram and the Sparrow-hawk in the “Monuments from Egypt and Ethiopia,” Part III. plate 90.

89 From the pods and their contents Dr. Klotzsch recognised the Moringa arabica Persoon (Hyperanthera peregrina Forskăl). It seems that this tree was only previously known from Arabia, and is natural there. The single trees near Barkal, which are not mentioned by former travellers, might have been first introduced from Arabia. This is the more probable as the immigration of those tribes of the Shaiqîeh Arabs from the Hegâz is now testified by manuscript authorities. [This tree must therefore be added to the botanical list of Pickering, who, in his Races of Man, has collected all the introduced animals and plants of Egypt, India, America, Polynesia, Southern Arabia, &c., and though the lists want classification, they are well worthy of attention.—K. R. H. M.]

90 The literal expression is, that he has built the temple “to his image, Ra-neb-ma, living on the earth.” The word chent no longer exists in Koptic, but it is always translated εἰκών on the Rosetta stone. The temple and the place belonging to it was also named after the king, but according to his Horus-name, “Dwelling-place of Sha-em-ma;” this led to the recognition of the original position of the ram of Barkal and the lions in the British Museum.

91 [For the straw huts down the Nile, and particularly beyond Chartûm, see Werne’s White Nile, chapter i. vol. i. p. 28.—K. R. H. M.]

92 [See Bunsen’s Egypt’s Place, vol. i. p. 624.—K. R. H. M.]

93 Monuments, Part II. Plates 245, 246.

94 Monuments, Part II. plate 1.

95 Salamât “the greetings” are they called by earlier travellers. The proper pronunciation and meaning was first remarked to me by our intelligent old guide, Ἀuad. The Arabs are for confounding them, as salâm, salus, is pronounced with the dental sin, s’anam, idolum, with the lingual sâd. The plural, which is usually as’nam, here takes the feminine form s’anamât. That they were male figures had long since been indistinguishable from the battered heads. The stone of which the statues are formed is a peculiarly hard quartz brittle sandstone conglomerate, looking glazed, and with innumerable cracks. The frequent bursting of little particles of stone at sunrise, when the changes of temperature are most sudden, caused, according to my idea, the celebrated Memnon sounds, which were compared with the breaking of a violin string.

96 [Herodotus II. c.c. 121-122.—K.R.H.M.]

97 This King Ai was formerly a private individual, and took his sacerdotal title into his royal cartouche at a later period. He appears with his wife in the tombs of Amarna, not unfrequently as a noble and peculiarly honoured officer of King Amenophis IV., that puritanical sun-worshipper, who changed his name into that of Bech-en-aten.

98 The above dimensions are here taken from Wilkinson’s Modern Egypt and Thebes, vol. ii. p. 220.

99 [For an excellent description of such retreats, vide Floss, Quæstiones Criticæ de Macaris, cap. i. § 1. Coloniæ, Heberle, MDCCCL.—K.R.H.M.]

100 Apuleii Asclepius, dialogue Hermetis Trismegisti, c. 24.

101 When I wrote the above, I did not think that the crime would be so soon avenged. See Letter XXXV. p. 372.

102 I have since learnt (Rev. Arch., vol. iv. p. 32,) that M. Ampère had been expressly sent to Egypt, by the Paris Academy, to copy the bilingual inscription at Philae, to which I had turned attention in my Letters. See Letter XV. p. 120, and note. Of the impression brought back to Paris, in which, however, the beginnings of the Demotic lines, and the date of the decree are wanting, the very diminished representation of Demotic text is taken, which M. de Saulcy has published in the Revue Archéologique.

103 [In Bunsen’s list of Determinatives, No. 5. I quote his description “Disk diffusing rays of light; light, as sti, a sunbeam, (sun’s ray); ht, daylight; ubn, to illuminate; mau, to gleam; ui, brilliancy; hai, light; am, a beam.” Bunsen’s Egypt’s Place, vol. i. p. 537.—Since writing the foregoing note in the first edition, I have read the Rev. Charles Forster’s Monuments of Egypt, and I find that he attempts to identify this royal sign with a grain of millet, “with its stamina and antheræ developed,” assigning for its pronunciation the word “pschent.” I forbear criticism upon this “discovery,” only referring the reader to p. 54 of the second part of the Primæval Language.—K. R. H. M.]

104 [Dr. Lepsius alludes to Herr Maximilian Weidenbach.—K. R. H. M.]

105 These places were first accurately and instructively described by Wilkinson, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. ii. pp. 28 sqq.

106 These are the actual words of my journal as they are understood also by Ritter, p. 578. According to the printed report, p. 8, it might appear as if Robinson had given up the attempt to climb the whole of this mountain district; this is particularised in the Bibliotheca Sacra as an inaccuracy. But I only spoke of the top of the mountain rising in the plain in contradistinction to the higher points lying toward the side, which Robinson has ascended.

107 This report, sent to His Majesty, was printed, while I was still absent in 1846, under the title “Reise des Prof. Lepsius von Theben nach der Halbinsel des Sinai vom 4ten März, bis zum 14ten April, 1845,” Berlin, with two maps, a general map of the whole peninsula, and a special map of Serbâl and Wadi Firân, which were drawn by G. Erbkam after my directions or plans. This pamphlet was not published, but was given to a few; yet its contents have become better known by a translation into English by Charles H. Cottrell, (A Tour from Thebes to the peninsula of Sinai, &c., London, 1846); and into French by T. Pergameni, (“Voyage dans le Presq’île du Sinai, &c., lu à la Société de Géographie, séances du 21 Avril et du 21 Mai. Extrait du Bulletin de la Soc. de Géogr., Juin, 1847, Paris.”)

108 The Nakb el Haui, “Windsaddle” is an exceedingly wild and narrow mountain pass, which is impassable from its shelving abysses. The road had to be made with great art along the western side, and is in many places hewn out of the rock; on the other side, the loose soil has been paved with great flat stones. It is not to be doubted, that this daring path was made after the building of the convent, in order to have a shorter road to the town of Pharan, which before could only be reached by the wide circuit through the Wadi e’ Shech.

109 It seems that this convent has not been visited by any recent traveller. Burckhardt, who calls it Siggillye, did not descend, but heard that it was well-built and spacious, and provided with a good well, (Trav. in Syria, p. 610). More accurate information concerning this convent in the Serbâl gorge is very desirable, as it belongs probably to one of the oldest, or, at least, the most considerable of the peninsula, as the artistic and elaborately prepared rock-road thence to the town of Pharan amply shows.

110 [I may here draw the reader’s attention to an interesting work, (to be more completely alluded to in the sequel,) lately published by the Rev. Charles Forster. The One Primeval Language. Part I. The Voice of Israel from the Rocks of Sinai.—K. R. H. M.]

111 Monuments, Part II., plates 2, 116, 137, 140, 152, III., 28.

112 [Bunsen, vol. i. p. 400, and see Lepsius, Ueber den Ersten Aegyptischen Götterkreis, p. 30.—K. R. H. M.]

113 [From its great length, I have found it necessary to reserve a note on this passage until the Appendix, Note A., where the reader will find it.—K. R. H. M.]

114 On this point I find all the most important voices unanimous. Robinson, in particular, has the merit of having done away with many old prejudices of this kind. But Burckhardt had already allowed himself to be so little influenced in his judgment by the authority of tradition, that he did not hesitate to find a reason for the erection of the convent of Sinai on Gebel Mûsa on strategical grounds. (Trav. in Syr. p. 609.)

115 The name Firân, formerly Pharan, is certainly the same as the Biblical Paran; but it is equally sure that this name had shifted its application in the locality. All other comparisons of names are totally unsatisfactory.

116 One of the two wells seems to go back to the time of the building of the convent; it is the smaller one of the two. The deep, principal well, which gives the most and the best water, seems to have been first sunk in 1760, by order of an English Lord. (Ritter, p. 610.)

117 Burckhardt also expressly observes, that there is no good pasturage in the neighbourhood of the convent, where the rather more numerous little fountains would almost allow us to consider the soil to be moisture. See Bartlett’s impression in a subsequent place.

118 So the Arabs unanimously assured us, see also Burckhardt, p. 625, and Ritter, p. 769. Lord Lindsay here found “a small wood of tarfa trees, in which blackbirds were singing, and farther on some palm plantations.” It was at the same outlet of the valley “where Seetzen first had the pleasure of gathering much manna off the tarfa bushes and eating it; here he found the ripe fruits of the wild caper bush, which were eatable like fruit.”

119 [Note B, Appendix.—K. R. H. M.]

120 Originally, both these hot springs seem not to have been called Hammân Faraûn from Pharaoh, but Farân from Pharan. For Edrisi calls the place Faran Ahrun and Istachri Taran, which should doubtless be Faran (Cf. Ritter, Asien, Bd. VIII. S. 170 ff.). Macrizi also calls the place Birkit Faran (Ritter, Sinaihalbinsel, p. 64.) Probably the harbour region of Pharan was called after the city, though it was somewhat distant; and the legend, so very inapposite here, concerning Pharaoh’s ruin, only connected itself with Faraûn by a confusion with Faran. It is curious that the Arab writers, of whom Macrizi was certainly there, speak of Faran as of a coast town!

121 The part of the sandy coast, considered by Robinson to be the desert of Sin, has no tarfa bush, much less manna. Concerning the regions where manna is found, Cf. Ritter, p. 665 sqq. That Eusebius also considers the wilderness of Sin to extend to Sinai, is already mentioned. [Σίν, έρημος ἡ μετάξυ παρατείνουσα τῆς Ἐρυθρᾶς Θαλάσσης καὶ τῆς ἐρήμον Σίυα]

122 Robinson, vol. i. p. 173, 196. To Wilson’s particular argument of the extensive prospect from Gebel Mûsa is to be objected, that, from a point very inconsiderably higher than the plain, many places can be seen, from which the elevation itself would not appear very considerable.

123 See Robinson, vol. i. pp. 118, 196.

124 Ewald, History of the People of Israel, vol. ii. p. 86, also considers that Sinai “was already looked upon as an oracular place and divine seat before Moses.” Ritter considers it insupportable.

125 This is confirmed at the present day by Rüppell, who considers Gebel Katharine to be Sinai. He relates in his voyage to Abyssinia, vol. i. p. 127, the following about his ascent of Mount Serbâl in 1831:—“At the top of Serbâl, the Bedouins have placed little circles of stones in a circle, and other stones are laid from it down the steep declivity like steps, to render the ascent more easy; when we came to that circle my guide took off his sandals, and approached it with religious reverence, he then said a prayer inside, and afterward told me that he had already sacrificed two sheep here as thank-offerings, the one at the birth of a son, the other on regaining his health. The mountain of Serbâl has been held for such superstitions in the highest respect by the Arabs of the vicinity, from time immemorial; and it must once have been somewhat holy to the Christians, as in the valley to the south-west there lie the ruins of a great convent and many little hermits’ cells. In any case, the wild, craggy rocks of Serbâl, and the isolated position of this mountain is much more remarkable and grand than any other group of mountains in Arabia Petræa, and it was peculiarly adapted for the goal of religious pilgrimages. The highest point of the mount, or the second rock from the west, and on which the Arabs usually sacrifice, is, according to my barometrical observation, 6,342 French feet above the level of the sea.”

126 See the excellent treatise of Tuch (Einundzwanzig Sinaitische Inschriften, Leipzig, 1849.) This scholar endeavours to prove, by the deciphered names of the pilgrims, that the authors of the inscriptions were native pagan Arabs, and went to Serbâl for religious festivals; according to him, these pilgrimages ended, at latest, in the course of the third century. Here it may also be mentioned, that the name itself of Serbâl, which Rödiger, (in Wellsted’s Travels in Arabia, vol. ii. page the last), doubtlessly correctly derived from serb, palmarum copia, and Baal, “palm grove (φοινίκων) of Baal,” points to a heathen origin. [However much M. Tuch may reproduce the notion of Beer, he cannot set aside its confutation in Forster’s Primeval Language, Part I. pp. 8-38.—K. R. H. M.]

127 Vol. i. p. 198.

128 I thought to be able to conclude this indirectly from his narrative, (Antiq. III. 2.) It now appears to me that nothing can be elicited, as to his opinion, from it, for which reason the name should be omitted above. In itself it is still probable that he held the same opinion as Eusebius and Jerome.

129 Eusebius, περὶ τῶν τοκικῶν ὀνομ., etc s.v. Ῥαφιδίμ, τόπος τῆς ἐρήμον παρὰ τὸ Χωρὴβ ὄρος, ἐν ᾧ ἐυ τῆς πέτρας ἐρρύησε τὰ ὔδατα καὶ ἐκλήθη ὀ τόπος πειρασμός ἔνθα καὶ πολεμεῖ Ἰησοῦς τὺν Ἁμαλὴκ ἐγγὺς Φαράν. Hieron. de situ et nomin., etc. s.v. Raphidim, locus in deserto juxta montem Choreb, in quo de petra fluxere aquæ, cognominatusque est tentatio, ubi et Jesus adversus Amalec dimicat prope Pharan. [Here again the authorities resolve themselves into one, as the reader knows that, after all, Jerome was only the translator of Eusebius, and would therefore, of course, agree with him. The Doctor does not appear to have thought of this.—K. R. H. M.]

130 Of the older authors there is yet Cosmas Indicopleustes (A.D. 535) to be particularly mentioned, (Topogr. Christ, Lib V. in the Coll. Nov. Patr. ed. Montfaucon, tom. II. fol. 195,) Ἔιτα πάλιν παρενέ βαλον εἰς Ῥαφιδὶν εἰς τὴν νῦν λεγομένην Φαράν also Antoninus Placentinus, who is placed about 600, while the learned Papebroch, who has edited his Itinerarium in the Acta S.S., May, vol. ii. p. 10-18, places him in the eleventh or twelfth century, came, as he says, in civitatem (which can only be Pharan) in qua pugnavit Moyses cum Amalech: ubi est altare positum super lapides illos quos posuerunt Moyse orante.” The city is surrounded with a brick wall, and “valde, sterilis” for which Tuch (Sinait. Incr. p. 38) proposes to read “fertilis.” When Pharan is called an Amalekite city by Macrizi, (History of the Kopts, translated by Wüstenfeld, p. 116), this can only point to the same conclusion that Moses was attacked near Pharan by the Amalekites, to whom the territory belonged. Ritter is particularly to be mentioned among the new school.

131 See the passage of Cosmas, in a former note.

132 The name Raphidîm itself, “the resting-places,” indicates that the place was intended for a longer rest.

133 Exodus, xix. 1-3.

134 See Note C, in the Appendix.

135 Therefore Robinson and others, who admit no hiatus in the resting stations, place Raphidîm beyond Firân, and do not admit that the latter is named at all, or place Alus there. What is contrary to this, and has already been made use of by Ritter, is already mentioned above. On the contrary, Ritter, to get over the difficulty, considers our present text to be imperfect (p. 742).

136 To this conclusion, which appears to me the most doubtful, of any, Ritter feels himself driven. The tradition of the present day is different, that Horeb and Sinai are two mountains in close juxtaposition, but also distinctly divided.

137 To this conclusion, which appears to me the most doubtful, of any, Ritter feels himself driven. The tradition of the present day is different, that Horeb and Sinai are two mountains in close juxtaposition, but also distinctly divided.

138 The three possibilities of getting quit of this difficulty have been tried by Robinson, Ritter, and Josephus. The first places Raphidîm in the neighbourhood of Gebel Mûsa; the second sees an omission between Raphidîm and Sinai, and accepts two divine mountains; the third transposes the passage, and does not mention Horeb at all, but only Sinai.

139 Cf. the comparison and discussion of both opinions in Robinson, vol. i. pp. 197, sqq. All those places where exactly the same is said of Horeb as of Sinai, and no idea of a larger extent of region is admissible, speak against the view of the latter that Horeb is the denomination of the mountain-range or country, and Sinai the name of the particular mount. A Desert of Horeb is never spoken of, as are the deserts of Sur, Sin, Paran, and others. For a contrary view one could cite Acts, vii. 30, compared with Exodus, iii. 1. [The former passage is “And when forty years were expired, then appeared unto him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, an angel,” &c.; the other runs thus, “He led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.”—K. R. H. M.]

140 This view is already to be found in the Itinerarium of Antoninus, who finds the convent between Sinai and Horeb. The present monkish tradition that the rock on the plain of Râha is Horeb is already known. The arbitrariness of such views are self-evident. Yet the latter opinion is taken up by Gesenius, (Thesaur. p. 517), Wiener, and others.

141 St. Jerome already says expressly the same thing, in adding to the words of Eusebius, s.v. Choreb:—“Mihi autem videtur, quod duplici nomine idem mons nunc Sina, nunc Choreb vocetur.” Josephus already evidently took both mountains to be one, as he everywhere substitutes Sinai where Choreb occurs in the Bible; so also does the author of Acts (vii. 80); and likewise Syncellus (Chron. p. 190), who says of Elias:—ἐπορεύετο ἐν Χωρὴβ τῷ ὄρει ἤτοι Σιναίῳ. [The adjective termination of Σιναίῳ shows that Syncellus meant that Choreb was part of the Sinaitic range. Otherwise, he would have employed the Hebraic termination:—K. R. H. M.] Of late scholars, Ewald presents the same opinion concerning the identity of the two mounts. He says, (Gesch. des V. Isr., vol. ii. p. 84):—“The two names Sinai and Horeb do not change, because they denoted two peaks of the same mountain, lying close together, but the name Sinai is plainly older, which is also used by Deborah, (Judges v. 5), while the name Horeb is not to be found previous to the time of Numbers (cf. Exod. iii. 1, xvii. 6, xxxiii. 6), but then becomes very frequent, as is proved by Deuteronomy, and the passages, 1 Kings viii. 9, xix. 8, Mal. xii. 22, Psalm cvi. 19, while it does not mean anything to the contrary, when quite recent writers, for the sake of showing their acquaintance with ancient literature, re-introduce the original name of Sinai!”

142 If we omit the two verses xix. 12, the narrative in xix. 3 continues quite naturally that of xviii. 27; “and Moses let his father-in-law depart; so he went his way into his own land. And Moses went up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain,” &c.

143 [See Note C. Appendix.]

144 [See Note A. Appendix.]

145 [Note D, Appendix.]

146 [Note E, Appendix.]

147 [Note F, Appendix.]

148 Ritter (p. 31), where he mentions that Sinai appears almost simultaneously, as Serbâl, with the Egyptian Cosmas, and as Gebel Mûsa with the Byzantine Procopius, broaches another conjecture, which I shall here quote:—“Was there, perhaps,” says he, “a different tradition or party opinion prevailing in Constantinople and Alexandria on this point among the convents and the monks, which might have arisen from a jealousy to vindicate the more sacred character of one or other of the places? It is curious that at the same time such different views of the question should exist among the most learned theologians of their time.”

149 This letter, which is here printed word for word, was addressed to the General-Director der K. Preuss. Museen, Herr Geh. Legations-Rath von Olfers. Perhaps its publication may serve at the same time to spread abroad a just respect for the principles on which the Egyptian Museum, that part of one of the most grand and newest creations of Berlin first accessible to the public, has been erected and decorated.

150 [This might, not without some reason, be considered to assimilate with the style of painting which has lately made its appearance in England as a school—I refer to the pre-Raphaelite, which, whatever its own intrinsic merits may be,—and those, I suspect, are very few,—will at least have one good effect, that of calling the attention of English painters to the individualities in their paintings, and obviating the slurring sketchy style so prevalent at the present time, the upholders of which, after all, are the persons who condemn the pre-Raphaelites. The remarks of Dr. Lepsius will therefore apply to this new school of painting.—K. R. H. M.]

151 [The Cheta are generally considered to be the Hittites.—K. R. H. M.]

152 [Exodus, i. 11.—K. R. H. M.]

153 It must be from some error that Burckhardt (Travels in Syria, p. 5) only allows the grave of Noah a length of ten feet, although the same number recurs in Schubert (Reise in das Morgenland, Bd. III., p. 340). It is well known how continually the number forty is used by the Hebrews as an indefinite number. The same seems to have been peculiar to all Semitic nations, at least, it may be pointed out frequently, and at all times with the Phænicians and Arabs; the numeral word for four and forty itself points, in these languages, to the general idea of multitude. Cf. my Treatise on Philological Comparison (“Sprachvergleichende Abhandlungen,”) Berlin, 1836, pp. 104, 139, and the “Chronology of the Egyptians,” vol. i. p. 15.

154 See V. Hammer, History of the Osmanli Empire, part II. p. 482.

155 Cf. Krafft, the Topography of Jerusalem, Bonn, 1846, and Plate II. No. 33.

156 The king represented here is explained by Rawlinson (a Commentary on the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Babylonia and Assyria, London, 1850, p. 70,) to be the son of the builder of Khorsabad, Bel-Adonim-Sha. The same king is found on the buildings of Kuyunjik, Nebbi Yûnas, and Mossul, according to Layard, (Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 142, 144,) who, (p. 400), conjectures that the monument from Cyprus, now in the Berlin Museum, also belongs to him. (Cf. Bonomi, Nineveh and its Palaces, London, 1852, p. 127.)

157 [Hesych. οὐραγίαν, τὴν ὄπισθεν ἀκολουθοῦσαν στρατίαν—K.R.H.M.]

158 [See Bunsen, Egypt’s Place, vol. 1. p. 209—K.R.H.M.]

159 [It may be as well to remark that the calculations of longitude here and on the map are made from the island of Feroe, on the west coast of Africa, and not from Greenwich.—K.R.H.M.]

160 [To the Rev. Charles Forster it would appear we are indebted for the detection of the record of the visit of Cosmas, which, according to his reading, runs thus:—“μνησ τηθ? Κοσμάν του’ ν Τεβδ... ναυτιου.” “Remember Cosmas, the voyager to Tibet.” See that gentleman’s work on the Primeval Language, Part I. p. 4. The Greek, as the author observes, is very corrupt.—K.R.H.M.]

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