BY LINA ECKENSTEIN AUTHOR OF “WOMAN UNDER MONASTICISM” WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C. NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO. 1921 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. In the winter of 1905-6 Professor Flinders Petrie undertook the examination of the Egyptian remains in Sinai. After working at Wadi Maghara he removed into the Wadi Umm Agraf to copy the inscriptions and excavate the temple ruins at Serabit.

Adjoining this zone of drift sand, the land extends south with increased elevation to the centre of the peninsula, where it reaches a height of about 4000 ft., and abruptly breaks off in a series of lofty and inaccessible cliffs, the upper white limestone of which contrasts brilliantly in some places with the lower red sandstone. This region is, for the most part, waterless and bare. It is known in modern parlance as the Badiet Tîh (the plain of wandering). Its notable heights include the Gebel

Fig. 1.—Situation of Sanctuaries. (Petrie: Researches in Sinai .) The constant recurring changes of the moon caused this to be accepted as the ruler of times and seasons by the huntsman and the herdsman generally. The Hebrews came from a stock of moon-worshippers. It was from Ur of the Chaldees, a centre of moon-cult, that Terah and Abraham migrated to Haran on the way to Canaan about b.c. 2100. [11] The Arab writer Al Biruni ( c. a.d. 1000) in his Chronology of the Ancient Nations , noted the c

Fig. 6—Sanctuary surroundings at Serabit. (Petrie: Researches in Sinai .) The plateau of Serabit falls away abruptly on its southern and western edge, and the stratum here appears which anciently yielded turquoise. The wish to control access to this turquoise no doubt originally led to the permanent occupation of the caves, and we shall probably not be far wrong if we imagine this in the possession of a clan or hereditary priesthood, who, in return for offerings brought to their cave, gave turqu

Semerkhet was probably not the first Pharaoh who worked in Sinai. For a small plaque found at Abydos represents Den-Setui, an earlier king of the First Dynasty, who is seen in the same attitude as the Pharaohs on the Sinai rock tablets, and the cast of countenance of the enemy is also the same. [44] Little is known of King Semerkhet outside Sinai. It is supposed that the First Dynasty at his time was weakening. No records in Sinai mention kings of the Second Dynasty, who were indigenous to the N

The next people who are mentioned on the Egyptian monuments in Sinai are the Mentu. King Ra-en-user (V 6) was described as “great god of the smiting countries and raider of the Mentu.” Again, the tablet of Men-kau-hor, mentioned a royal expedition to the Mentu; and Ptahwer in Sinai of the Twelfth Dynasty was described as “bringing the Mentu to the king’s heels.” The Mentu took part in the great Hyksos invasion of Egypt between the Twelfth and the Eighteenth Dynasties. For when the tide of foreig

Thus, on some of these offerings, beginning with the reign of Hatshepsut (XVIII 5), a feline animal appears, which is sometimes a cheetah and sometimes a serval, and which was directly associated with the goddess Hathor, as was shown by a ring-stand on which the head of the goddess appeared with a cat on either side. This animal, considering its varying form, can hardly be intended for an Egyptian nome-animal, such as the cat of Bubastis. Rather should we look upon it as intended for a local ani

Prof. Brugsch looked upon Ramessu II as the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Prof. Petrie endorsed the view, accepting the date of Ramessu II as b.c. 1300-1234, and of the Exodus as c. b.c. 1220. One of his reasons for doing so was that the Israelites, as stated in the Bible, worked at the “city Raamses” (Exod. i. 11), which, as excavations have shown, was a creation of the Ramessides. But the expression the “land of Rameses,” was used in connection with the story of Joseph (Gen. xlvii. 11), which deals w

The theophany on high bearing witness to the presence of the Divinity, Moses prepared for the tribal sacrifice below by erecting an altar and setting up twelve pillars ( mazzeboth ). The young men slew the oxen, and Moses sprinkled the blood on the pillars and the people. Then, taking with him three priests and seventy elders, he went up into the mountain. “And they saw the God of Israel, and there was under His feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone and as it were the very heaven for cl

The Phoenikon or palm grove of these writers, was sometimes located at Raithou; perhaps the one at Ayun Musa is meant. Diodorus then mentioned the Island of the Sea-calves on the coast of Arabia, and the promontory ( i.e. Sinai) that shoots out towards this island, describing this as “over against Petra in Arabia and Palestine to which the Gerrhaens and Mineans bring incense.” He then mentioned the Maraneans and Garindaeans (names which recall Mara and Wadi Gharandel, the Carandar of Pliny), who

Paphnutius († c. 390), a monk of Egypt, came across Onophrius on his wanderings and wrote a life of him. Onophrius told him that he had been in the desert seventy years. Originally he dwelt in the Thebaid with about a hundred monks, but hearing of Elijah and John the Baptist, he decided that it was more meritorious to dwell alone in the desert, so he wandered away, led by an angel, and met a hermit who urged him to go five days further where he reached “Calidiomea” (perhaps a corruption of calyb

Envoys were therefore despatched to the phylarch. They carried bows and arrows, and a stone for striking fire, which would enable them to live by killing and roasting game, “for there is wood in abundance that serves as firewood, since no one fells trees in the desert” (p. 663). During their absence Nilus and others went the round of the neighbouring settlements, where the hermits had been attacked. At Bethrambe (or Thrambe) they buried Proclus; at Salael [166] they buried Hypatius; Macarius and

Fig. 16.—View of the Convent. (Petrie: Researches in Sinai .) In order to safeguard the building, Roman slaves were brought from the Black Sea (traditionally from Wallachia), a hundred in number, and transferred to Sinai with their wives and children, together with a hundred men with their wives and children from Egypt. Dwellings were erected for them in Mount Sinai so that they might safeguard the monastery and the monks; they received their supplies from Egypt. Their settlement was known as th

It is related in an appendix to the stories of Anastasius how the Christian Saracens, who dwelt near the tower of Pharan and the Holy Bush, sought refuge in the holy mountain, but could not resist the numerous invaders, and therefore decided to accept the faith of the Prophet. One man was about to fly, when his wife begged him to kill her and the children rather than leave them at the mercy of the barbarians. He did so, and then fled to Horeb, where, like Elijah, he dwelt with wild beasts till h

Fig. 18.—El Arish. ( Times History of the War. ) Of the religious life of the cities along the Mediterranean coast little is known at this period. The last bishop of Ostracine known by name was Abraham, of the year 431. At Rhinocorura called El Arish by the Moslim, later bishops were Ptolemæus and Gregorius. Lequien made the mistake of identifying Rhinocorura with Farma, and mentioned the Jacobite prelates of Farma as prelates of Rhinocorura. Farma, famous for its palm groves, was near the ruins

The relics of St. Katherine consisted of the head and some of the limbs. Jacopo stated that, besides these, the monks had bones stored away in another chest or arca (p. 230). Maundeville writes he saw “the head of St. Katherine rolled in a bleeding cloth, and many other holy and venerable relics, which I looked at carefully and often with unworthy eyes” (p. 60). Wilhelm de Baldensel first noted a silver scoop or spoon which was used for taking up the drops of oil which exuded “not from the sarco

Towards the close of the century the accounts of pilgrims show that these now came in large parties. In 1479 the Nürnberg patricians Hans Tucher and Sebald Rieter, went to Gaza where they entered into an agreement with a dragoman that was set down in writing to convey them to the convent or Cairo. This agreement is worded exactly in the same way as these agreements are worded at the present day. They travelled with seven Franciscan friars, and on their arrival at the convent Latin mass was celeb

But a new protector to the monks now arose in the Tsar of Muscovy, who, when Constantinople fell to the Turks, took it upon himself to protect the orthodox. In the year 1547 Gregorius, a monk of Sinai, visited Moscow, where he complained of the tax which the Turk levied on the convent. The Tsar at the time was Ivan the Terrible (1533-84), who forthwith arranged that Gennadius, archdeacon of St. Sophia, at Novgorod, together with the merchant Posniakow and another should visit the patriarch of Al

With the return of more settled conditions travellers became more numerous. Lord Prudhoe and Major Felix (1827) were among those who visited the ruins of Serabit. The account of their journey was lost, but Lord Prudhoe, after inspecting the temple ruins, was the first and, as far as I am aware, the only traveller to whom it occurred that this might be the sanctuary that was visited by the Israelites. The fact was recorded by Edward Robinson who came into Sinai in the interest of Biblical researc