670 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



The second oldest cartographic representation of tliis region, the 

 mosaic map of Madeba (pi. 2), dating from the sixth century and 

 discovered in 1896, indicates Sinai as a strikingly drawn mountain 

 but without naming it. The inscribed legends, however, leave no 

 room for doubt; thus spT^/ioc ocv oitoo KarsTcsiitpdrj to /lawa Kac tj opxujo- 

 prjTpa (the desert Sin where the mamia was sent and the quail), 

 almost word for word after the text of Silvia: " Ostenderunt et 

 ilium locum, uhi eis pluit manna et coturnices" (they showed also 

 that place where the manna and quails fell for them).^ On the left 

 side underneath it we read, Pa(pcd:n evda entXdovrc zco AnaXrjK o lapa-qk 

 eTtokfojosv (Repliidim, where Israel fought the advancing Amalek.) 

 Below the Sinai Mountain (the map being oriented toward the 

 east, north is on the left) on the map (pi. 2) is still seen the 

 eastern branch of the Nile, wliich runs off from the main river 

 and wliich is designated as the n-fiXooacamv orbixa (mouth of the Pe- 

 Ksium), after the boundary city of Pelusion, of which the initial part, 

 n-fjXouo, written vertically, is still to be seen. 



It is remarkable, on the other hand, that the oldest work on 

 Bibhcal geography, the Onomasticon of Eusebius (died in 340 A. D.) 

 places Horeb in Midian.- Xioprj^. opog xoit Oeoo h x^PV Madcap.. Tiapd- 

 Ktcxac to) opec 2cvd imlp zriv 'Apaj^'cav km zfj^ kp-fjpou (Horeb, the moun- 

 tain of God, is in Midian; near the mountain hes Sinai; opposite 

 Arabia in the desert), to wliich St. Jerome in his Latin edition of 

 the work remarks : " milii autem videtur quod dwplici nomine idem mans 

 nunc Sinai, nunc Clioreh vocetur" (it seems to me, however, that one 

 and the same mountain is designated by the double name, being 

 now called Sinai, now Horeb). Antonius of Placentia (570 A. D.) 

 also distinguishes between Horeb and Sinai.^ The two thfferent 

 names in the Bible, wliich have engaged the attention even of recent 

 investigators, are now explained by the difference in the sources of the 

 Bibhcal account (Horeb in the Eloliist, Sinai in the Jahvist, etc.). 



After the erection of the famous monastery of St. Catherine under 

 Justinian I (sixth century) at the latest, Jebel Musa (''Mountain of 

 Moses"), 2,292 meters (=-7,520 feet) high, which the liighest peak in 

 the south, Jebel Katerin (2,606 meters = 8,712 feet) exceeds by about 

 300 meters (1,000 feet), was firmly established by tradition as the 

 mountain of the giving of the law. This tradition was fu-st ques- 

 tioned by the renowned traveler, Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, who 

 traversed the Sinaitic Peninsula in 1816 and expressed the opinion that 

 older tradition was in favor of Jebel Serbal, which rises to an hnposing 



> Die Mosaikkarte von Madeba, herausgegeben von Guthe, I. (Leipzig, 1906), Plates V and X. A. Jacob. 

 Das geographische Mosaik von Madeba (Leipzig, 1905), p. 44. A. Schulten, Die Mosaikkarte von Madaba 

 (Berlin, 1900), p. 27. 



1 Eus. Onom., herausgegeben von E. Klostermann (Leipzig, 1904), p. 172f. 



2 Geycr, op. cU.,j>. 183. 



