VOL. LVI.3 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 283 



He asked what it was, and they told him Hagar Mousa, the stone of Moses. 

 He told them that could not be, for that lay in Rephidim ; they said that was 

 true, but this was Hagar il Chotatain, the stone of the two strokes ; that he 

 struck it twice, and more water came from it than from Meribah; witness the 

 river. The bed of the river winds to the eastward, about e. s. e. He asked 

 how far it went; they said this bed ran by Sheich Ali to those ruins, and quite 

 away to the sea; so the river must have begun here, and not at Pharan, and 

 the bed from Pharan here is only formed probably by winter torrents. If this 

 is the bed of the river mentioned by St. Paul, as he thinks it is, we have the 2d rock : 

 if it runs to the ruins, as is said, and there is no reason to doubt it, they will be 

 pretty plainly those of Kadesh Barnea; and if this bed continues in the same 

 course to the sea, as it probably does, this must be the river at Rinocolura, 

 supposed, by Eratosthenes, to be formed by the Arabian lakes; because he did 

 not know its miraculous head. 



They went down a large valley to the west, towards the sea, and passed the 

 head of a valley, a part of the desart of sin, which separates the mountains of 

 Pharan from those which run along the coast, and the same plain which they 

 had passed from Tor. They had scarcely entered these mountains, and travelled 

 an hour, when after passing a mountain, where there were visible marks of an 

 extinguished subterraneous fire, they saw, on their left hand, a small rock, with 

 some unknown characters cut out on it, not stained as those hitherto met with ; 

 and, in ten minutes, they CTitered a valley 6 miles broad, running nearly north 

 and south, with all the rocks, which enclose it on the west side, covered with 

 characters. These are what are called Gebel El Macaatab, the written moun- 

 tains. On examining these characters, he was greatly disappointed, in finding 

 them every where interspersetl with figures of men and beasts, which convinced 

 him they were not written by the Israelites; for if they had been after the 

 publication of the law, Moses would not have permitted them to engrave 

 images, so immediately after he had received the second commandment ; if they 

 went this way, and not along the coast, they had then no characters, that we 

 know of, unless some of them were skilled in hieroglyphics, and these have no 

 connection with them. It will be difficult to guess what these inscriptions are; 

 and probably, if ever it is discovered, they will be found scarcely worth the pains. 

 If conjecture be permitted, he gives thoughts thus. They cannot have been 

 written by Israelites, or Mahometans, for the above reason; and if by 

 Mahometans, they would have some resemblance to some sorts of Cuphic 

 characters, which were the characters used in the Arabic language, before the 

 introduction of the present Arabic letters. The first mss. of the Alcoran were 

 in Cuphic: there is a very fine one at Cairo, which he could not purchase; for 

 it is in the principal Mosque; and the Iman would not steal it for him, under 



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