WHEPvE IS MOUNT SINAI ? 51 



The wilderness of Sinai arljoined that of Paran (Nnmb. x, 12), 

 and Paran lay on the southern border of Canaan, the sanctuary of 

 Kadeshbavnea being in it (Xamb. xiii, 3, 17, 22, 26). 



In Judg. V, 4, 5, Seir and Sinai are identified, as they are also 

 in Deufc. xxxiii, 2. The passages are poetry, it is trae, but poeti- 

 cal geography is not necessarily false geography. If Sinai had 

 been miles away in the Egyptian province of Mafket, some indica- 

 tion of tiie fact must have been given. 



(2) From the time of the 3rd dynasty to the age of the Ptolemies, 

 the Sinaitic Peninsula was an Egyptian province, and the copper 

 and malachite mines on the western side of it wei'e strongly 

 gnrrisoned. To have marched into it, therefore, would have been 

 like going out of the frying pan into the fire, and the Israelitish 

 fugitives, who were ordered to avoid " the way of the Philistines " 

 lest they should " see war," would have shared the fate of Professor 

 Palmer and his companions. 



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The Rev. W. Aiithui^ writes: — 



With Professor Hull I am entirely agreed in the belief 

 that the true Mount of the Covenant is neither Serbal nor some 

 unknown peak in the heights of Edom, but is that mountain 

 which I call Sinai and which Professor Hull calls Jebel-Musri. I 

 always found the Arabs to confine the name Jebel-Masa to the 

 great summit on the south-eastern side - of that mass which 

 altogether has been from time immemorial called Sinai, on the 

 north-western front of Avhich on a level many hundreds of feet 

 lower lie the three minor peaks, of which one is known as Ras- 

 Sufsafeh. Professor Hull seems to place these at a distance of a 

 mile from each other ; my recollections would make it more than 

 two miles, but that is a point to be decided by the Ordnance 

 Survey, of which I have not here any copy. But at all events the 

 distinction between Jebel-Musa and Ras-Sufsafeh with its two 

 kindred peaks is as clear and as necessary as that between the 

 dome of St. Paul's Cathedral and the cupolas on the west side 

 overlooking Ludgate Hill ; but to make the comparison a good one 



