1909.] AND THE ORIGIN OF JUDAISM. 365 



against drawing too near to the mountain, inasmuch as any man 

 or beast might be killed by a volcanic bomb or the lapilli ejected 

 from the volcano. The universal interpretation of this passage 

 (which we find also in the New Testament, Hebrews xii., 20) 

 that men or beasts that disregarded this prohibition were to be 

 executed by being stoned or shot with an arrow, is grotesque. 

 No Hebrew ever shot a domestic cow with an arrow. 



There is a mountain in the neighborhood of Elath, known as 

 the Jahal an-Niir, the Mountain of Light, or Jabal al-Barghir, a 

 modification of barghil, which denotes a region near the water 

 or between cultivated land and the wilderness. The Arabs say 

 that the Lord spoke to Moses on that mountain. There is also 

 a Jabal Harb*'- southeast of Elath, which is 7,218 feet high. It 

 is situated near the eastern shore of the Red Sea, about lat. 

 28° N., west of Tabuk, north of Ziba on the Red Sea, on the route 

 of the pilgrims from Egypt to Mecca. We ought to send an 

 expedition to Akaba to find out whether these two 

 mountains are extinct volcanoes and covered with senna 

 shrubs."*^ Systematic explorations of this volcanic region of the 

 cradle of Judaism would no doubt yield most striking results. 



I am inclined to think that not only the Edomite ancestors of 

 the Jews came from that region, but also the Semites who invaded 

 both Babylonia and Egypt. The aborigines of Egypt must have 

 been a negroid race,** but Semites must have invaded the valley of 

 the Nile in the prehistoric period. Some of these Semitic invaders, 



"My attention has been called to the fact that A. H. McNeile, The 

 Book of Exodus (London, 1908) p. cv. states: Horeb must ... be located 

 ... on the east of the Gulf [of Akaba]. And it is worthy of notice that 

 in modern maps a Jabal Harb is situated on the east of the Gulf, a little 

 south of lat. 28°. 



^^We ought to disinter also the ancient capital of Galilee, at the hot 

 springs (Hammdth) south of Tiberias, and the traditional home of Abraham, 

 Ur of the Chaldees, the present Mughair. I have been advocating excava- 

 tions at Mughair for more than 25 years. Dr. John P. Peters states in 

 his work on Nippur (vol. ii., page 300) : I have seen no mound which 

 seemed easier and safer to excavate, or promised richer results than Mughair. 



"See my paper The Aryan Ancestry of Jesus, page 9, note *; compare 

 the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenldndischen Gesellschaft, vol. Ixiii.. page 

 250, lines 24-30. See also above, page 356, note 4. 



