which we reposed ourselves in our lenls. These hills are called 
Gebel el Mokatab, that is, the Written Mountains : for as soon as we 
had parted from the mountains of Faran, we passed by several 
others for an hour together, engraved with ancient unknown cha- 
racters, which were cut in the hard marble rock, so high as to be 
in many places at twelve or fourteen feet distance from the ground ; 
and though we had in our company persons who were acquainted 
with the Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Coptic, Latin, Armenian, 
Turkish, Illyrian, and other languages, yet none of them had any 
knowledge of these characters; which have nevertheless been cut into 
the hard rock, with the greatest industry, in a place where there is 
neither water, nor any thing to be gotten to eat. It is probable, 
therefore, these unknown characters contain some very secret mys- 
teries; and that they were engraved either by the Chaldeans, or 
some other persons, long before the Christian era.” 
Niebuhr mentions a large cemetery in the desert of Sinai, 
where a great many stones are set up in an erect position, on a 
high and steep mountain, covered with as beautiful hieroglyphics 
as those of the Egyptian mountains. The Arabs carried them 
to this burial place, which is more remarkable than the written 
mountains, seen and described by other travellers in this desert; 
for so many well-cut stones could never be the monuments of 
wandering Arabs, but must necessarily owe their origin to the 
inhabitants of some great city near this place, which is, however, 
now a desert. 
Most of the preceding remarks formed the subject of a letter 
written in 1774, after my first visit to the excavations on Salsette. 
I shall not at present enter into the political disputes and civil wars 
