The Rocks of Sinai

It was the Patriarch Job, of the land of Uz, approximately 1,500 years before Christ, who expressed a wish that his words might be graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever” (Job 19:24). Did he have in mind that record of the wanderings of the children of Israel inscribed in the rocks of Sinai? Although exposed for thousands of years to the action of the atmosphere, up to the turn of the century they were still in an excellent state of preservation.

Their existence was first revealed by a merchant of Alexandria named Cosmas in A.D. 518-9. He visited the peninsula on foot while journeying to India. Jews in his company declared them to be the work of their ancestors during their desert wanderings. Owing to the turbulent state of Europe at the time little attention seems to have been paid to his report. Eventually, in 1807, a treatise on the subject appeared with Latin notes. Public attention was again directed to the matter by an Irish bishop who offered £500 to the traveller who should copy and bring to Europe the inscrip­tions found in the Wady Mokatteb (or the Written Valley). Following a visit by a Dr R. Pocock, Europe became the possessor of a few of these mysterious records.

Then, in 1820, 177 copies of the inscriptions came into the possession of the Royal Society of Literature. Decipherable was difficult because they were in a language unknown to Europe then. Eventually, in 1840, Dr Beer of Leipzig, friend and fellow laborer of Genius, published a work dealing with these inscriptions. They were to be found mainly in the valley and hills branching from the foot of Mount Sinai, and also on Mount Herbal and in some valleys to the south of Sinai. Again, they are found in prolific numbers on the stones on an adjoining hill near the Written Valley. A certain Lord Lindsay said there were thousands of them. They must have been the work of a large body of men. Frequently there was a sign similar to the letter ‘t’, a sign which appeared in early Egyptian writings.

It is also significant that all these inscriptions appear along the route which was the direct one from Suez to Sinai. They stretch over several miles, and are often in high positions. Dr Beer stated:

“The internal evidence of the writing is so uniform, that I doubt if the oldest can be parted from the most recent by an interval of more than a single age”.

In view of the fact that it is admitted that the writings are the work of a large body of men, then it must have been supernatural power that sustained Israel in such a desolate region as Sinai. Does not Jeremiah say that Sinai was

“a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt” (2:6)?

In 1851 J. L. Porter attempted to decipher the inscriptions in his book One Primeval Language (probably still in many major libraries). He was a man of great learning, and as a basis for his works he laid down the principle that “letters of the same known forms could be assumed to possess the same known powers”, particularly where the unchanging East was concerned. As the result of his efforts he was convinced that the inscriptions were the work of the people whom Moses led out of Egypt and who wandered in the wilderness for forty years.

He said:

“It was impossible to express or forget the thrill when my newly-constructed alphabet, formed on the principle just described, returned the translations: ‘The people, with prone mouth, drinketh at the water springs’; The people at the two water springs, kicketh like an ass’; ‘Then smiting with the branch of a tree, the well of bitterness he heals’ “.

Another he deciphered:

“The people journeyeth through the passage tenor-stricken. Urges onward with slackened rein benignantly Jehovah . . . The people essayeth the waters. Pharaoh, retro­grading (retreating), reins back his war-horse”.

Another:

“The people devour greedily, they drink like horses, they dance tumultuously (riotously and disorderly), disobedient to all authority, sucking the marrow from the bones, devouring flesh ravenously, dancing, shouting; they play”. Again: “Prayeth unto God, the prophet, upon a hard, great stone, his hands sustaining Aaron Hur”.

Another:

“The elo­quent speaker strikes the rock; flows forth the water, falling down”.

In his work, A Pilgrimage to the Land of My Fathers, a certain Dr Moses Margoliouth connects the Sinaitic inscriptions with Numbers 11:26. There we read that Eldad and Medad “were of them that were written”. Correctly this should read, “They were among the inscriptions”. This would seem conclusive. Brother Thomas stated:

“The five books of Moses were written in that vast, howling wilderness, whose rocks to this day are covered with inscriptions chiseled by the sojourning Israelites”.

The inscriptions are in fact chiseled—not clearly cut, but punched, or dotted out. There are also a number of Greek inscriptions which are obviously of a much later date and not a translation of the original markings. They are clearly cut, not chiseled.

Editor’s comment

In Sinai and Palestine, first published in 1856, A. P. Stanley has a section on these inscriptions. He refers to two theories as to their origin. He refers to Dr Beer as having put forward the idea that they were in a dialect of Arabic and were the work of pilgrims to Mount Sinai in the post-Christian era. He also refers to C. Forster, who put forward the view that the writing was Egyptian, that the inscriptions were the work of the Israelites, and that the events recorded were to do with the Exodus. Stanley himself observed that the inscriptions were in fact of very different ages, and some were clearly in Greek, Arabic or Latin. There were many signs of the cross amongst the inscriptions. He concludes that they were the work of Christian pilgrims.

In The New Biblical Guide, Volume IV, written some seventy years later, John Urquhart says that these inscriptions are mere graffiti, written in Aramaic, and do not date back to the Exodus. The purpose of Urquhart’s eight-volume work is to demonstrate the truth of the Scriptures, so he is not one to reject needlessly evidence that could be used for this purpose.

J. L. Porter is not necessarily a reliable authority. He wrote a book called The Giant Cities of Bashan in which he referred to the existence of the ruins of many cities in Bashan whose size indicated that they were the abode of giants. Yet one hears nothing about these cities today, despite the extensive excavations that have gone on over the years. Moreover, I have driven over this territory several times and seen no evidence of such cities. I would not be happy therefore to accept Porter as a reliable authority. Modern books of archaeology and the Bible make no reference at all to these Sinaitic inscriptions.

However, I am not qualified to say that there is nothing in the idea, and the purpose of this note is merely to advise caution in considering it. If any readers can provide further information I would be pleased to receive it.—TB.