A History of Sinai

by Lina Eckenstein

CHAPTER IV

THE EGYPTIANS IN SINAI I.

THE monuments which the Egyptians erected in Sinai are evidence of their continued connection with the place. These were examined and studied in the winter of 1906.[42] They comprised many monuments which were carved in the living rock, and were found in the Wadi Maghara, the Wadi Nasb and at Serabit. At Serabit, moreover, there were found numerous offerings consisting of statuettes, vases, pottery, and other objects which were brought from Egypt to the sanctuary. Outside this sanctuary the Egyptians set up steles near the holy caves and on the neighbouring hillside, and they built chambers and porticoes inside the temenos, and covered these with scenes and inscriptions. Thus the buildings outside the caves went on increasing till the place assumed the appearance of a vast temple.

The baboon figure which was discovered in the temple of Serabit, and the turquoise that was found in early graves in Egypt, show that the Egyptians came to the peninsula in pre-dynastic days. The beginning of dynastic history in Egypt was dated by Prof. Breasted (1909) to about b.c. 3400,[43] and by Prof. Petrie (1914) to about b.c. 5500. Scholars are more and more inclining to accept the earlier date.

At the beginning of the First Dynasty the Egyptians had secured a firm foothold in the peninsula, as is shown by the inscriptions on the living rock of the Pharaohs of this dynasty. These rock-inscriptions are close to the mine holes in the hillside about 170 feet above the valley floor. Besides these there were many inscriptions of kings of the Third, Fifth and Sixth Dynasties. They were known to Europeans in the eighteenth century, and some were drawn and described. But their importance was not fully recognised and many perished in the blasting, when the search for turquoise was renewed in the nineteenth century. Among those which were ruthlessly destroyed was the great tablet of King Khufu (IV 2), here reproduced. A full record was therefore made of those which remained in 1906, and, in order to save the tablets, they were removed to the Museum in Cairo. One only was left in situ. It was the oldest of all, dating from King Semerkhet (I 7), seventh king of the First Dynasty, which is engraved on the rock 394 feet above the valley floor in a position which seems to guarantee its safety.

The earliest tablets in the Wadi Maghara represented the Pharaoh under three aspects: as king of Upper Egypt, as king of Lower Egypt, and as smiter of the enemy who crouches before him. There is, at first, little wording beside the names and the titles of the king. As a smiter the king holds a mace in one hand and a staff in the other, and the enemy has a bold cast of countenance, abundant hair, a peaked beard, and wears a loin-cloth. The Pharaoh holds him by the top-knot, together with a carved object which he seems to have taken from him. This may be a feather; possibly it is a boomerang or throwstick.

The rock inscription of Semerkhet was worked by cutting away the face, and leaving the figures and the hieroglyphs standing in relief. A little in front of the scenes, and worked on the same scale, was the general of the expedition, who wears no distinctive dress, but the word Mer-meshau (leader of troops), written in hieroglyphs, is before him. He is without head-dress and carries arrows and a bow of the double-curved Libyan type.

Semerkhet was probably not the first Pharaoh who worked in Sinai. For a small plaque found at Abydos represents Den-Setui, an earlier king of the First Dynasty, who is seen in the same attitude as the Pharaohs on the Sinai rock tablets, and the cast of countenance of the enemy is also the same.[44]

Little is known of King Semerkhet outside Sinai. It is supposed that the First Dynasty at his time was weakening. No records in Sinai mention kings of the Second Dynasty, who were indigenous to the Nile valley, and whose energies were devoted to reconstructing the older elements of government at home.