In the year 1873 Doughty, coming from Damascus, stayed at the Medaïn Saleh, where he saw and described the well, now enclosed in a tower, where the she-camel was watered. He also visited the pass some way further along the road, the Mubrak en Naga, where the she-camel was killed.[81]
According to one tradition this was done by Codar el Ahmar (i.e. the Red), a name in which Caussin de Perceval, saw a likeness to Chedorlaomer of the time of Abraham.[82] This agrees with Masudi’s statement that Saleh came to the rescue of the Thamudites when their existence was threatened by a descendant of Ham.[83] Saleh and King Djundu fled to Sinai where they became hermits, and Saleh died and was buried in El Ramlah. The tomb of Nebi Saleh is located in the present Wadi Sheykh near the Gebel Musa, and is the site of the great annual encampment of the Arabs of southern Sinai.
In the newly discovered annals of King Sargon of Assyria (b.c. 722-705), the people of Tamud are named among “the Arabians living at a distance in the desert of whom the Wise Men and the Magi knew nothing, who never brought tribute to (my father) the king, whom I overthrew, and the remainder I carried off into Palestine.”[84] This transportation explains the re-appearance of the Thamudites in different localities. Ptolemy knew of Thamuditæ who dwelt along the Gulf of Akaba, and of Thamudenæ who dwelt further inland.[85] Diodorus Siculus (c. b.c. 50) mentioned Thamudeans living in Arabia.[86] As late as about a.d. 452-3 a Notitia Dignitatum mentioned equites Thamudeni, who were in the service of Rome, of whom one division, the equites Saraceni Thamudeni camped on the frontier of Egypt, another, the equites Thamudeni Illyriciani, were stationed in Judæa.[87] The present Bir Themed, in Sinai, situated half-way between Akaba and Kala’at en Nakhl, recalls the connection of the Thamudites with the peninsula.
CHAPTER VI
THE EGYPTIANS IN SINAI II.
AFTER the close of the Twelfth Dynasty, the Egyptians ceased for centuries to come to Sinai. The reason was that foreigners, for over a hundred years, ruled in the Nile valley whom the Alexandrian writers called Arabians or Phœnicians. The Egyptians themselves called them Hyksos. To this period probably belong the inscriptions in Semitic script that were set up in some mines in the Wadi Dhabah near Serabit, and the offerings of a squat figure and of a sphinx inscribed in the same Semitic script which were presented before the shrine of the goddess. These inscriptions again and again mention the goddess of the place in lettering which may be Ba-alat, and the script itself is considered of the highest interest in the study of Semitic characters generally.
After throwing back the foreign invaders of Egypt, the Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty once again sent expeditions to Sinai, where, as we learn from the inscriptions and monuments, they worked both at Maghara and at Serabit. At Serabit building was now continued on an extensive scale outside the caves of the sanctuary. Halls, courts, a pylon, and a long row of chambers were erected on the plateau inside the temenos, which gave the sanctuary the appearance of a vast temple. The buildings were all constructed of the red sandstone of the place, which was quarried on the hill slope just below the temple on the north side, where great quarries remain ([Fig. 11]).
The offerings which the Egyptians now made to the shrine were smaller, more numerous and, with few exceptions, of less importance than those of the Twelfth Dynasty. They included figures, bowls, cups, vases of alabaster and glaze, ring-stands, sistra or rattles, menats or pendants, besides wands for temple use, and rows upon rows of beads. Most of these objects are similar to those which were in use in Egypt in connection with the cult of the goddess Hathor, but many bear a character which show that they were made in deference to the local associations of the place.