A History of Sinai

by Lina Eckenstein

The identification of a daughter of Akhen-aten as the princess who adopted Moses suggests another possible date for Exodus. The reign of Akhen-aten was dated by Prof. Breasted to c. b.c. 1375-1350, and by Prof. Petrie to c. b.c. 1383-1365. If Moses left Egypt during the reign of one of his immediate successors, perhaps under that of Tut-ankh-amen (XVIII 12), c. b.c. 1353-1344, the date of Exodus on the basis of the Egyptian chronology as now accepted, would be about b.c. 1350, as against the date b.c. 1410 or 1450 as stated in the First Book of the Kings.

According to the Bible, Moses slew an Egyptian who had smitten a Hebrew, whereupon the Pharaoh sought to slay Moses, and he fled (Exod. ii. 12-15). According to Artapanus, the Pharaoh, after the death of the princess, called upon Chanethotes (Canuthis) to kill him. Moses, warned by Aaron, crossed the Nile at Memphis, intending to escape into Arabia. Chanethotes lay in ambush, whereupon Moses, in self-defence, slew him.

Moses then dwelt in the land of Midian, where he watered the flock kept by the daughters of Reuel (called Raguel in Numb. xi. 29). Reuel befriended him and took him for a sojourner and son-in-law (Exod. ii. 21). A further passage states that Moses kept the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, who is described also as a priest (Exod. iii. 1), and a Kenite. Artapanus named Raguel, describing him as ruler (ἄρχων) of the country, and said that he desired to make an expedition into Egypt in order to secure the crown for Moses and his daughter, but Moses refused.[99] Barhebræus says that Moses married a daughter of Jethro, and describes Jethro as a son of Raguel.[100] This suggests that Raguel was the father of the tribe. Philo of Alexandria also refers to Moses’ claim to the crown of Egypt.

In the service of Jethro, Moses led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, to Horeb (Exod. iii. 1). Here he found himself on holy ground. The presence of a priest, of a mountain of God, and of a reserved tract of land, point to an ancient sanctuary, and our thoughts naturally turn to Serabit, for many centuries a High Place of Burning, a centre of moon-cult and a shrine of the Semitic god Sopd. The wall of rough stones across the Wadi Umm Agraf marked the limit of the ground that was reserved to the sanctuary. This would be the backside of the desert from which Moses approached the mountain.

The angel or messenger of God who spoke to Moses did so from a Burning Bush inside the limit of the holy ground (Exod. iii. 5). Perhaps he was set there as a guardian to the place. During our stay in Sinai the guards who were appointed to watch over our encampment near Serabit, settled near some bushes to which they added brushwood, so as to form a circular shelter, with an opening on one side, and in this they spent their time, mostly sitting around a small fire. The appearance of the shelter from outside was that of a burning bush ([Fig. 14]).

The Divinity in Sinai revealed himself to Moses in the name of Yahveh or Jehovah, and subsequently declared himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exod. iii. 6), “but by my name Yahveh was I not known to them” (Exod. vi. 3). Considering the connection of Abraham and of Joseph with Haran and the “Hermiouthian” sanctuaries mentioned above, their God was presumably the moon-god. The word Yahveh under which the Divinity now manifested himself, probably represents the moon-god as Ea or Ya under a later and more spiritualised aspect. In our Bible the term is rendered as “I am that I am” (Exod. iii. 14), which recalls the interpretation by the Septuagint as Ὤν, the Self-existent One. From the Song of Deborah we gather that Yahveh “came to Sinai from Seir and the field of Edom” (Judges v. 4), which leaves us to infer that he had sanctuaries there also. This explains how it was that during the later progress of the Israelites, Yahveh spoke to Moses at Kadesh on the borders of Edom (Num. xx. 7), at Hor (Num. xx. 23), and again in the Red Sea, and how it was that the prophet Balaam was inspired by Yahveh (Num. xxiv. 13). Various allusions render it probable that the cult of Yahveh was peculiar to the Kenites whose home lay in Edom. Jethro, who befriended Moses, was at once a priest of Midian and a Kenite (Judges i. 16).

The representative of the Divinity from the Burning Bush commanded Moses to persuade the elders of Israel to bring forth the people out of Egypt, in order to serve God on the mountain, going three days into the wilderness in order to sacrifice to the Lord, the women bringing with them all available jewels of silver and jewels of gold (Exod. xi. 2, xii. 35). The pilgrimage is called a feast (Exod. v. 1, x. 9), which may have been similar to the modern Arab hadj, a word which signifies an encampment or erection of tents. This term, and the general claims that were advanced, show that it was question of a pilgrimage to a well-known centre, the thought of which caused no surprise to the Egyptians. One of its features was the offering of animals. Such offerings among the Hebrews were made to keep off the plague; they forestalled the sacrifice of the first-born, which was the means they used to stay the plague once it had begun. The Pharaoh, who was anxious to prevent the Israelites from going the pilgrimage, proposed that they should sacrifice in Egypt instead. Moses refused on the plea that their doing so might be interpreted as sacrificing the “abomination,” i.e. tampering with a sacred-nome animal of Egypt (Exod. viii. 26). When the Pharaoh, further wrought upon, said that the people alone might go, Moses insisted that they must have wherewith to sacrifice, and that there must be cattle, since “we know not with what we must serve the Lord until we come thither” (Exod. x. 26).

Fig. 14.—Men in Burning Bush.

This serving the Lord with animals shows that a holocaust was in contemplation, and bears out the belief that the objective of the pilgrimage was a High Place of Burning.