From Pharan Etheria’s party moved to a place where the mountains opened themselves out, and found a great valley beyond which appeared “Syna, the holy Mount of God,” which is united with the place where are the Graves of Lust (i.e. Kibroth Hata-avah). The guards said that it was customary to offer prayers. “So then we did.” From here to the Mount of God it was perhaps four miles altogether, the length of the valley being sixteen miles (c. 31) The plain was presumably the present plain of Er Raha.
According to Etheria the Israelites waited in this plain when Moses went up into the Mount of God—there was also the place where the calf was made—it was the valley at the head of which was the place where holy Moses was when he fed the flocks of his father-in-law when God spoke to him from the Burning Bush. But as their route was first to ascend the Mount of God at the side from which they were approaching because the ascent was easier, and then to descend to the head of the valley where the Bush was, thence retracing their steps so as to see the places mentioned in Scripture, they spent the night at a certain monastery where kindly monks dwelt and where they were all well received. There was a church there and a priest (this place has not been identified). It was the night preceding the Sabbath, and early on the following morning they made the ascent of the mountains one by one with the priests and the monks that lived there. “And you must go straight down each mountain until you arrive at the foot of the central one, which is strictly called Sinai. And so, Christ our God commanding us, and encouraged by the prayers of the holy men who accompanied us, although the labour was great, for I had to ascend on foot because the ascent could not be made in a chair (sella), yet I did not feel it.” At the fourth hour they reached the peak of Sinai where the Law was given, the place where the majesty of God descended on the day when the mountain smoked, and then they found a church, small because the summit of the mount where it stood was small, but with a large measure of grace. They were joined by the priest of the monastery who served the church, for no one permanently lived on the mountain where was the cave and the church where holy Moses was (c. 33). Passages were read of the book of Moses, the party communicated and received a present of first fruits (pomis) from the monks, and Etheria asked questions about the various sites, including the cave where Moses was when he ascended the mountain a second time to receive the tables and “other sites, both those which we asked to see, and those about which they themselves knew. But this I would have you know, ladies, venerable sisters, that the mountains which we had at first ascended without difficulty, were as hillocks compared with the central one on which we were standing. And yet they were so enormous that I thought I had never seen higher, did not this central one overtop them by so much. Egypt and Palestine, the Red Sea and the Parthenian (i.e. Mediterranean) Sea, which leads to Alexandria, also the boundless territories of the Saracens, we saw below us, hard though it is to believe; all which things these holy men pointed out to us” (c. 34). As a matter of fact, the Red Sea is not visible from the Gebel Musa, but from the Gebel Katrîn. Etheria’s mention of a church on the height, however, shows it was the Gebel Musa she ascended.
From the Mount of God they descended to the mountain joined to it called Horeb, where there was a church and where they saw the cave where Elijah hid and the stone altar (sic) which he built. This description and the later account of Antoninus Martyr (cf. below) show that at this period Horeb was accounted a different height from the Mount of the Law. After seeing a great rock with a flat surface on which stood Aaron and the seventy elders when Moses received the Law—“and in the middle there is a sort of altar made of stones”—the party began the descent at about the eighth hour and at the tenth hour they reached the Bush; “it is alive to this day and puts forth shoots.” Here there were many cells, a church, and a garden with the Bush, and the party partook of a light meal in the garden and remained the night (c. 35). On the next day they explored and saw the following: the place of the camp of the Israelites,—the place where the calf was made, “a great stone is fixed in that place to this day,”—the spot from which Moses watched the Israelites dancing,—the rock on which the tables were broken,—the dwelling places of the Israelites “of which the foundations made in circular form remain to this day,”—the place where the Israelites ran from gate to gate,—also the place where the calf was burnt, and the stream out of which the Israelites drank,—the place where the seventy received the spirit of Moses (Num. xi. 25),—the place where the Israelites lusted (Num. xi. 34),—the place where the camp took fire (Num. xi. 2), and the place where it rained manna and quails. The reader is aware that according to the Biblical account, these latter sites were far removed from the spot where the Law was given. “Thus having seen all the places which the sons of Israel visited both going and returning,” Etheria and her party started back to Pharan, distant thirty-five miles. They then stayed at a station (mansio) in the desert of Pharan; then near the coast, and then at Clysma (near the present Suez), where they rested, “for we had stoutly made our way through the soil of the desert.” Etheria had previously passed through Goshen on her way from Egypt into Sinai; but she now decided to follow up the places visited by the Israelites. So she journeyed to Migdol “with its fort and an officer commanding the soldiery in accordance with Roman discipline,” and passed Epauleum (LXX for Pihahiroth) on the further side of the water; and another fort “Balsefon”; also “Othon” (LXX for Etham), Succoth and Pithom. “The present Pithom is now a fort,” she wrote, and reached Hero, ancient Heroöpolis. Here the party entered the borders of Egypt leaving behind the territories of the Saracens (c. 39), and moved on to the city of Rameses, described as a “come” (i.e. κώμη) situated near the present Tell er Rotab. Finally they reached “the city of Arabia,” and met its bishop. Probably the ancient Per-Sopd, later Phacusa, the capital of the nome, is meant. A bishop of Phacusa is mentioned.[186] From here the road went “from the Thebaid to Pelusium by way of Tathnis,” probably the Greek Daphne, the Tahpanhes of Jeremiah, following the course of an arm of the Nile to Pelusium. Etheria had been before on her way to Alexandria. She now journeyed along the coast “passing several stations,” and then entered Palestine (c. 40).
The detailed account by Etheria and her location of the various holy sites in Sinai was the first of its kind, and apparently remained the only one for centuries to come. Before her pilgrimage we only hear of a church built above the valley of Pharan which commemorated the struggle between Moses and the Amalekites, while the Bush, Horeb, and Elim were names of settlements which had been chosen by the monks in remembrance of Moses and Elijah whom they accepted as their patrons. On the same basis a monastery or laura near Jerusalem, mentioned as the abode of John Moschus, was called Pharan. The names which were given to settlements in Sinai may have caused these places to be looked upon as those that were actually visited by Moses and Elijah.
The “Bush” was mentioned without further comment by Ammonius (c. 372) as a settlement. It was described as the “Bush at the foot of the mountain where God conferred with the people” by Nilus (c. 449). About the same time Etheria (c. 450) spoke of “a church in the place where the Bush is, which Bush is alive to this day,” while Procopius, the secretary of Justinian, remarked (c. 550) in a more cautious strain, “here it was that Moses was said to have received the Laws from God and proclaimed them.” It was Etheria who claimed to have seen during a single day all the places visited by the Israelites including, in the plain below, Taberah, the place of Burning (Num. xi. 2) and Kibroth Hata-avah (Num. xi. 34), where the Israelites stayed long after they left the holy mountain.
The monkish settlement Horeb or Choreb was mentioned also by Ammonius (c. 372), and, judging from his description, it was quite separate from that of the Bush. As a height, Horeb was also held separate from the Mountain of the Law both by Etheria and by Antoninus. But Etheria, and others after her, looked upon Horeb not only as the site to which Elijah fled after crossing the desert, but as identical with the place where he set up the great altar at which he confounded the prophets of Baal.
Elim, again, was mentioned as a monkish settlement by Ammonius (c. 372), and his description leaves no doubt that Raithou near the present Tur on the coast, two days’ journey from the Bush, is meant. This settlement retained its name, Elim, till recent times. Some of the mediæval pilgrims looked upon it as the actual Elim of the Bible. Thus the Ritter von Harff, who visited it in 1497, held that the Israelites here left the Red Sea, and asserted that bones that lay on the shore were those of the pursuing Egyptians. But Etheria and Cosmas (c. 550) with a better appreciation of possibilities, located the passage of the Israelites near Clysma (near the present Suez), and sought Elim of the Bible, not at Raithou, but at Arandara, the present Wadi Gharandel.