On the 27th of March we rose early to ascend the mountain. The only way to Serbâl, Derb e’Serbâl, leads from the Wadi Firân through Wadi Aleyât up the mountain. We were obliged to go round to the south-east end of the mountain, in order to mount it behind on the south; as it would have been far beyond our strength to have climbed up through the ridge cleft, which falls steep, and in a direct line between the two eastern summits. A quarter-hour from our resting place we came to a well, shaded by nebek hamâda and palms, whose fresh and pure waters were walled in for a depth of some feet. We then went over a little mountain ridge, upon which stood several stone huts, into another branch of the valley of Rim (Rim el Mehâsni), and reached in an hour and a-half the south-east corner of the mountain. From hence we followed a beaten path, which sometimes was even paved. This led us to an artificial terrace, and a wall, which appeared to be the ruins of a fallen house, and to a cool well, shaded by high rushes, a palm, and several jassur (of which Moses’s staves were cut); the whole mountain being covered with habak and other sweet-scented herbs. Some minutes further we came to several rock caverns, which must once have served as hermits’ cells; and after four hours’ further journeying, we arrived at a small plain, which lay between the heights, upon which we found another house with two rooms. A way led from this level to the edge of the west side of the mountain, which at first steep and rugged, then in soft broad slopes, sinks to the sandy plain el Ge’ah. It opened to me here a glorious prospect over the sea to the opposite coast, and the Egyptian mountains which bound it. From here the mountain path suddenly sank by the rugged precipice into a wild deep mountain hollow, around which the five summits of Serbâl unite in a half circle, and form a towering crown. In the middle of this hollow, called Wadi Si’qelji, lie the ruins of an old convent, to which the mountain path leads, but which unfortunately we could not visit for want of time.[109]
I then went back across the level, and began first to ascend the southern Serbâl summit. When I had nearly reached the steep height, I thought that the second summit appeared to be somewhat higher. I hurried down again to seek a road to this. We passed a small water-fall, and were obliged to go almost all round the hollow before we succeeded in ascending the north-east side. Here, to my astonishment, I found between the two points into which the summit is split, a fruitful little plain, well covered with bushes and herbs, from which I first ascended one point and then the other, and with the assistance of my experienced guides, and the compass, I took the bearings of all the principal points which could be seen around. I could distinguish quite plainly that beyond Gebel Mûsa the mountains rose higher and higher, and that the distant Um Shômar towered over all. We did not begin to return till towards four o’clock. The long round by which we mounted we were obliged to avoid on our return, in order not to be in the dark. We determined, therefore, to make our way down the steep rock cleft, which led in a straight line to our camp in the Wadi Rim, and like the chamois to spring from block to block; and we got down this impassable road, (the most difficult and fatiguing that I ever went in my whole life,) in about two hours and a-half with trembling knees to our tent.
On the following day we went on farther, and reached, through the Wadi Selâf and the lower end of the Wadi e’Shech, the Wadi Firân, this most precious jewel of the peninsula, with its palms and tarfa woods, by the side of a lovely bubbling stream, which flows on, winding through bushes and flowers, as far as the old convent-mountains of the city of Pharan, the present Firân. Everything that we had seen, till then, and that we afterwards saw on our way, was a naked stony desert, in comparison with this fruitful well-wooded and well-watered oasis. For the first time since we left the valley of the Nile, did we tread again on the soft black earth, obliged to put out of our way the overhanging bushy branches with our arms, and did we hear the singing birds twittering in the foliage. There where the broad Wadi Aleyât descends from Serbâl into the Wadi Firân, and widens the valley into a wide level, rises the rocky hill Hererât, on the top of which lie the ruins of an old convent. At the foot of this hill stood once a stately church, built of well-hewn sand-stone blocks, the remains of which have been used in building the city lying on the opposite slope.
I went the same evening up the Wadi Aleyât, and passed innumerable rock inscriptions, till I came to a spring surrounded by palms and nebek, from whence I enjoyed the full view of the majestic mountain chain. Distinguished from all the other mountains, and united in one mass, rises the Serbâl, first in a gentle slope, and then in steep rugged precipices, to a height of 6,000 feet above the sea. Incomparable was the view, when the valleys and lower mountains around were already wrapped in the shades of night, and the summit of the mountain, still above the colourless grey, rose like a fiery cloud, glowing in the setting sun. The next morning I repeated my visit to Wadi Aleyât, and finished the plan of this remarkable district, the land points of which I had already laid out from the top of the Serbâl.
The most fertile part of Wadi Firân is enclosed between two hills, which rise from the middle of the level in the valley; of these, the upper one is called El Buêb, the lower one at the end of the Wadi Aleyât, Meharret or Hererât. In olden times, it appears that this valley must have been enclosed, and the rushing water which flowed from all sides, even from Gebel Mûsa, into this hollow, uniting, must have formed a lake. Such a supposition alone appears to account for the extraordinary deposit of earth, which here to a height of from eighty to a hundred feet, lies along the valley walls; and it is, without doubt, this singular situation of Firân, as the lowest point of a large mountainous tract, which causes the uncommon wealth of waters which is now met with. Immediately behind the convent hill, we found the narrow valley bed as stony and barren as the higher valleys, although the stream flowed on for another half-hour by our side. The powerful rush of the water here admitted no more earthy deposit. Not till the next large turning of the valley, called El Héssue, did we see any palms. Here the stream disappeared in a cleft in the rock, and the more suddenly, as it had broken out behind the Buêb, and we saw no more of it. After five hours’ journey, we left the valley of Firân, which here turns to the left towards the sea, and we went out of the mountains into a flat sandstone country. The high mountains turned next back towards the north, and enclosed in a great bow the hilly, sandy landscape which we crossed. We came to the Wadi Mokatteb, the “written valley,” which takes its name from the inscriptions which are found here in many places.
It is easily seen that it is those rocks, shaded from the noonday sun, which invited the travellers passing to Firân to engrave their names and short maxims upon the soft stone. We took impressions in paper of all the inscriptions that we could reach, or copied with the pen such as were not suited for impression. We found these inscriptions singly, at the most various, and often very far distant places in the peninsula; and, on the whole, had no doubt that they had been engraven by the inhabitants of the land in the first centuries before and after Christ. Occasionally I found them graven over older Greek names, and Christian crosses are not unfrequently combined in them. These inscriptions are usually called Sinaitic, and not unaptly, if the whole of the peninsula of Sinai is so meant as the place where they are found. But it is worthy of remark that at Gebel Mûsa, which is generally considered to be Mount Sinai, there are but a few single and short inscriptions of this kind, in the same manner, as by a careful survey they might be found in any of these places; but their actual centre was rather Pharan, at the foot of Serbâl.[110]
On the 31st of March we again reached the mountains turning eastward, and entered by Wadi Qeneh, the little branching Wadi Maghâra, in which sandstone and primary stone bound each other. Here we found, high upon the northern cliff, the remarkable Egyptian rock-steles belonging to the earliest monuments of Egyptian antiquity with which we are acquainted.[111] Already, under the fourth dynasty of Manetho, the same which erected the great pyramids of Gizeh, 4,000 B.C., copper mines had been discovered in this desert, which were worked by a colony. The peninsula was then already inhabited by Asiatic, probably Semetic races; therefore do we often see in those rock sculptures, the triumphs of Pharaoh over the enemies of Egypt. Almost all the inscriptions belong to the Old Empire; only one was found of the co-regency of King Tuthmosis III. and his sister.
I wished to get from hence by the shortest way to the second place on the peninsula Sarbut el Châdem. But there was no direct road over the high mountains to the descent on the north-east side. So we were obliged to return to Wadi Mokatteb, and going a long way round to the south-east through Wadi Sittere and Wadi Sîch, to avoid the mountain. When we came out of the valley, we had before us the wide-spreading plain, which includes the whole northern part of the peninsula, and which consists entirely of sandstone. This falls, however, towards the south, into a double descent, so that the view appears, at a great distance, to be bounded by two lofty mountain walls, of the same height. The next southern descent, called E’ Tîh, leads down to a wide sandy valley-plain, Debbet e’ Ramleh, while the near side of the sandstone rocks appears to reach the height of the immense plain.
Upon one of the projecting terraces in this broad valley, which we had to climb with great fatigue, lie the monuments of Sarbut el Châdem, most astonishing even to one prepared for the sight of them. The most ancient representation here carried us back into the Old Empire, but only into the last dynasty of the same, the twelfth of Manetho. At this time, under Amenemhra III. there was a little grotto hewn out of the rock, and furnished with an ante-chamber. Outside it high steles were erected at different distances without any particular order, the most distant of which was about a quarter of an hour away on the highest point of the plateau. Under the New Empire, Tuthmosis III. had enlarged the building towards the west, and added a small pylon, and an outer court. The later kings built a long row of rooms in the same direction, one before the other, occasionally, as it appears, for the purpose of preserving the steles within from the weather; particularly from the sharp, and often sand-filled winds, which had all through eaten up the ancient undefended steles. The youngest stele bears the cartouches of the last king of the nineteenth dynasty. Since that time, or soon after, the place was deserted by the Egyptians.
The divinity who was mostly revered here in the New Empire, was Hathor,[112] with the designation, also found in Wadi Maghâra, “Mistress of Mafkat,” i.e., “the copper country;” for mafka, signified “copper,” in the hieroglyphical, as well as in the Koptic language. Therefore, no doubt copper was also obtained here. This was confirmed by a peculiar appearance, which strangely enough has not been observed by any earlier travellers. East and west of the temple are to be seen great slag-hills, which, from their black colour, form a strange contrast to the soil of the neighbourhood. These artificial mounds, the principal of which is 256 paces long, and from 60 to 120 paces broad, situated on the tongue of the terrace projecting into the valley, are covered with a massive crest of slag from four to five feet thick, and thence to their feet from twelve to fifteen feet, sprinkled with single blocks of the same material. The land shows that the mines could not have been in the immediate neighbourhood, but the old and still visible paths which lead into the mountain no doubt point them out. Unfortunately we had not time for it. It seems, therefore, that this free point was chosen only for smelting, on account of the sharp, and as the Arabs assure us, almost incessant draught of air.