SINAI A CENTRE OF MOON-CULT

THE name Sinai is first mentioned in the Song of Deborah (Judges v. 5), which is dated to about b.c. 1000, and in the story of Exodus. It perpetuates the early form of belief of the inhabitants of the peninsula. For the word Sinai together with Sin (Exod. xvi. 1) and Zin (Num. xiii. 21), all date back to Sin, a name of the moon-god in ancient Babylonia.

The word Sin appears as part of the name of Naram-Sin, king of Accad in Babylonia (c. b.c. 3700), whose great stele of victory, now in the Louvre, represents his conquest of Elam (Persia). The acts of Naram-Sin were considered in the light of lunar influence, for his Annals state that “the moon was favourable for Naram-Sin who at this season marched into Maganna.”[8] Maganna, otherwise Magan, was frequently named in early annals and inscriptions, notably on the great statues of King Gudea (b.c. 2500). It was the place where the diorite came from out of which the statues were made. The same inscriptions mention Milukhkha.[9] An ancient fragment of Assyrian geography which was engraved about the year b.c. 680, but the original of which is considered much older, names side by side: “The country of Milukhkha as the country of blue stone, and the country of Maganna as the country of copper.”[10] Of these names Maganna may refer to Sinai while the word Milukhkha recalls the Amalekites who dwelt in the peninsula. In any case the name Sin goes back to Babylonian influence, probably to the Semites who were powerful in the land of Arabia in the days of Khamurabbi.

The constant recurring changes of the moon caused this to be accepted as the ruler of times and seasons by the huntsman and the herdsman generally. The Hebrews came from a stock of moon-worshippers. It was from Ur of the Chaldees, a centre of moon-cult, that Terah and Abraham migrated to Haran on the way to Canaan about b.c. 2100.[11] The Arab writer Al Biruni (c. a.d. 1000) in his Chronology of the Ancient Nations, noted the connection of Haran with the moon-cult, and stated that near it was another place called Selem-sin, its ancient name being Saram-sÎn, i.e. Imago lunÆ, and another village called Tera-uz, i.e. Porta Veneris.[12]

The acceptance of moon-worship among the ancient Hebrews is confirmed by Artapanus, some of whose statements were preserved by Alexander Polyhistor (b.c. 140). Artapanus described the Syrians who came to Egypt with Abraham as “Hermiouthian” (i.e. worshippers of Hermes), and stated that Joseph’s brethren built Hermiouthian sanctuaries at Athos and Heliopolis.[13] Heliopolis, the city On of the Bible (Gen. xli. 45), was near the present Cairo; followers of Abraham were held to have settled there. Athos has been identified as Pithom. More probably it was Pa-kesem, the chief city of Goshen. The word Hermiouthian indicates moon-worshippers, as Hermes, the Greek god, was reckoned by the classic writers the equivalent of the Egyptian moon-god Thoth, as is shown by the place-name Hermopolis, (i.e. the city of Thoth), in Lower Egypt.

Another name for the moon-god was Ea or Yah, who was accounted the oldest Semitic god in Babylonia, to which his devotees were held to have brought the cultivation of the date-palm, an event that marked a notable step in civilisation.[14] The emblem of Sin was the crescent moon, the emblem of Ea was the full moon, who, in the Assyrian Creation story is described as “Ea the god of the illustrious (i.e. lustrous) face.”[15] On Babylonian seal cylinders Ea is shown standing up as a bull, seen front face, with his devotee Eabani (i.e. sprung from Ea), a man seen, front face also, who wears the horns and hide of a bull.[16] This representation perpetuates the conception of the horned beast as a sacrosanct animal that was periodically slain. We shall come across this conception later in the emblem worn by the Pharaoh, and in the story of the Israelites and the Golden Calf.

Fig. 2.—Figures of Baboons. (Ancient Egypt, a periodical, 1914, Part i.)

The monuments found in Sinai contain information which points to the existence of moon-worship there at a remote period of history. These monuments consist in rock-tablets which were engraved by the Pharaohs from the First Dynasty onwards over the mines which they worked at Maghara, and of remains of various kinds discovered in the temple ruins of the neighbouring Sarbut-el-Khadem or Serabit. Maghara more especially was associated with the moon-god and was presumably the site of a shrine during the period of Babylonian or Arabic influence which preceded the invasion of the peninsula by the Egyptians (Fig. 1).

Among the Egyptians, Thoth, the moon-god, had shrines at Hierakonpolis and at Abydos in Upper Egypt, and in both these places he was worshipped under the semblance of a baboon. He was worshipped also at Hermopolis in Lower Egypt, but here he was represented as ibis-headed. In Sinai we find him represented sometimes as a baboon and sometimes as ibis-headed.

Thus the excavations of the temple-ruins at Serabit in 1906 led to the discovery of several figures of baboons. One was the rude figure some three inches high which is here represented; it was found in the cave that was the treasure-house of the sanctuary. This little figure is similar in appearance and in workmanship to figures found at Hierakonpolis and at Abydos, the centres of moon-worship in Upper Egypt. Several of these figures were found at Hierakonpolis.[17] At Abydos more than sixty were discovered in the winter of 1902 in a chamber at the lowest temple level, where they were apparently placed when the later cult of Osiris superseded the earlier cult of Thoth. This took place in pre-dynastic times.[18] The figure of the baboon who stood for the lunar divinity in Egypt, was doubtless deemed a suitable offering to the sacred shrine at Serabit in Sinai, because of the nearness of this shrine to the centre of moon-worship of the country. If the figure was carried to Sinai at the time when similar figures were offered in Egypt, the establishment of the moon-cult in the peninsula dates back to the pre-dynastic days of Egypt.[19]

Another baboon, carved life-size in limestone with an inscription around its base, came out of one of the chambers of the adytum to the sacred cave at Serabit, the work and inscription of which dated it to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. The presence of this figure suggests that the Egyptians associated their moon-god with the moon-worship of the peninsula.

The chief shrine or sanctuary of the moon god in the peninsula probably lay in Wadi Maghara where mining on the part of the Arabs preceded that of the Egyptians, for the Egyptians here fought for the possession of the mines. This is shown by the tablets carved in the living rock, which commemorate the Pharaohs from King Semerkhet (I 7) of the First Dynasty onwards. They are represented as smiters of the enemy above the mines which they worked. One of these tablets represents Sneferu, the ninth king of the Third Dynasty, who wears a head-dress that consists of a double plume which rises from a pair of horns as is seen in the illustration. The double plume is well known, but the horns are foreign to Egypt, and recall the lunar horns that are worn by Eabani, the devotee of the moon-god Ea or ancient Babylonian seal cylinders. The adoption of horns by the Pharaoh of Egypt seems to indicate that he has usurped the authority of the earlier ruler of the place (Fig. 3).

Other monuments found at Maghara point to the same conclusion. Thus one rock-tablet represents King Khufu (IV 2), the great pyramid builder, smiting the Anu in front of the ibis-headed figure of Thoth who stands holding out his sceptre facing him (Fig. 4). Other Pharaohs are represented as smiters. But after the Fifth Dynasty the opposition which the Pharaohs encountered in Sinai must have come to an end, for later Pharaohs were no longer represented as smiters, but are seen in the double capacity of lord of Upper and of Lower Egypt standing and facing the ibis-headed figure of the moon-god Thoth, who now holds out to them his sceptre supporting an ankh and a dad, the Egyptian emblems of life and stability. Among the Pharaohs so represented was Amen-em-hat III, sixth king of the Twelfth Dynasty, who is shown facing the god Thoth behind whom the goddess Hathor is seen (Fig. 5). The interpretation is that the Pharaoh is now acting in complete agreement with the divinities of the place. Of these Thoth stands for the moon-god who originally had his shrine at Maghara, and Hathor stands for the presiding goddess who had her shrine at Serabit. This shrine or sanctuary at Serabit is of special importance in the religious associations of the peninsula.