THE SANCTUARY OF SERABIT

THE existence of the sanctuary at Serabit in Sinai was unknown to Europeans till the year 1762, when it was chanced upon by Carsten Niebuhr, who did not, however, record its name. Seetzen who visited it between 1809 and 1810 noted this as Serrabit-el-Chadem.[20] Sarbat is Arabic for height, khadem signifies slave. But Prof. Sayce claims for the name a different derivation. In ancient Egyptian ba, plur. bit, signifies hole or mine, khetem signifies fortress. Serabit el Khadem thus signifies mine fortress, with the prefix sar, which probably stands for exalted.

Other place names in the district probably date from the ancient Egyptians also. Thus the valley leading up from the coastal plain of El Markha to the mine district is called Wadi Baba, i.e. mine valley. Again, a tributary of the Baba, with its valley head close to Serabit, is the Wadi Bateh, a name which probably includes the word for mine also.

The sanctuary of Serabit[21] at the outset consisted of a cave, or rather of two caves adjacent to one another, of which the larger, which has been squared, measures 20 by 10 feet, the smaller one measures 6 by 4 feet with three steps leading up to a round-headed apse or recess (Fig. 9).

These caves have separate entrances and lie in a knoll facing a plateau in the midst of wild, upland scenery. The plateau lies some 2680 feet above sea level, and is difficult of access on all sides (Fig. 6).

To the north it communicates with the Wadi Suweig along the steep and tortuous Wadi Dhaba, which is marked number 6 on the map. The word dhaba signifies panther, probably in allusion to the feline animal which was at one time associated with the presiding female divinity at Serabit. Another valley, marked number 7 on the map, leads up to the temple ruins, with a path passing the mines which contain inscriptions in an early Semitic script. But it was not along these gorges, but along a path leading up from the plain El Markha along the Wadi Baba and the Wadi Nasb that the ancient Egyptians approached the sanctuary. This path has been included in the Ordnance Survey of 1871. A rock tablet marked P on the map, which commemorates the Pharaoh Amen-em-hat IV (XII 7), lies near the watershed, and this shows that the Egyptians passed here. A small Egyptian shrine (Q) was also discovered at the western end of the plateau.

To the south of the plateau, and separated from it by several ravines and valley heads, extends the Wadi Umm Agraf which is comparatively remote from the valleys communicating with the Wadi Suweig and the Wadi Baba, and relatively close to the sanctuary. The approach to the temple from this side was unknown to Europeans till the winter of 1905-6, when Prof. Flinders Petrie and his party, who worked at excavating the temple ruins, pitched their tents here. A path was constructed from the camp up the mountain side to the temple by clearing away the stones. In parts an old path was re-used, the existence of which showed that there was at one time frequent intercourse between the sanctuary and the Wadi Umm Agraf. Some way down the Wadi Umm Agraf the valley floor is crossed by a wall made of rough stones piled together, the purpose of which was to mark off the upper reaches of the Wadi as is seen by a glance at the map. These upper reaches evidently constituted a tract of land the use of which was reserved to the sanctuary. A copious supply of good water is obtainable at a well some miles down the valley. The separation wall across the valley is undoubtedly old. A similar wall crosses the Wadi Maghara, which was dated by Prof. Petrie to at least the Fourth Dynasty. Its purpose, like that near Serabit, was to mark off the upper reaches of the valley, which in this case may have represented the hima or tract of land that was originally appropriated to the sanctuary of the moon-god.

The plateau of Serabit falls away abruptly on its southern and western edge, and the stratum here appears which anciently yielded turquoise. The wish to control access to this turquoise no doubt originally led to the permanent occupation of the caves, and we shall probably not be far wrong if we imagine this in the possession of a clan or hereditary priesthood, who, in return for offerings brought to their cave, gave turquoise or the permission to work it inside the appropriated area. The offerings brought to the cave naturally led to a sacrifice and feast which, in the course of time, would hallow the precincts of the place. Prof. Robertson Smith remarked that almost every sacred site in Palestine had its cavern or grotto which served to store the vessels and utensils that were used at the sacrifice that took place near it. No religious significance originally attached to the cave. But the holiness of the sacrifice reflected on it, and in the course of time it was identified as the abode of the divinity.[22]

The plateau in front of the caves at Serabit served as a High Place of Burning. Such high places were in use in Canaan before and after the Exodus. Prof. Robertson Smith showed how the barren and unfrequented hill top would be one of the most natural places chosen for the holocaust, and in this connection recalled the proposed sacrifice of Isaac on the mountain.[23] We read in the history of Samuel how he was called upon to sanctify the sacrifice on the height, of which the people would not partake until it had received his blessing (1 Sam. ix. 12); also that Solomon visited Gibeon, where he burnt sacrificial flesh and offered a thousand burnt offerings upon the altar (1 Kings iii. 4). In consequence of the building of the Temple at Jerusalem efforts were made to draw to it all the offerings, but the High Places seem to have continued till the Captivity. They finally came under the ban of the ceremonial law.[24]

The use made of the plateau of Serabit as a High Place of Burning was shown by the excavations. In front of the caves, beneath the stone floor of the Temple buildings that were erected by the Egyptians after their appropriation of the site, there was found a continuous bed of wood-ashes which extended all across the temple area and out as far as the buildings and stone walls on the south, in all fifty feet in breadth. Outside the area covered by the stone floor the ashes would be carried away by wind and rain. In the words of Prof. Petrie: “We must therefore suppose a bed of wood ashes at least 100 by 50 feet very probably much wider, and varying from 3 to 18 inches thick, in spite of all denudation that took place before the XVIII dynasty. There must he on the ground about 50 tons of ashes, and these are probably the residue of some hundreds of tons of ashes. The ashes are certainly before the XVIII dynasty.” In further explanation of the way in which the sacrifice was treated, Prof. Petrie tells us that “the fires were not large, as the ash is all white, and no charcoal of smothered fire remains. No whole burnt sacrifice was offered, as no calcined bones were found; and some kind of feeding at the place is suggested by the finding of a few pieces of pottery jars and of thin drinking cups. These belonged to the age of the XII dynasty.”[25]

The space in front of the caves was fenced in by a wall built of rough stones loosely piled together, similar in construction to the walls that cross the Wadi Umm Agraf and the Wadi Maghara. The temple area which the wall enclosed varied at different periods. It was finally 200 feet in its greatest length and 140 feet at its greatest breadth. Behind the caves across the knoll its course was doubled. It thus enclosed a vast temenos of oblong form which included large open spaces that were again partitioned off, besides the ground that was covered by the Egyptian temple buildings (Fig. 11).

Outside the temenos wall and well in view of the knoll, rough circular enclosures lie scattered here and there on the plateau, which were made by clearing the ground of stones and piling these together in the same way as the walls were built up. These stone enclosures are for the most part four to six feet inside measurement, a few are larger, and many of them contain one stone of larger size that was set up at one side of the enclosure and propped up by other stones. There were also some uprights without enclosures.

Similar uprights and enclosures are found in Syria; their devotional and commemorative origin is apparent from incidents related in the Bible.

Thus in the story of Jacob we read how, coming from Beersheba, he lighted on a certain place that was holy ground, and tarried all night because the sun was set. “And he took of the stones of that place and put them for his pillows” (Gen. xxviii. 11; LXX at his head). In the night he had his wonderful dream and on the following morning he set up the stone and poured oil on it and called it Bethel (i.e. house of El), saying, “And this stone which I have set for a pillar (mazzebh) shall be God’s house” (Gen. xxviii. 22). On another occasion he made a covenant with Laban in ratification of which he took a stone and set it up for a pillar (mazzebh), and called his brethren to take stones and make an heap (perhaps an enclosure), “and they did eat there upon the heap” (Gen. xxxi. 45, 46). Again when the Israelites camped in Sinai, Moses erected an altar, and set up twelve pillars (mazzeboth), and when they crossed the Jordan, Joshua took twelve stones from the river which he set up at the place which was known as Gilgal (Joshua iv. 1-9, 19-20). The name Gilgal in this case was associated with “rolling” away the reproach of Egypt (Joshua v. 9). But the word Gilgal signifies “circle of stone.”[26] In the Septuagint the word generally stands in the plural Galgala (Joshua iv. 19, 20, etc). If the single stones (mazzeboth) were set up inside circular stone enclosures, this would correspond with the way the uprights were set up at Serabit.

In the course of the Twelfth Dynasty, the Egyptians secured a foothold in Serabit where they erected inscriptions and steles, and commemorated the female divinity of the place under the name of Hathor. A statuette of Hathor was the usual gift to the shrine of the Pharaohs of this dynasty. Her cult was at first coupled with that of the moon-god Thoth as the representative of the neighbouring Maghara, later she appears alone or associated with the local divinity Sopd.

At Wadi Maghara, Hathor appears on one tablet following the ibis-headed Thoth, who faces the Pharaoh Amen-em-hat III (XII 6), as already mentioned (Fig. 5). On a corresponding tablet found at Serabit she is seen holding out to the same king a sceptre which supports the ankh and the dad. There were many Hathors in Egypt, for Hathor here took the place of earlier mother-divinities in much the same way as the Virgin Mary took the place of local mother-divinities in Europe. The goddess Hathor in Sinai was generally represented wearing a head-dress that consists of a pair of horns which support the orb of the full moon, and she is described as mistress of the turquoise land, and later simply as mistress of turquoise (mafkat). Hathor stands for the unwedded mother-goddess who appears as Ishtar in Babylonia, as Ashtoreth in Canaan, and as the Queen of Heaven generally. At Serabit her name appears in script which may be Semitic. One of these inscriptions is on a figure of the usual squatting type that came out of the sanctuary (Fig. 7). Another is on a peculiar sphinx that is now in the British Museum. Others are on much-battered steles that were carved on the rock in the mine along the valley marked number 7 (Fig. 6). The name consists of a sequence of four signs, which Dr. Alan Gardiner reads as Ba-alat: “Almost every Egyptian inscription from Serabit names the goddess Hathor, and there could not possibly be a better equivalent for the name of this goddess than Ba-alat.”[27]

The name Ba-alat recalls Alilat whom Herodotus (c. b.c. 450) named as the chief divinity of Arabia (iii. 8), and who reappears as Al-Lat in the Koran (c. a.d. 630). Al-Lat had her sanctuary at TaÏf, about forty miles north-north-east of Mecca, which consisted of a cave in an upland plain in which clothes, jewels, incense, silver and gold, were stored. The goddess was held to be incarnate in a white rock that was afterwards seen lying under the mosque, and which was described by Hamilton and by Doughty as a mass of white granite now shattered with gunpowder and shapeless.[28] Appropriated to the sanctuary at TaÏf was a guarded and reserved tract of land, the hima, where no idah-tree might be cut and no animal hunted, and the reluctance of Mohammad to dislodge the goddess was shared by the TaÏfites, to whom the gatherings near the shrine were a source of wealth.

Another cave sanctuary at El Nakhl, not far from Mecca, which was associated with El Uzza, likewise consisted of a cave with accumulated wealth and owned a reserved tract of land or hima.[29] The arrangement at Serabit was apparently the same, and proves the Arabian or Semitic origin of the place.

The excavations at Serabit, moreover, led to the discovery of temple furniture such as served the “Queen of Heaven” elsewhere.

Thus several short stone altars were found, of which one, broken in half, was 22 inches high with a cup hollow on the top, 3½ inches wide and one inch deep. Another was described as “well finished, and on the top the surface was burnt for about a quarter of an inch inwards, black outside and discoloured below. This proves that such altars were used for burning, and from the small size, 5 to 7 inches across, the only substance burnt on them must have been highly inflammable, such as incense,”[30]

Two rectangular altars cut in stone were also found, each with two saucer-like depressions, ten inches wide all over, and seven inches across inside, which “might well be for meat offerings, or cakes of flour and oil, a kind of pastry.”[31] According to a passage in Jeremiah, the Israelite women, who repudiated visiting the sanctuary of the Queen of Heaven without their husbands, which was forbidden to them, said, “And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink-offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink-offerings unto her, without our men?” (Jer. xliv. 19). The utterance shows that offerings in food and drink as well as incense burning was customary in the cult of the Semitic goddess.

Offerings that consisted of cakes continued in Arabia into Christian times. For Epiphanius of Cyprus († 403), in his book, Against all Heresies, denounced certain Christians as Collyridians, from the cakes which they placed under an awning and offered in the name of the Virgin.[32]

Hathor, however, was not the only divinity whose cult was located at Serabit. While the larger of the two caves was appropriated to her, the smaller adjacent cave was associated with Sopd, who was repeatedly named here from the reign of Amen-em-hat III (XII 6) onwards. One inscription of the sixth year of this king named him together with Hathor. Another of the forty-second year mentioned Sebek-didi who set up an inscription and described himself as “beloved of Hathor; mistress of the mafkat-country; beloved of Sopd, lord of the east; beloved of Sneferu and the gods and goddesses of this land.”[33]

The special association of Sopd with the Pharaoh Amen-em-hat III is shown by an open hall that was erected outside the temple at Serabit in the course of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the decoration of which caused Prof. Petrie to call it the hall of the kings. On the inner wall of this building are the figures of the divinities and the kings who were especially associated with Serabit. Among them is Sopd who is seen holding in one hand an ankh, in the other a staff of justice, and who follows the Pharaoh Amen-em-hat III.[34] Sopd during the Eighteenth Dynasty was reckoned the equal of Hathor. For the entrance to a mine that was opened conjointly by Queen Hatshepsut and her nephew Tahutmes shows Tahutmes offering incense to Hathor and Hatshepsut in a corresponding scene offering incense to Sopd.

The divinity Sopd has no place in the older Egyptian pantheon, and is to all appearance an Egyptianised divinity of Semitic origin. He is named among the gods who are favourable to the Pharaoh Sen-usert I (XII 2) in the so-called Tale of Sanehat, which describes an incident of the time and is looked upon as a genuine historical account.[35] The cult of the god seems to have gained a firm foothold in connection with the forced retreat of the Mentu people. For it says in a nome text of Edfu, “Shur is here Sopd, the conqueror of the Mentu, lord of the east country, and in Edfu golden Horns, son of Isis, powerful god Sopd.”[36]

One mention of Sopd in Egypt is on a tablet of Sen-usert II (XII 4) that was found in the temple of Wadi Qasus in the desert of Kossayr on the borders of the Red Sea. On it Sopd is described as “lord of the eastern foreigners (sut), and of the east (Neb-Apti).”[37]

The description “lord of the east,” refers to the cult of Sopd in the land of Goshen, the twentieth nome of Lower Egypt, the capital of which, Pa-kesem, was known also as Per-Sopd, i.e. the House of Sopd. The amulet of Sopd at Per-Sopd was of turquoise, which bore out his connection with Sinai. An Egyptian text, moreover, described Sopd as “noblest of the spirits of Heliopolis.”

Now the Syrians or Hebrews, as already stated, had a foothold at Heliopolis since the days of Abraham, while the land of Goshen, as we know, was allotted to the Israelites. The inference is that Sopd who had a sanctuary in Sinai, had sanctuaries in Heliopolis and in the land of Goshen also. The study of these sanctuaries shows that they had features in common with some of the early sanctuaries in Palestine.

The ancient city Per-Sopd in Egypt, known as Phakusa in Greek, and as Kesem in the Septuagint, is now called Saft-el-Henneh. The change from Sopd to Saft suggests a possible origin of certain place names in Palestine, including Tell-es-Safi, which is situated between Jerusalem and Gaza, and Safed, which is situated north of the Sea of Galilee. Both of these were hallowed by ancient religious associations.

Modern Safed occupies a conspicuous position on the summit of a mountain. Together with Jerusalem, Hebron and Tiberias, it ranked as a holy city of Palestine.[38] It is named Tsidphoth in the Travels of an Egyptian Mohar,[39] and is Tsapheth in the Talmud, and Sephet in the Vulgate of Tobit.

On the other hand Tell-es-Safi, situated between Jerusalem and Gaza, was identified as a High Place of Burning by recent excavations. Possibly it was Gath of the Bible, one of the five holy cities of Palestine. The excavations at Tell-es-Safi led to the discovery of features which recall the arrangements at Serabit in Sinai. At a depth of 11 to 21 ft. the pre-Israelite ground was reached, on which stood several pillars (mazzeboth), some of which were enclosed in the largest of several chambers that were built on slightly higher level. The long wall of the chamber which included the uprights, had a break, roughly in the form of an apse that was 4 feet 5 inches wide and 2 feet 4½ inches deep. A rude semicircle built of stone stood 20 inches high from the ground a distance of a few feet, facing it.[40] This apse corresponds with the recess at the back of the cave of Sopd in Sinai.

The likeness between the place names Per-Sopd, modern Safet in Egypt, and the place names Sephet, modern Safed, and Safi in Palestine, suggests that the cities in Palestine also were the site of a shrine of the Semitic divinity who figures in Egypt and in Sinai under the name Sopd. It is possible that Sopd is the verbal equivalent of the Hebrew word shophet, Phoenician sufet, which signifies judge. Among the early Semites the sanctuary was the seat of justice, and the priests were its administrators, who, in this capacity, gave out the pronouncements. As such they were sacred and, with reference to the joint divinities (El) of the tribes, they were at first called Elohim, later Kohanim. The word shophet itself indicates the Supreme Judge, as in the passage, “Shall not the Judge (shophet) of all the earth do right?” (Gen. xviii. 25), while the relation between the Judge and His administrators is indicated by the words, “And the heavens shall declare his righteousness, for Elohim is Shophet himself” (Psa. l. 6).

The shrine of Sopd in Sinai and the one at Per-Sopd in Egypt, perhaps the one at Heliopolis also, served the same purpose as the shrine at Tell-es-Safi. The priest would stand in the recess with his face towards the suppliant, who, at Safi, stood in the low semicircle.

In Sinai the cave of Sopd was adjacent to that of the moon-goddess (Fig. 8). According to information already cited, a shrine at Heliopolis where Sopd was “noblest of spirits” dated from the “Hermiouthians,” who came there with Abraham, while Hermiouthian sanctuaries were erected in Goshen by the brethren of Joseph. We are left to infer that a shrine of Sopd, presumably a centre for the administration of justice, was connected here also with the localised cult of the moon.

Other features at Serabit confirm the non-Egyptian character of the cult of Sopd. Thus, on the northern approach to the temple stood a stone tank measuring 54 by 32 inches, with a hollow of 37 by 17 inches. Inside the temple area, in one of the courts which were built in the Eighteenth Dynasty, stood a circular tank, 31 inches across with a hollow of 25 inches, and another rectangular tank, 44 by 30 inches stood in the same court, and a further rectangular tank in the hall on the approach to the lower cave. The disposition of these tanks was such that the worshipper who approached the temple from the north, passed the tank outside and the various other tanks on his way to the lesser cave. The use of tanks outside and inside the temple, is foreign to Egypt. They are in keeping with the apsu or stone tank of the Babylonian temple; and with the regulations of Moses regarding the laver that stood between the entrance to the temple and the altar (Exod. xxx. 18). In Jerusalem in the temple of Solomon was a “molten sea” that was round about, and there were ten lavers of brass, five on the right and five on the left side of the house. (1 Kings vii. 23, 38, 39). A similar arrangement prevails to this day in the Arab mosque. Outside stands the well or place for legal washings ghusl, and inside is the circular tank for ablution wazur.[41] The tanks at Serabit were therefore connected with the cult of Sopd, and their presence confirms the Semitic character of the place.