EARLY PEOPLE AND PLACE NAMES

THE ancient peoples and place names of Sinai claim separate attention.

The earliest Egyptian rock inscription at Maghara represents the Pharaoh as a smiter, and describes him as such with the signs of a hand, an eagle, and the determinative of hills. The term is held to apply to no people in particular, and is therefore rendered as “barbarians.”

King Khufu (IV 2), in addition, is described as a smiter of the Anu; the word is written with the pillar sign. The word Anu was applied in Egypt to cave-dwellers generally, more especially to those of Nubia. The Anu are first mentioned on the Palermo Stone in connection with a king of the First Dynasty whose name is broken away, but who was probably King Den-Setui.

In the estimation of the historian Josephus (c. a.d. 60), the inhabitants of Sinai at the time of Moses were cave-dwellers, for he stated that Moses, in going to Sinai, went among the “troglodytes” (Antiq., ii. 11).

Among the early inhabitants of the peninsula were the Horites. The Babylonian kings who fought against the four kings of southern Syria who revolted in the time of Abraham, “smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzims in Ham, and the Emims in Shaveh-Kiriathaim, and the Horites in their mount Seir unto El Paran, which is by the wilderness” (Gen. xiv. 5-6). This associates the Horites with Mount Seir, which extended along the depression between the head of the Gulf of Akaba and the Dead Sea.

In the estimation of Prof. Robertson Smith the Horites of the Bible were troglodytes, which would bring them into line with the Anu of the Egyptian inscriptions. These Horites were accounted of low stock by the Hebrews, and were probably in the stage through which the Israelites had passed before they formed a confederacy. Prof. Robertson Smith pointed out that the list of their so-called dukes (Gen. xxxvi. 20) is not a literal genealogy, but an account of their tribal and local division, since five of the names are animal or totem names.[59] The view that the Horites were cave-dwellers was based on the likeness between the name Horite and the Hebrew word hor, which signifies mountain. The connection between the names is now denied, and the Horites of the Bible are identified with the Kharu or Khalu of the Egyptian texts. The Kharu appear in the Annals of Tahutmes III (XVIII 6) and of Amen-hotep IV (XVIII 10), among the people against whom the Egyptians fought on the way to Naharain i.e. Mesopotamia.[60] But the word Kharu on the Egyptian side has been interpreted as “mixed multitude.”

The next people who are mentioned on the Egyptian monuments in Sinai are the Mentu. King Ra-en-user (V 6) was described as “great god of the smiting countries and raider of the Mentu.” Again, the tablet of Men-kau-hor, mentioned a royal expedition to the Mentu; and Ptahwer in Sinai of the Twelfth Dynasty was described as “bringing the Mentu to the king’s heels.”

The Mentu took part in the great Hyksos invasion of Egypt between the Twelfth and the Eighteenth Dynasties. For when the tide of foreign nations was rolled back, they were among the conquered. King Aahmes I (XVIII 1), after seizing the foreign stronghold Avaris, “made a slaughter of the Mentu of Setiu, and going south to Khent-hen-nefer, he destroyed the Anu-Khenti.”[61] Among the conquered people who were represented around the throne of Amen-hotep II (XVIII 7) are the Mentu, who have the appearance of true Asiatics. An Edfu inscription, as mentioned above, stated that the Mentu were thrown back with the help of the devotees of the god Sopd.

The people who figured most prominently in the Egyptian annals of Sinai were the Retennu, who were mentioned again and again on the steles which were set up at Serabit in the course of the Twelfth Dynasty. On three separate steles it says that the Egyptian expedition was sped across the desert by the brother of the sheykh (sen-heq-en) of the Retennu country, whose name was Khebdet or Khebtata, and who is represented riding on an ass which is led by a man in front, with a servant carrying his water flask behind him. On one stele six Retennu are named.[62]

These Retennu who figure in the annals of the Sinai in the Twelfth Dynasty are mentioned as dwelling in southern Syria in the Egyptian Tale of Sanehat, otherwise Sinuhe. This tale describes how a high-born Egyptian fled when news reached him of the death of King Amen-em-hat I (XII 1). He was at the time on the western Delta and by way of the Wadi Sneferu (unknown) reached the quarries of Khri Ahu (perhaps Cairo), crossed the Nile and passed the domain of the goddess Hirit, mistress of the Red Mountain (possibly Gebel Ahmar), and the wall which the prince had constructed. He reached Keduma (or Aduma) where Amu-anshi, sheykh of the Upper Tennu, took him for a sojourner or son-in-law, and settled him in the adjoining Ya-a country, a land of honey and figs, where wine was commoner than water. Sanehat remained here many years till the death of the Pharaoh caused him to petition his successor Sen-usert I (XII 2) for return to Egypt.[63] The name of the land to which Sanehat fled was read either as Aduma which would be the equivalent of Edom, but more probably (cf. Maspero and Dr. Alan Gardiner) as Keduma, and is probably the land Kedem, i.e. the east country, to which Abraham sent the sons of his concubines (Gen. xxv. 6). But the Retennu, who were peaceful neighbours of the Egyptians during the Twelfth Dynasty, were among the peoples against whom they afterwards waged war. Tahutmes I (XVIII 3) fought the Retennu on his way from Egypt to Naharain, i.e. Mesopotamia; Tahutmes III (XVIII 6) again and again ravaged their country; and Sety I (XIX 2), whose objective was Kadesh on the Orontes, was represented in his temple at Karnak dragging after him the great sheykhs of the Retennu, whom he is shown holding by the hair of their heads.[64] Again, Ramessu III (XX 1) mentioned the tribute which was brought by the Retennu, in the great inscription of his temple at Medinet Habu.[65]

The Retennu and their name survived in Sinai, for Ptolemy, the geographer, named as its inhabitants the Pharanites, the Raithenoi and the Munichiates. Again, in the year 1816 the traveller Burckhardt noted that, attached to the mosque that stood inside the convent precincts, there were certain poor Bedawyn “called Retheny,” whose duty it was to clean the mosque. One of them had the dignity of imam, a leader in prayer, and was supported by offerings.[66]

And not only did the Retennu continue, the language which they spoke seems to have continued likewise. The sheykh who befriended Sanehat about two thousand years before our era, was named Amu-anshi, as recorded in the Tale of Sanehat. About the year a.d. 440 the Christian community of Pharan in Sinai, in consequence of outrages committed by the Arabs, lodged a complaint with their sheykh who stood in the relation of phylarch to the Romans, and who dwelt at a place described as twelve days’ journey from Pharan. The sequel of the account makes it probable that it was Petra. The name of the sheykh was Ammanus, which is the Latinised equivalent of Amu-anshi.

Another people who were associated with Sinai were the Rephaim who are mentioned in the Bible among the people who were raided by the Babylonian kings about b.c. 2100. “They smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim” (Gen. xiv. 5). The word Rephaim is related to Raphaka or Raphia of the annals of Sargon II (b.c. 722-50).[67] It lies on the high road from Syria to Egypt on the Mediterranean. Its modern name is Rafa.

The Rephaim of the Bible were accounted giants. In Arabian tradition we also hear of giants or tyrants, the Jababera. They were accounted descendants of the Aulad bin Nuh (children of Noah), or Amalikah, from their ancestor Amlah bin Arfexad bin Sam (Shem) bin Nuh. Masudi spoke of the giants of the race of Amalekites who ruled in Syria at the time of Moses.[68]

According to Arab belief the Amalekites were inspired with a knowledge of the Arabic tongue, and settled at Medina, and were the first to cultivate the ground and plant the date palm. In the course of time they extended over the whole tract towards the Red Sea (El Hedjaz), and the north-western part of the Indian Ocean (El Omar), and became the progenitors not only of the Jababera, but also of the Faraineh (i.e. the Pharaohs) of Egypt.

In the Biblical genealogy Amalek appears as a descendant of Esau, his mother, Adah, being a Hittite (Gen. xxxvi. 2, 12). But scholars generally are agreed in assigning a high antiquity to the Amalekites. The prophet Balaam, inspired by Jehovah, uttered the words, “Amalek was the first of the nations” (Num. xxiv. 20).

Whatever their origin, the Amalekites were in the possession of Sinai when the Israelites came there, since they opposed their entrance and harried them on their way to the holy mount, and later attacked them in Rephidim, where the Israelites carried the day (Deut. xxv. 17; Exod. xvii. 8-16). Later, acting in concert with the Canaanites, they smote the Israelites on their way to Hormah (Num. xiv. 25-45), and in the time of Saul they still occupied the land “from Havilah unto Shur” (from Arabia to the Wall of Egypt), which, according to another account, was allotted to the sons of Ishmael (Gen. xxv. 18). Saul waged a fierce war against them.

The connection of the Amalekites with Sinai continued in the mind of the Arab, for Makrizi († 1441) speaking of Pharan, the city of Sinai, described it as a city of the Amalekites.[69]

The Amalekites of the Bible and of Arab tradition are probably the Milukhkha of the ancient annals. As mentioned above, they appear on the statue of Gudea of about the year b.c. 2500, and in the Assyrian fragment of geography of about b.c. 600.

Pharan, which the Arab writers described as a city of the Amalekites, was from early times a place-name in Sinai. According to the Bible, the Babylonian kings (c. b.c. 2100) pressed the Horites as far as “El Paran, which is by the wilderness,” a phrase which the Septuagint rendered as “the terebinth of Pharan,” as though it were a site marked by a tree. Pharan, to all appearance, was a general name given to the peninsula of Sinai. It is like the name Pharaoh, and this is apparently the reason why the name “Bath of Pharaoh,” Gebel Hammam Faraun, is given to a hill near the west coast, and the name Giziret el Faraun to the island near Akaba, the idea of the Pharaoh leading to various localised legends.

In the Bible we read that the Israelites, after leaving the Holy Mount, passed through “the wilderness of Paran” on their way to Edom, which would locate it to the Badiet TÎh. Again, King Hadad (c. b.c. 1156), on his way from Midian to Egypt, passed through Paran (1 Kings xi. 17).

The Septuagint and the classical writers rendered Paran, as Pharan, and Ptolemy, the geographer, named a village (???) Pharan, the position of which corresponds with the seat of the later Christian bishopric in the Wadi Feiran. He also named the southernmost point of the peninsula, the present Ras Mohammad, as the promontory of Pharan, and included the Pharanites among the inhabitants of Sinai.

Again, Pliny († a.d. 79) mentioned a variety of precious stone as sapenos or pharanites, so called from the country where it is found (xxvii. 40). Perhaps turquoise is meant, in which case Sapenos, a word otherwise unknown, may be connected with the name Sopd; Pharanites would refer to Pharan or to Pharaoh.

The Egyptologist Ebers was the first to suggest that the name Paran shows Egyptian influence, and may be the place-name Rahan plus the Egyptian article Pa, in the same way as Pa-kesem is the land of Kesem, i.e. Goshen.[70]

The word Rahan occurs in an Egyptian inscription of the Twelfth Dynasty, according to which an envoy coming from Egypt crossed Desher to the Rahan country.[71]

The word Raha as a place continues in different parts of the peninsula to the present day. The north-western part of the TÎh is called Gebel er Raha, and the wide sandy plain that extends north of the Gebel Musa is the Plain of Raha.[72]

According to the Bible, Ishmael “a wild man and an archer,” dwelt in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother, who was an Egyptian, “took him a wife out of Egypt.” The Septuagint rendered this as “out of Pharan of Egypt” (Gen. xvi. 12; xxi. 21). The Ishmaelites in the Bible are referred to Abraham himself, which shows that they were regarded as an allied stock by the Hebrews, a certain inferiority being implied by their having Egyptian blood in their veins. The acceptance of a joint divinity El seems to have made a bond of union between the twelve tribes of Ishmael, as it did between the tribes of Israel. According to Genesis the Ishmaelites dwelt from Havilah unto Shur, “living in houses and castles,” or rather in “tents and booths,” as the Septuagint rendered the passage (Gen. xxv. 16).

While Paran in the Bible was associated with Ishmael the adjoining land of Edom was connected with Esau, the incidents of whose story are more or less mythical, but a clue to them is yielded by the word Edom which signifies red in Aramaic.

Esau was red-haired at birth. “And the first came out red, all over like a hairy garment; and they called his name Esau” (Gen. xxv. 25). Again, Esau, in exchange for his birthright, i.e. herds and flocks and precedence after his father’s death, took “very red food,” literally the “red, red thing,” which the Septuagint rendered as “fiery red” (p?????). In the further development of the story, the red thing is described as a pottage of red lentils. “And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom” (Gen. xxv. 30). The hairiness of Esau has been connected with Mount Seir, a word signifying rough;[73] on the same basis the idea of redness conveyed by the word Edom, is referable to the red sandstone of the district.

The Edomites, according to the Bible, took possession of the land of Uz (Lam. iv. 21), which was the land of Job (Job i. 1). Uz was described as the son of Aram, the son of Shem (Gen. x. 23), or, according to Masudi († 957), “Aud, the son of Aram, the son of Shem.”[74]

Uz and Aud are thus identified, and in keeping with this, Septuagint described Job as dwelling in the land “Ausitis.”

Aud was a divinity by whom a group of Arabs took their oath, and the people of Ad or Uz were among the great people of the Arab legendary past, who were smitten by misfortune. The calamities which befell them are, perhaps, reflected in the story of Job.

In the Koran the utterance was put into the lips of Moses, “Hath not the story reached thee of those who were before thee, the people of Noah and Ad and Themud” (xiv. 9).[75] “And unto Ad we sent their brother Hud ... and unto Themud we sent Saleh, but the people received them not as their prophets, and they were destroyed” (vii. 63). “And we destroyed Ad and Themud” (xxix. 38). According to Masudi († 957) Aud, who was sent to the Adites, and Saleh, who was sent to the Thamudites, lived immediately after the Flood, before Abraham.[76]

Many stories were current among the Arabs concerning the wealth and influence of the Adites. They were said to have lived twelve hundred years, when their sons the Shaddad, subjected the country of the Egyptian, and in this they remained two hundred years, and built the city Aour or Awar.[77] The reference is to the great fortress of the Hyksos, the Hatuar of the Egyptians, the Avaris of Manetho-Josephus, situated about twenty miles north of Cairo. If the Adites were instrumental in erecting this city, they must have taken part in the great Hyksos invasion which happened during the Fourteenth Dynasty of Egypt, i.e. about b.c. 2500.

According to Makrizi († 1441), the Adite king who marched against Egypt was Shaddad ben Haddad ben Shaddad ben Ad, and the Pharaoh whom he conquered was Ashmoun ben Masir ben Beisar, son of Cham, son of Noah, whose buildings he destroyed and in his turn he raised pyramids (probably pillars), traced Alexandria and then left for the Wadi el Korah between El Nabouyah and Syria. He built a series of square reservoirs, which resulted in many kinds of cultivation, which extended from RaÏah (i.e. Raithou) to Aila (at the head of the Gulf of Arabia) to the western sea (i.e. the Mediterranean). His peoples’ dwellings covered the district between El Dathmar, El Arish, and El Goufar, in the land of Shaleh (along the Mediterranean sea-board in northern Sinai), where there were wells and fruit-trees, and cultivation including that of saffron of two kinds and of the sugar-cane. This land was occupied by Khodem ben El Airan, when God, because of the over-bearing of the Adites, raised a storm, and sand of the desert covered the land they inhabited. Hence the words of the Koran, “And in Ad: when we sent against them the desolating blast, it touched not aught over which it came, but it turned it into dust.”[78]

The Adites at one period controlled the gold and incense route from Inner Arabia to Syria, and the Koran credited them with erecting pillars, probably mazzeboth, in high places. “Hast thou not seen how the Lord dwelt with Ad at Iram, adorned with pillars whose like have not been raised in these lands” (lxxxix. 6). And again, “Build ye land-marks on all heights in mere pastime” (xxiv. 128). Ptolemy, the geographer (a.d. 140), located the OaditÆ to the east of the Gulf of Akaba, and named as their chief city Aramava, which was an important watering station on the way between Petra and Mecca. Aramava is perhaps Iram of the Koran.[79]

The Adites as traders were succeeded by the Thamudites, who, according to the Koran, “hewed rocks in the valley” (xxxix. 8). The reference is possibly to Petra. According to tradition they occupied Aila.[80]

A prophet of the Thamudites was Saleh, who has a special interest for southern Sinai, since the Benu Saleh, who claim descent from him, are among the oldest and most powerful tribes of the peninsula. Saleh in the Biblical record is named as third in descent from Shem, and as the progenitor of Eber (Gen. x. 24).

The remembrance of the Thamudites survives in the present Diar (or land of) Themoud, in north-western Arabia, which includes the great Wadi El Korah which is followed by the pilgrims from Damascus to Mecca. In the Wadi El Korah lie the MedaÏn (cities of) Saleh, and some distance south of these, is the pass which is associated with the destruction of the she-camel, the creation of Saleh. For the people of Themoud to whom Saleh was sent, did not accept him. They asked for a sign, whereupon he produced from the rock the Naga or she-camel that gave milk. “Let her go at large,” was his command, “and feed on God’s earth, and do her no harm. Drink there shall be for her and drink there shall be for you, on a several day for each; but harm her not, lest the punishment of a tremendous day overtake you. But the Thamudites hamstrung her, and repented of it on the morrow, for the punishment overtook them.”

This story of the she-camel preserves the tradition of man’s right to the free use of an animal, which was indispensable to the well-being of the man of the desert. According to the Koran, it will be the end of all things when “the sun is folded up, the stars fall, the mountains rock, the she-camel is abandoned and the wild beasts are gathered together” (lxxxi. 1).

In the year 1873 Doughty, coming from Damascus, stayed at the MedaÏn Saleh, where he saw and described the well, now enclosed in a tower, where the she-camel was watered. He also visited the pass some way further along the road, the Mubrak en Naga, where the she-camel was killed.[81]

According to one tradition this was done by Codar el Ahmar (i.e. the Red), a name in which Caussin de Perceval, saw a likeness to Chedorlaomer of the time of Abraham.[82] This agrees with Masudi’s statement that Saleh came to the rescue of the Thamudites when their existence was threatened by a descendant of Ham.[83] Saleh and King Djundu fled to Sinai where they became hermits, and Saleh died and was buried in El Ramlah. The tomb of Nebi Saleh is located in the present Wadi Sheykh near the Gebel Musa, and is the site of the great annual encampment of the Arabs of southern Sinai.

In the newly discovered annals of King Sargon of Assyria (b.c. 722-705), the people of Tamud are named among “the Arabians living at a distance in the desert of whom the Wise Men and the Magi knew nothing, who never brought tribute to (my father) the king, whom I overthrew, and the remainder I carried off into Palestine.”[84] This transportation explains the re-appearance of the Thamudites in different localities. Ptolemy knew of ThamuditÆ who dwelt along the Gulf of Akaba, and of ThamudenÆ who dwelt further inland.[85] Diodorus Siculus (c. b.c. 50) mentioned Thamudeans living in Arabia.[86] As late as about a.d. 452-3 a Notitia Dignitatum mentioned equites Thamudeni, who were in the service of Rome, of whom one division, the equites Saraceni Thamudeni camped on the frontier of Egypt, another, the equites Thamudeni Illyriciani, were stationed in JudÆa.[87] The present Bir Themed, in Sinai, situated half-way between Akaba and Kala’at en Nakhl, recalls the connection of the Thamudites with the peninsula.