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.