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. CHAPTER VI THE EGYPTIANS IN SINAI II. AFTER the close of the Twelfth Dynasty, the Egyptians ceased for centuries to come to Sinai. The reason was that foreigners, for over a hundred years, ruled in the Nile valley whom the Alexandrian writers called Arabians or Phœnicians. The Egyptians themselves called them Hyksos. To this period probably belong the inscriptions in Semitic script that were set up in some mines in the Wadi Dhabah near Serabit, and the offerings of a squat figure and of a sphinx inscribed in the same Semitic script which were presented before the shrine of the goddess. These inscriptions again and again mention the goddess of the place in lettering which may be Ba-alat, and the script itself is considered of the highest interest in the study of Semitic characters generally.