The Land of Midian (Revisited) — Volume 1Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Science
The Land of Midian (Revisited) — Volume 1
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir, 1821-1890; Hejaz (Saudi Arabia) -- Description and travel
frozen wilderness, was once well supplied with wood and water.
The "true Mount Sinai" is probably some unimportant elevation in
the Desert named by moderns after the Wanderings.
Dr. Beke, I am persuaded, is right in denying that Mount Sinai
occupies the site at present assigned to it; but I cannot believe
that he has found it in the Jebel el-Yitm, near El-'Akabah. His
"Mount Bárghir" is evidently a corruption of the "Wali" on the
summit, Shaykh Bákir--a common Arab name. His "Mountain of Light"
is a term wholly unknown to the Arabs, except so far as they
would assign the term to any saintly place. The "sounds heard in
the mountain like the firing of a cannon," is a legend applied to
two other neighbouring places. All the Bedawin still sacrifice at
the tombs of their Santons: at the little white building which
covers the reputed tomb of Aaron, sheep are slaughtered and
boiled in a huge black cauldron. The "pile of large rounded
boulders" bearing "cut Sinaitic inscriptions" (p. 423) are
clearly Wusúm: these tribal-marks, which the highly imaginative
M. de Saulcy calls "planetary signs," are found throughout
Midian. The name of the Wady is, I have said, not El-Ithem, but
El-Yitm, a very different word. Lastly, the "Mountain Eretówa,"
or "Ertówa" (p. 404), is probably a corruption of El-Taur
(El-Hismá), the "inaccessible wall" of the plateau, which Dr.
Beke calls Jebel Hismá. My old friend, with his usual candour and
straightforwardness, honestly admitted that he had been
"egregiously mistaken with respect to the volcanic character of
(the true) 'Mount Sinai."' But without the eruption, the "fire
and smoke theory," what becomes of his whole argument?[EN#132]
Save for the death of my friend, I should have greatly enjoyed
the comical side of his subject; the horror and disgust with
which he, one of the greatest of geographical innovators, regards
a younger rival theory, the exodist innovation of Dr. Heinrich
Brugsch-Bey. The latter is the first who has rescued the "March
of the Children of Israel" from the condition of mere guesswork
described by the Rev. Mr. Holland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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