DISCOVERY OF MOUNT SINAI

Grey River Argus, Volume XIV, Issue 1788, 29 April 1874, Page 2

DISCOVERY OF MOUNT SINAI

[PALL MALL GAZETTI.] The exact position of Mount Siqai has been so great a subject of dispute among travellers that it is to be hoped the news which arrived from Cairo yesterday that the true Mount Sinai has been found by D,r Beke one day's journey north-east of Akaba will,, at all eyents, be accepted as coraect, and thus put an end to all further differences on the subject. Under any circumstances, great credit is due to Dr. Beke for undertaking such an arduous task as the discovery of this mountain. To look for Mount Sinai among the mass of granite and porphyry mountains in the Arabian Peninsula, lying between the Qnlf of Sue? and Akaba, is equivalent to •* looking for a needle in a bottle of hay.'' If the telegram from Cairo proves correct, Dr Beke's discovery places the earlier Church Fathers, Eusebius, Jerome, Cosmas, and Co., in rather an awkward position, for they identified Serbal, whose height is 5340 ft above the sea, with Sinai, whereas it seems that Dr Beke's Sinai is only 5000 ft in height, and therefore cannot be Serbal. Dr Beke with his Sinai also knooka the ground from under the feet o

the various learned persons who held that Jebel-Musa, or the Mount of Moses, whose height is estimated at 7100 ft was the true Mount Sinai. It will be interesting to hear whether Dr Beke's Sinai is the same mountain as that visited by Wellstead and described in his "Travels in Arabia" (1838). Wellstead's Sinai was not a mountain to be visited by travelle'ri-who look for silence in solitnde. It was a very noisy mountain, for Wellstead; 'Having seated himself on a rock, saw an avalanche of sand falling, the . sound of 'which "attained the loudness of thunder," caused his seat to vibrate, and so alarmed his camels that they were with difficulty prevented by their drivers from bolting. A more frightful occupation can hardly be imagined than that of riding a runaway camel on Mount Sanai. After the above had appeared in the PaU Matt Gazette, Mrs Beke forwarded to tbat journal the following telegram which she had received from her husband, and which was dated Suez, 16th February :— " Arrived safely. All well. I have succeeded! in discovering the true Mount Sinai beyond Akaba, and have ascended to the summit. It is a mountain called by the Arabs 'Djibel en Nur,' or ' Mountain of Light,' on which the Arabs say. 'God spoke to Mose3," and therefore they stop and pray towards it."