Part 49

We returned from Mount St. Catherine to the place where we had passed the night, and breakfasted with the Djebalye, for which payment was asked, and readily given. The conveying of pilgrims is one of the few modes of subsistence which these poor people possess, and at a place where strangers are continually passing, gratuitous hospitality is not to be expected from them, though they might be ready to afford it to the helpless traveller. The two days excursion to the holy places cost me about forty piastres, or five dollars.

Before mid-day we had again reached the convent El Erbayn, in the garden of which I passed a most agreeable afternoon. The verdure was so brilliant and the blossoms of the orange trees diffused so fine a perfume that I was transported in imagination from the barren cliffs of the wilderness to the luxurious groves of Antioch. It is surprising that the Europeans resident at Cairo do not prefer spending the season of the plague in these pleasant gardens, and this delightful climate, to remaining close prisoners in the infected city.

We returned in the evening to the convent, by following to the northward the valley in which the Erbayn stands. This valley is very narrow, and extremely stony, many large blocks having rolled from the mountains into it; it is called El Ledja [Arabic], a name given to a similar rocky district, described by me, in the Haouran. At twenty minutes walk from the Erbayn we passed a block of granite, said to be the rock out of which the water issued when struck by the rod of Moses. It lies quite insulated by the side of the path, which is about ten feet higher than the lowest bottom of the valley. The rock is about twelve feet in height, of an irregular shape approaching to a cube. There are some apertures upon its surface, through which the water is said to have burst out; they are

About one hundred and fifty paces farther on in the valley lies another piece of rock, upon which it seems that the work of deception was first begun, there being four or five apertures cut in it, similar to those on the other block, but in a less finished state; as it is somewhat smaller than the former, and lies in a less conspicuous part of the valley, removed from the public path, the monks probably thought proper in process of time to assign the miracle to the other. As the rock of Moses has been described by travellers of the fifteenth century, the deception must have originated among the monks of an earlier period. As to the present inhabitants of the convent and of the peninsula, they must be acquitted of any fraud respecting it, for they conscientiously believe that it is the very rock from whence the water gushed forth. In this part of

Those who should attempt to weaken the faith of the monks and their visitors respecting this rock, would be now almost as blameable as the original authors of the imposture; for, such is the ignorance of the oriental Christians, and the impossibility of their obtaining any salutary instruction under the Turkish government, that were their faith in such miracles completely shaken, their religion would soon be entirely overthrown, and they would be left to wander in all the darkness of Atheism. It is curious to observe the blindness with which Christians as well as Turks believe in the pretended miracles of those who are interested in deceiving them. There is hardly a town in Syria or Egypt, where the Moslems have not a living saint, who works wonders, which the whole population is ready to attest as eye-witnesses. When I was at Damascus in 1812, some Christians returned thither from Jerusalem, where they had been to celebrate Easter. Some striking miracles said to have been performed by the Pope during his imprisonment at Savona, and which had been industriously propagated by the

A little farther down than the rock above described is shewn the seat of Moses, where it is said that he often sat; it is a small and apparently natural excavation in a granite rock, resembling a chair. Near this is the “petrified pot or kettle of Moses” [Arabic], a name given to a circular projecting knob in a rock, similar in size and shape to the lid of a kettle. The Arabs have in vain endeavoured to break this rock, which they suppose to contain great treasures.

As we proceeded from the rock of the miraculous supply of water along the valley El Ledja, I saw upon several blocks of granite, whose smooth sides were turned towards the path, inscriptions similar to those at Naszeb; the following were the most legible:

1. Upon a small block: [not included]

2. [not included]

3. [not included] There are many effaced lines on this block.

4. Upon a rock near the stone of Moses: [not included]

5. Upon a block close to the above: [not included]

6. [not included]

7. Upon the rock called the Pot: [not included]

8. Upon a large insulated block of granite: [not included]

EL BOSTAN

At forty minutes walk from Erbayn, where the valley El Ledja opens into the broad valley which leads eastwards to the convent, is a fine garden, with the ruins of a small convent, called El Bostan; water is conducted into it by a small channel from a spring in the Ledja. It was full of apricot trees, and roses in full blossom. A few Djebalye live here and take care of the garden. From hence to the convent is half an hour; in the way is shewn the head of the golden calf, which the Israelites worshipped, transmuted into stone. It is somewhat singular that both the monks and the Bedouins call it the cow’s head (Ras el Bakar), and not the calf’s, confounding it, perhaps, with the “red heifer,” of which the Old Testament and the Koran speak. It is a stone half-buried in the ground, and bears some resemblance to the forehead of a cow. Some travellers have explained this stone to be the mould in which Aaron cast the calf, though it is not hollow but projecting; the Arabs and monks however gravely assured me that it was the “cow’s” head itself. Beyond this object, towards the convent, a hill is pointed out to the left, called Djebel Haroun, because it is believed to be the spot where Aaron assembled the seventy elders of Israel. Both this and the cow’s head have evidently received these denominations from

CONVENT OF MOUNT SINAI

On my return to the convent I could not help expressing to several of the monks my surprise at the metamorphosis of a calf into a cow, and of an idol of gold into stone; but I found that they were too little read in the books of Moses to understand even this simple question, and I therefore did not press the subject. I believe there is not a single individual amongst them, who has read the whole of the Old Testament; nor do I think that among eastern Christians in general there is one in a thousand, of those who can read, that has ever taken that trouble. They content themselves, in general, with their prayer-books, liturgies, and histories of saints; few of them read the gospels, though more do so in Syria than in Egypt; the reading of the whole of the scripture is discountenanced by the clergy; the wealthy seldom have the inclination to prosecute the study of the Holy writings, and no others are able to procure a manuscript copy of the Bible, or one printed in the two establishments in Mount Libanus. The well meant endeavours of the Bible Society in England to supply them with printed copies of the Scriptures in Arabic, if not better directed than they have hitherto been, will produce very little effect in these countries. The cost of such a copy, trifling as it may seem in England, is a matter of importance to the poor Christians of the east; the Society has, besides, chosen a version which is not current in the east, where the Roman translation alone is acknowledged by the Clergy, who easily make their flocks believe that the Scriptures have been interpolated by the Protestants. It would, perhaps, have been better if the Society, in the beginning at least, had furnished the eastern Christians with cheap copies of the Gospels and Psalms only, which being the books chiefly in use among them in manuscript,

I will not take upon me to declare how far the Roman and the Society’s Arabic translation of the Old Testament are defective, being unable to read the original Hebrew text; but I can affirm that they both disagree, in many instances, from the English translation. The Christians of the East, who will seldom read any book written by a Moslem, and to whom an accurate knowledge of Arabic and of the best writers in that language are consequently unknown, are perfectly satisfied with the style of the Roman version which is in use among them; it is for the sake of perusing it that they undertake a grammatical study of the Arabic language, and their priests and

In the present state of western Asia, however, the conversion of Mohammedans is very difficult; I have heard only of one instance during the last century, and the convert was immediately shipped off to Europe. On the other hand, should an European power ever obtain a firm footing in Egypt, it is probable that many years would not elapse before thousands of Moslems would profess Christianity; not from the dictates of their conscience or judgment, but from views of worldly interest.

I was cordially greeted on my return to the convent, by the monks and the fatherly Ikonómos, one of the best-natured churchmen I have met with in the East. The safe return of pilgrims from the holy mountains is always a subject of gratulation, so great is their dread of the Arabs. I rested the following day in the convent, where several Greeks from Tor and Suez had arrived; being friends of the monks, they were invited in the evening to the private apartments of the latter, where they were plied so bountifully with brandy that they all retired tipsy to bed.

Several Bedouins had acquainted me that a thundering noise,

WADY OWASZ

As I had lost much of the confidence of the Bedouins by writing upon the mountains, and could not intimidate them by shewing a passport from the Pasha, I kept my intended journey secret, and concerting matters with Hamd and two Djebalye, I was let down from the window of the convent a little before midnight on the 23rd of May, and found my guides well armed and in readiness below. We proceeded by Wady Sebaye, the same road I had come from Sherm. In this Wady, tradition says, the Israelites gained the victory over the Amalekites, which was obtained by the holding up of the hands of Moses (Ex. xvii. 12.), but this battle was fought in Raphidim, where the water gushed out from the rock, a situation which appears to have been to the westward of the convent, on the approach from the gulf of Suez.

I was much disappointed at being able to trace so very few of the ancient Hebrew names of the Old Testament in the modern names of the peninsula; but it is evident that, with the exception of Sinai and a few others, they are all of Arabic derivation.

On a descent from the summit of Wady Sebaye, at an hour and a half from the convent, we turned to the right from the road to Sherm, and entered Wady Owasz [Arabic], in a direction

WADY RAHABA