Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/1025

 SINAI. copied by Abderakhman from the southern coast of Ai'abia, preserved and translated by Schultens, be correct, it will follow that the old Adite character was decipherable even two centuries later than the date assigned to Cosmas, who could scarcely have failed to discover the Christian origin of these in- scriptions, if they had been really Christian. Indeed it may well be questioned whether any Christians could have been sufficiently conversant with this an- cient character to use it as freely as it is used on the rocks of the peninsula. Certainly if the hypo- thesis of this place having been resorted to as a place of pilgrimage by the pagan tribes of Arabia, and so haing acquired a sanctity in the very earliest times, could be established, the fact might furnish a clue to the future investigation of this deeply interesting subject, and, as Ritter has sug- gested, might serve to remove some difficulties in the Sacred Narrative. Now the journal of Antoninus Placentinus does in fact supply so precisely what was wanting, that it is singular that bis statement Las attracted so little notice in connection with the Sinaitic inscriptions; which, however, he does not expressly mention or even allude to. But what we do learn from him is not unimportant, viz., that be- fore the time of Islam, in " the ages of ignorance," as the lIohammedans call them, the peninsula of Jlount Sinai was a principal seat of the idolatrous superstition of the Arabians; and that a feast was held there in honour of their miraculous idol, which was resorted to by Ishmaelites, as he calls them, from all parts: the memorial of which feast seems htill to be preserved by the Bedawin. (Burckhardt, Syria, pp. 566, .567.) Now when it is remembered that the eastern commerce of Greece and Rome, conducted by the Arabs of Yemen and Hadramant, must have brought their merchants and sailors to the vicinity of this ancient sanctuaiy at Arsinoe or at Elana, the pilgrimage becomes almost a matter of course ; and the practice which we know prevailed in their own country of graving their memorials with an iron pen in the rock for ever, was naturally adopted by them, and imitated by the Christian pilgrims in after times. Undue stress has been laid on the frequency of the inscriptions about Serhal, contrasted with their rarity about Jebel Miisa ; but it should be remembered that they are executed almost entirely in the soft sandstone which meets the granite on and around Serbal, but which is scarcely found in the interior, where tiie hard, primitive rock did not encourage the scribbling propensities of the travellers, as the softer tablets in the more western part, where the blocks of trap-stone (which are also largely interspersed with the granite, and which present a black surface without, but are lemon- coloured within) were studiously selected for the inscriptions, which, in consequence, come out with the effect of a rubricated book or illuminated manu- script, the black surface throwing out in relief the lemon-coloured inscriptions. This account of the peninsula must not be con- cluded without a brief notice of the very remarkable temple of Harhut el-Cliddem, and the stelae which are found in such numbers, not only in the temple, but in other western parts of the peninsula, where large masses of copper, mixed with a quantity of iron ore, were and still are found in certain strata of the sandstone rocks along the skirts of the prime- val chain, and which gave to the whole district the name still found in the hieroglyphics, Maphat, '■ the copper land," which was under the particular pro- SINDA SARJIATICA. 1005 tection of the goddess Hathor, Mistress of Maphat. The temple, dedicated to her, stands on a lofty sand- stone ledge, and is entirely filled with lofty stelae, many of them like obelisks with inscriptions on both sides: so crowded with them in fact, that its walls seem only made to circumscribe the stelae, althoufrh there are several erected outside it, and on the ad- jacent hills. The monuments belong, apparently, to various dynasties, but Dr. Lepsius has only specially mentioned three, all of the twelfth. The massi'e crust of iron ore covering the hillocks, 250 yards long and 100 wide, to the depth of 6 or 8 feet, and blocks of scoriae, prove that the smelting furnaces of the Egyptian kings were situated on these airy heights ; but tlie caverns in which the ore was found contain the oldest effigies of kings in exist- ence, not excepting the whole of Egypt and the pyramids of Gizeh, The chief authorities for this article, besides those referred to in the text, are Niebuhr (^Voyage en Arahie,o. i. pp. 181 — 204); Seetzen (i?eise», vol, iii. pp. 55—121). For the physical history and description of the peninsula, Russegger is by far the fullest and most trustworthy authority {Reisen, vol. iii. pp. 22 — 58). Dr. Robinson has investigated the history and geography of the peninsula, with his usual diligence (Travels, vol. i. §§ 3, 4. pp. 87 — 241); and Dr. Wilson has added some important observations in the way of additional information or correction of his predecessor {Lands of the Bible, vol. i. chapters vi. — viii. pp. 160 — 275). Lepsius's Tonr from Thebes to the Peninsula of Sinai (Le«ers,pp. 310— 321,556— 562), which has been translated by C. II. Cottrell (London, 1846), argues for Serbal as the true itiountain of the Law; and his theory has been maintained with great learning and industry by Mr. John Hogg {Remarks on Mount Serbal, (JV. in Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, 1849). The graphic description of the country from Jlr. A. P. Stanley's pen is the latest contribution to the general history of the penin- sula {Sinai and Palestine, 1856). The decipher- ment of the inscriptions has been attempted by the learned Orientalists of Germany, Gesenius, Eoediger, Beer, and others (Ch. Bunsen, Christianity and Mank-ind, vol. iii. pp. 231 — 234); and Jlr. Forster has published a vindication of his views against the strictures of Mr. Stanley on his original work (The Voice of Israel from the Rocks of Sinai, 1851; The Israelitish Authorship of the Sinaitic Inscrip- tions, 1856). [G. W.] SINCHl, a sub-division of the Sarmatian tribe of the Tauri. (Amm. Mar. xxii. 8. § 33.) [T. H. D.] SINDA (2iV5a : Eth. Sindcnsis), a town which seems to have been situated on the western frontier of Pisidia, in the neighbourhood of Cibyra and the river Caularis (Liv. xxxviii. 15; Strabo, xii. p. 570, xiii. p. 630). Stephanus B. (.?. v. 2i»'5io), who speaks of Sindia as a town of Lycia, is probably alluding to the same place. (Comp. llierocl. p. 680; Polyb. Excerpt, de Leg. 30.) Some writers liave confounded Sinda with Isionda, which is the more surprising, as Livy mentions the two as dilfcrcnt towns in the same chapter. (Leake, Asia Minor, p. 152.) [L. S.] SINDA SARMATICA (itVSa Kw^i-q, Ptol. v. 9. § 8), a town or village in Asiatic Sarmatia, in the territory of the Sindi, with an adjoining liarbour (SiA/SiK^s Mpriv, Ptol. lb.), 180 stadia E. of the mouth of the Bosporus Cimmerius at Corocondama, and, according to Arrian (At. /'. Eux. p. 19), 500