Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/104

 88 S I M S I N of which, with additions, appeared in 1750. The first three books of this treatise were translated into English, and several times printed, with the title The Elements of the Conic Sections. In 1749 was published Apollonii Perg&i Locorum Planorum Libri II. , a restora- tion of one of Apollonius's lost treatises, founded on the lemmas given in the seventh book of Pappus's Mathematical Collection. In 1756 appeared, both in Latin and in English, the first edition of his Euclid's Elements. This work, which contained only the first six and the eleventh and twelfth books, and to which in its English version he added the Data in 1762, has become the standard text of Euclid in England. The additions and alterations which Simson made by way of restoring the text to its ' ' original accuracy " are certainly not all of them improvements, and the notes lie appended show with what an uncritical reverence he regarded the great geometers of antiquity. Two other works, restorations of Apollonius's treatise De Scctione Detenninata and Euclid's treatise De Porismatibus, which Simson was too distrustful of himself to publish during his lifetime, were printed for private circulation in 1776 at the expense of Earl Stanhope, in a volume with the title Boberti Simson, H.D Opera Quaedam Eeliqua. The volume contains also two additional books De Seclione Determinata, two small dissertations on Logarithms and on the Limits of Quantities and Ratios, and a few problems illustrative of the ancient geometrical analysis. How far these restorations represent the lost originals will probably always be a matter of conjecture. The De Porismatibus certainly cannot be coextensive with Euclid's three books ; but, if it is only a restored fragment, the credit due to Simson's perseverance and penetration in recovering from oblivion the nature and some of the contents of one of the most interesting treatises of antiquity will always be such as to keep his name in the remembrance of geometers. SIMSON, WILLIAM (1800-1847), portrait, landscape, and subject painter, was born at Dundee in 1800. He studied under Andrew Wilson at the Trustees' Academy, Edinburgh, and his early pictures landscape and marine subjects were executed with great spirit and found a ready sale. He next turned his attention to figure painting, producing in 1829 the Twelfth of August, which was followed in 1830 by Sportsmen Regaling and a Highland Deerstalker. In the latter year he was elected a member of the Scottish Academy ; and, having acquired some means by portrait-painting, he spent three years in Italy, and on his return in 1838 settled in London, where he exhibited his Camaldolese Monk Showing Relics, his Cimabue and Giotto, his Dutch Family, and his Columbus and his Child at the Convent of Santa Maria la Rabida. He died in London on the 29th of August 1847. Simson is greatest as a landscapist ; his Solway Moss Sunset, exhibited in the Royal Scottish Academy of 1831 and now in the National Gallery, Edinburgh, ranks as one of the finest examples of the early Scottish school of landscape. His elder brother George (1791-1862), portrait-painter, was also a member of the Royal Scottish Academy, and his younger brother David (d. 1874) practised as a landscape-painter. SINAI. In judging of the points of controversy connected with Sinai we are brought face to face with the question of the historicity of the Hebrew records involved. Though new attempts to fix the stations of the wilderness wandering appear every year, critics have long agreed that the number of forty for the years of wandering and for the stations are round numbers, and that the details are not based on historical tradition of the Mosaic age. This does not exclude the possibility that the names of some or all of the stations belong to real places and are based on more or less careful research on the part of the writers who record them. As regards the Mountain of the Law in particular, if the record of Exod. xix. sq. is strictly historical, we must seek a locality where 600,000 fighting men, or some two million souls in all, could encamp and remain for some time, finding pasture and drink for their cattle, and where there was a mountain (with a wilderness at its foot) rising so sharply that its base could be fenced in, while yet it was easily ascended, and its summit could be seen by a great multitude below. In the valley there must have been a flowing stream. The peninsula of Sinai does not furnish any locality where so great a host could meet under the conditions specified, and accordingly many investigators give up the statistics of the number of Hebrews and seek a place that fulfils the other conditions. But when we consider that the various records embodied in the PENTATEUCH (q.v.) were composed long after the time of Moses, and that the authors in all probability never saw Sinai, and had no exact topographical tradition to fall back on, but could picture to themselves the scene of the events they recorded only by the aid of imagination, the topographical method of identifying the Mountain of the Law becomes very questionable. The Pentateuchal writers are not at one even about the name of the mountain. It used to be thought that Horeb was the name of the mountain mass as a whole, or of its southern part, while Sinai was the Mountain of the Law proper, but it has been shown by Dillmann that the Elohist and Deuteronomy always use the name Horeb for the same mountain which the Jahvist and the Priestly Code call Sinai. The Elohist belonged to Northern Israel, but Judges v. 5 shows that even in Northern Israel the other name Sinai was not unknown. And it might be shown, though that cannot be done here, that the several accounts vary not only as regards the name but in topographical details. Thus all that can be taken as historically fixed is that after leaving Goshen the Hebrews abode for some time near a mountain called Sinai or Horeb (cf. ISRAEL, vol. xiii. p. 396), and that this mountain or range was held to be holy as a seat of the Deity (Exod. ii. 1, 1 Kings xix.). Where, then, was this mountain ? The Midianites, of whom according to one source Jethro was priest, probably always lived east of the Gulf of 'Akaba ; yet we can hardly follow Beke in seeking Sinai beyond that gulf, but must rather think of some point in the so-called peninsula of Sinai, which lies between the Gulfs of 'Akaba and Suez, bounded on the N. by the Wilderness el-Tlh, which slopes gently towards the Mediterranean. To the south of this wilderness rises the Jebel el-Tih, a mass composed mainly of Nubian sandstone and cretaceous limestone, which attains in fantastic forms an altitude of some 3000 feet ; its ridges converge towards the south and are cut off by great valleys from the mass now known as Mount Sinai. The latter is composed of primitive rocks, granite, porphyry, diorite, gneiss, &c. The sandstones of Jebel el- Tih are rich in minerals ; inscriptions of Amenophis III. and Thothmes III. found on the spot show that the ancient Egyptians got emerald, malachite, and kupfergriin at Sarbiit al-KMdem ; and still older are the turquoise and copper mines of Maghara, where inscriptions occur bearing the names of kings from Senefru and Cheops down to Rameses II. These mines were worked by criminals and prisoners of war, and the waste products of copper foundries indicate that the peninsula was once better wooded than now, of which indeed we have express testimony of post-Christian date. At present the dominant feature is bare walls of rock, especially in the primitive formations ; the steep and jagged summits have a striking effect, which is increased by the various colours of the rock and the clearness of the atmosphere. The deep-cut valleys are filled by rushing torrents after rain, but soon dry up again. In the south the centre of the main mountain mass is Mount Catherine (8540 feet), Omm Shomar to the south-east being little lower ; this peak and north of it Mount Serbal (6750 feet), which rises more immediately from the plain, dominate the Ka'ah, a waste expanse of sand strown with pebbles, which occupies the south-west margin of the peninsula. In the Ka'ah is the village of Tiir, and at the southern promontory (Ras Mohammed) is the little hamlet of Sherm. The Sinai group as a whole is called by the Arabs Jebel al-Tur ; the name Sina in Arabic comes only from books. The area