Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/214

 and now and then comes the note of a bird. Dear little songsters of the air, never did their music sound so sweet.

The event of the day was reaching Surabit el Khadim, a mountain of striking natural form as well as historical interest, in which the range of sandstone ends, and which served in the early days as a site both for a fortress and a temple. We dismounted from our camels, and under the escort of Arab guides, first descended a rough pass, or glen, on the other side of which rose an almost perpendicular wall of rock seven hundred feet high. We clambered up the precipice, turning hither and thither to get a footing on a narrow ledge, and often obliged to stretch out a hand to our nimble and sure-footed companions, till we reached the top, and found ourselves on a broad plateau, where are traces of copper mines that were worked in the times of the Pharaohs: how far back in the list of Egyptian dynasties, we cannot tell. But the mountain was probably a place of worship long before it was pierced by mineral excavations, if it be true that the temple, whose remains we find here now, was standing four hundred years before the time of Abraham! This would seem to justify the assertion that it is the oldest temple in the world. Like the priests of Baal, those of Egypt chose high places for their worship. This point commands a most extensive view. To the south rise the peaks of Serbal, so that the priests, while celebrating their worship here, could see in the distance the smoke of sacrifices from the altars of Baal. Centuries after this, in the time of Rameses II., whose daughter took Moses out of the bulrushes, it is said to have been occupied as a military station, for which it had an obvious fitness, as it commanded an outlook over a large part of the Peninsula. It is even urged that the Israelites, in the march to Sinai, probably avoided this