Page:The Northern Ḥeǧâz (1926).djvu/279

 toward which the kings proceeded: it is at the northern extremity of al-ʻAraba. We identify Êl Pârân, which they reached, with the settlement of al-ʻAḳaba at the southern extremity of the same rift valley, and we are not aware of any reason why the kings should have left this valley. We must therefore suppose that they proceeded from Êl Pârân (al-ʻAḳaba) northward to the southern extremity of the Dead Sea. Along this road they reached ʻÊn Mišpaṭ (i. e. Ḳadeš), and therefore we must locate ʻÊn Mišpaṭ near al-ʻAraba between Êl Pârân and the lowland of Siddîm.

According to Numbers, 13: 17, Moses sent out spies to view the Promised Land. Starting from Pârân they searched the land from the wilderness of Ṣin as far as Rehob and finally returned (Num., 13: 21, 26) to the wilderness of Pârân and Ḳadeš. From this it would seem that Ḳadeš must have been situated on the borders, or at least near the borders, of the wildernesses of Pârân and Ṣin. As we know from other passages that the wilderness of Pârân extended as far as the northern extremity of the Gulf of al-ʻAḳaba and that the wilderness of Ṣin extended along the southern border of the Promised Land (which, according to Joshua, 11: 17, stretched as far as the Ḥalaḳ mountain) we must locate Ḳadeš eastward of the Ḥalaḳ mountain near the rift valley of al-ʻAraba. We thus arrive near the ruins of Petra on the watershed of the Dead Sea and Gulf of al-ʻAḳaba. We identify the wilderness of Pârân with the southern portion of al-ʻAraba, through which water flows into the Gulf of al-ʻAḳaba, while we assign the northern part, through which water flows into the Dead Sea, to the wilderness of Ṣin, placing Ḳadeš on the border line of these two wildernesses near Petra.

Deuteronomy, 1: 2, refers to the transport route leading from Ḥoreb to Ḳadeš Barneʻa; it is there designated as the road to Seʻîr, and the journey along it from Ḥoreb to Ḳadeš Barneʻa is said to take eleven days.

Deuteronomy, 1: 19, mentions the same road as the road to the mountains of the Amorites, and it is there said to lead through a “great and terrible wilderness.”

These two statements are of importance to us, because, knowing the exact situation of the mountains of the Amorites to the southwest of the Dead Sea and of Seʻîr to the south-southeast of the same sea, we may, from the mountains of the Amorites by way of Seʻîr, define the direction in which we must seek Ḳadeš Barneʻa. The ruins of Petra, in the neighborhood of which we locate Ḳadeš Barneʻa, are situated precisely on the route from the Amorite mountains by way of Seʻîr to the south-southeast.

The road to Seʻîr, or the road to the Amorite mountains, passed through a “great and terrible wilderness” and thus could not have entered the populated mountain range but must have passed round it at its western foot between it and the wilderness of Pârân to the west. Along the western foot, of the aš-Šera’ range there actually leads an ancient transport route from south to north via Petra through the an-Namala pass (about twenty kilometers north of Petra [Wâdi Mûsa]; see Musil, Karte von Arabia Petraea) into the ʻAraba and farther in a north-northwesterly direction to the Amorite mountains. From Mount Ḥoreb along this road to Ḳadeš Barneʻa is eleven days’ march. We locate Mount Ḥoreb by the šeʻîb of al-Ḫrob in the northeastern part of the al-Hrajbe table-land, and place Ḳadeš in the vicinity of the ruins of Petra. From the šeʻîb of al-Ḫrob to Petra is nearly two hundred and twenty kilometers, so that one day’s