Mount Sinai
Summit of Mount Sinai
Elevation	2,285 m (7,497 ft)
Location
Location	Saint Catherine, South Sinai Governorate, Egypt
Coordinates	28°32′23″N 33°58′24″E / 28.53972°N 33.97333°E / 28.53972; 33.97333Coordinates: 28°32′23″N 33°58′24″E / 28.53972°N 33.97333°E / 28.53972; 33.97333

Sinai Peninsula, showing location of Mount Sinai

Mount Sinai (Arabic: طور سيناء‎ Ṭūr Sīnā’; or جبل موسى Jabal Mūsá, Egyptian Arabic Gabal Musa, lit. "Moses' Mountain" or "Mount Moses") (Hebrew: הר סיני‎ Har Sinai), also known as Mount Horeb, is a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt that is the traditional and most accepted identification of the Biblical Mount Sinai. The latter is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus in the Torah, the Bible^[1], and the Quran.^[2] According to Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition, the biblical Mount Sinai was the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments.

Geography[link]

Mount Sinai is a 2,285-metre (7,497 ft) high mountain near Saint Catherine in the Sinai region. It is next to Mount St. Catherine (at 2,629 m/8,625 ft, the highest peak in Egypt).^[3] It is surrounded on all sides by higher peaks of the mountain range.

Geology[link]

Mount Sinai's rocks were formed in the late stage of the Arabian-Nubian Shield's (ANS) evolution. Mount Sinai displays a ring complex that consists of alkaline granites intruded into diverse rock types, including volcanics. The granites range in composition from syenogranite to alkali feldspar granite. The volcanic rocks are alkaline to peralkaline and they are represented by subaerial flows and eruptions and subvolcanic porphyry. Generally, the nature of the exposed rocks in Mount Sinai indicates that they originated from different depths.

Religious significance[link]

A Greek Orthodox Chapel at the top of Mount Sinai

The biblical Mount Sinai was one of the most important sacred places in the Abrahamic religions.

According to Bedouin tradition, it was the mountain where God gave laws to the Israelites. However, the earliest Christian traditions place this event at the nearby Mount Serbal, at the foot of which a monastery was founded in the 4th century; it was only in the 6th century that the monastery moved to the foot of Mount Catherine, following the guidance of Josephus's earlier claim that Sinai was the highest mountain in the area. Jebel Musa, which is adjacent to Mount Catherine, was equated with Sinai, by Christians, only after the 15th century.

Christian orthodoxies settled upon this mountain in the third century, Georgians from the Caucasus moved to the Sinai Peninsula in the fifth century, and a Georgian colony was formed there in the ninth century. Georgians erected their own temples in the area of the modern Mount Sinai. The construction of one such temple was connected with the name of David The Builder, who contributed to the erecting of temples in Georgia and abroad as well. There were political, cultural and religious motives for locating the temple on Mount Sinai. Georgian monks living there were deeply connected with their motherland. The temple had its own plots^{[clarification needed]} in Kartli. Some of the Georgian manuscripts of Sinai remain there, but others are kept in Tbilisi, St. Petersburg, Prague, New York, Paris and in private collections.

View down to the Monastery of St. Catherine from the trail to the summit.

Some modern biblical scholars now believe that the Israelites would have crossed the Sinai peninsula in a direct route, rather than detouring to the southern tip (assuming that they did not cross the eastern branch of the Red Sea/Reed Sea in boats or on a sandbar), and therefore look for the biblical Mount Sinai elsewhere.

The Song of Deborah, which some textual scholars consider to be one of the oldest parts of the bible, suggests that Yahweh dwelt at Mount Seir, so many scholars favour a location in Nabatea (modern Arabia). Alternatively, the biblical descriptions of Sinai can be interpreted as describing a volcano, and so a small number of scholars have considered equating Sinai with locations in northwestern Saudi Arabia; there are no volcanoes in the Sinai Peninsula.

Saint Catherine Area *
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Country	Egypt
Type	Cultural
Criteria	i, iii, iv, vi
Reference	954
Region **	Arab States
Inscription history
Inscription	2002 (26th Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List ** Region as classified by UNESCO

St. Catherine's Monastery[link]

(Greek: Μονὴ τῆς Ἁγίας Αἰκατερίνης) lies on the Sinai Peninsula, at the mouth of an inaccessible gorge at the foot of modern Mount Sinai in St. Catherine city in Egypt at an elevation of 1550 meters. The monastery is Greek Orthodox and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. According to the UNESCO report (60100 ha / Ref: 954) and website hereunder, this monastery has been called the oldest working Christian monastery in the world – although the Monastery of Saint Anthony, situated across the Red Sea in the desert south of Cairo, also lays claim to that title.

Discovery of ancient unknown script – Caucasian Albanian[link]

A devastating fire in 1971 at St. Catherine's Monastery on Mt. Sinai led to the discovery of 1100 manuscripts that had been kept in a crypt below the chapel floor but which had been totally forgotten until they were accidentally discovered during reconstruction of the chapel in 1975.^[4][5] The most significant discovery was a palimpsest manuscript which had Georgian script on the visible layer but an unknown script - which was barely visible - on the underlying layer and which turned out to be an ancient Caucasian Albanian text.

In 1990, Dr. Zaza Aleksidze, Director of the Center for Manuscripts in Tbilisi, Georgia, discovered the unknown script. In 1996, he identified it as Caucasian Albanian, a script which has 52 letters based on Georgian, Ethiopian, and Armenian alphabets. The script described a language in the Caucasus that was the ancestor to the language spoken by the present-day Udis, who live in three villages in Azerbaijan and Georgia.^[6]

In 2001, Aleksidze was able to decipher his first word – "Thesalonike," referring to passages in the New Testament that St. Paul addressed to the Thessalonians.^[7] and he later identified the text of some 300 pages as one of the earliest existing Lectionaries in the Christian religion (5th–6th centuries).^[8]

Ascent[link]

Sunrise on Mt. Sinai

There are two principal routes to the summit. The longer and shallower route, Siket El Bashait, takes about 2.5 hours on foot, though camels can be used. The steeper, more direct route (Siket Sayidna Musa) is up the 3,750 "steps of penitence" in the ravine behind the monastery.^[9]

Summit[link]

Another view from the summit of Mount Sinai

The last few meters of the climb up Mount Sinai.

The summit of the mountain has a mosque that is still used by Muslims. It also has a Greek Orthodox chapel, constructed in 1934 on the ruins of a 16th century church, that is not open to the public. The chapel encloses the rock which is considered to be the source for the biblical Tablets of Stone.^[10] At the summit also is "Moses' cave", where Moses was said to have waited to receive the Ten Commandments.

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View from the summit of Mount Sinai

See also[link]

• Saint Katherine city
• Biblical Mount Sinai
• Hashem el-Tarif
• Jabal al-Lawz
• Archaeology
• Mount Gerizim
• Jebel Musa, Morocco, a similarly named mountain in Morocco

Notes[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sinai

• Mount Sinai travel guide from Wikitravel
• Caucasian Albanian Alphabet Discovered and Deciphered, Azerbaijan International, Vol. 11:3 (Autumn 2003). Six articles.
• View OF Mount Sinai (as opposed to the view FROM Mount Sinai)
• Information about the town of St. Katherine and the Sinai mountains
• Photo album from Mount Sinai and St Catherine's
• Contains many photos of two alleged sites, and some research.
• A Report on Mount Sinai

Ron Wyatt

Ronald Eldon Wyatt (1933 – August 4, 1999) was an adventurer and former nurse anaesthetist noted for advocating the Durupınar site as the site of Noah's Ark, among other Bible-related pseudoarchaeology. His claims were dismissed by scientists, historians, biblical scholars, and even by leaders in his own Seventh-day Adventist Church, but his work continues to have a following among some fundamentalists and evangelicals.

Biography[link]

Wyatt was as a nurse-anesthetist^[1] when in 1960 he saw a picture in Life Magazine of the Durupınar site, a boat-like shape on a mountain near Mount Ararat. The resulting widespread speculation in evangelical Christian circles that this might be Noah's Ark started Wyatt on his career as an amateur archaeologist. From 1977 until his death in 1999 he made over one hundred trips to the Middle East, his interests widening to take in a wide variety of references from the Old and New Testaments.

Claimed discoveries[link]

By the time of his death on August 4, 1999, his claimed discoveries included:

• Noah's Ark (the Durupınar site, located 18.25 miles south of Mount Ararat)^[2]
• Anchor stones (or drogue stones) used by Noah on the Ark^[3]
• The post-flood house, grave markers and tombs of Noah and his wife^[4]
• The location of Sodom and Gomorrah and the other Cities of the Plain: Zoar, Zeboim and Admah^[5]
• Sulfur/brimstone balls from the ashen remains of Sodom and Gomorrah.^[6]
• The Tower of Babel site (in southern Turkey)^[7]
• How the Egyptians may have built the pyramids.^[8]
• The site of the Israelites' crossing of the Red Sea (located in the Gulf of Aqaba)^[9]
• Chariot wheels and other relics of the army of Pharaoh at the bottom of the Red Sea
• The site of the biblical Mt. Sinai (in Saudi Arabia at Jabal al Lawz)^[10]
• A chamber at the end of a maze of tunnels under Jerusalem containing artifacts from Solomon's Temple^[11]
• The site of the Crucifixion of Jesus
• Christ’s blood, dripped onto the Mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant beneath the Crucifixion site.
• Burial pots off the coast of Ashkelon^[12]

Reception[link]

While Wyatt won a devoted following from the ranks of fundamentalist Christians seeking tangible evidence of the literal truth of the Bible, his credibility was disputed, often bitterly, by professional archaeologists and biblical scholars. The Garden Tomb Association of Jerusalem state in a letter they issue to visitors on request:

The Council of the Garden Tomb Association (London) totally refute the claim of Mr Wyatt to have discovered the original Ark of the Covenant or any other biblical artifacts within the boundaries of the area known as the Garden Tomb Jerusalem. Though Mr Wyatt was allowed to dig within this privately owned garden on a number of occasions (the last occasion being the summer of 1991) staff members of the Association observed his progress and entered his excavated shaft. As far as we are aware nothing was ever discovered to support his claims nor have we seen any evidence of biblical artifacts or temple treasures.

In a similar vein, archaeologist Joe Zias of Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has stated that "Ron Wyatt is neither an archaeologist nor has he ever carried out a legally licensed excavation in Israel or Jerusalem. In order to excavate one must have at least a BA in archaeology which he does not possess despite his claims to the contrary. ... [His claims] fall into the category of trash which one finds in tabloids such as the National Enquirer, Sun etc."^[13]

Wyatt's fellow evangelicals have not been any less critical: Answers in Genesis called Wyatt's claims "fraudulent,"^[14] and one Seventh-day Adventist professor of archaeology sums up Wyatt's Noah's Ark and anchor stones claims in these words: "While the Durupinar site is about the right length for Noah's ark, [it is] ... too wide to be Noah's ark. Wyatt has claimed that the "boat-shapedness" of this formation can only be explained by its being Noah's ark, but both Shea and Morris have offered other plausible explanations. Likewise, Wyatt has argued that the standing stones he has found are anchors, while Terian is aware of similar stones outside the Durupinar site area that were pagan cultic stones later converted by Christians for Christian purposes."^[15]

Dismissed by the mainstream as a pseudoarchaeologist, Wyatt's official organization, Wyatt Archaeological Research (WAR), claims that the IAA have always been aware of the excavations and issued "verbal permits" for most of them and official permits to all WAR excavations since 2002.^{[citation needed]} Nevertheless, the only evidence of WAR involvement in a legitimate excavation sanctioned by the IAA relates to WAR part-funding of a 2005 dig.^[16]

Wyatt died on August 4, 1999, aged 66, in Baptist Central Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, after having suffered from a type of cancer. His interment was in Columbia's Polk Memorial Park Cemetery.

Following his death[link]

Following Wyatt's death, a split developed between the official Wyatt Archaeological Research (WAR) organization which he founded, and the independent ministries and interested individuals which had previously cooperated with WAR. WAR currently claims to be the sole owner of all Wyatt's photographs, newsletters, and other intellectual property; other individuals who had known and worked with Wyatt established independent ministries and websites with the purpose of promoting Wyatt's discoveries outside the framework set by WAR.

See also[link]

• Searches for Noah's Ark
• David Fasold
• Mount Judi

References[link]