Mount Sinai - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Mount Sinai ( Ṭūr Sīnā’ or Jabal Mūsá), also known as Mount Horeb, Mount Musa, Gabal Musa (Egyptian Arabic), Jabal Musa (standard Arabic) meaning "Moses' Mountain", is a mountain near Saint Catherine

Saint Catherine, Egypt

Saint Catherine is the capital city of Saint Katherine Markaz and a natural protectorate in the South Sinai Governorate in Sinai in Egypt. It is located at the outskirts of El-Tur Mountains Province at an elevation of 1586 m , 120 km away from Nuweiba, at the foot of Mount Sinai and the...

in the Sinai Peninsula

Sinai Peninsula

The Sinai Peninsula or Sinai is a triangular peninsula in Egypt about in area. It is situated between the Mediterranean Sea to the north, and the Red Sea to the south, and is the only part of Egyptian territory located in Asia as opposed to Africa, effectively serving as a land bridge between two...

of Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

. A mountain called Mount Sinai is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus in the Torah

Torah

Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...

and the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

as well as the Quran. According to Jewish, Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

and Islamic tradition, the biblical Mount Sinai was the place where Moses

Moses

Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...

received the Ten Commandments

Ten Commandments

The Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue , are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism and most forms of Christianity. They include instructions to worship only God and to keep the Sabbath, and prohibitions against idolatry,...

Geography

Mount Sinai is a 2285 metres (7,496.7 ft) high mountain near Saint Catherine

Saint Catherine, Egypt

in the Sinai region. It is next to Mount St. Catherine (at 2629 m (8,625.3 ft), the tallest peak on the Sinai peninsula

Peninsula

A peninsula is a piece of land that is bordered by water on three sides but connected to mainland. In many Germanic and Celtic languages and also in Baltic, Slavic and Hungarian, peninsulas are called "half-islands"....

). It is surrounded on all sides by higher peaks of the mountain range.

Geology

Mount Sinai's rocks were formed in the late stage of the Arabian-Nubian Shield

Arabian-Nubian Shield

The Arabian-Nubian Shield is an exposure of Precambrian crystalline rocks on the flanks of the Red Sea. The crystalline rocks are mostly Neoproterozoic in age. Geographically - and from north to south - the ANS includes the nations of Israel, Jordan. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Eritrea,...

's (ANS) evolution. Mount Sinai displays a ring complex that consists of alkaline granites intruded into diverse rock types, including volcanics

Volcanic rock

Volcanic rock is a rock formed from magma erupted from a volcano. In other words, it is an igneous rock of volcanic origin...

. The granites range in composition from syenogranite

Syenogranite

Syenogranite is a fine to coarse grained intrusive igneous rock of the same general composition as granite. They are characteristically felsic.The feldspar component of syenogranite is predominantly alkaline in character...

to alkali feldspar granite. The volcanic rocks are alkaline to peralkaline and they are represented by subaerial flows and eruptions and subvolcanic

Subvolcanic rock

A subvolcanic rock, also known as a hypabyssal rock, is an igneous rock that originates at medium to shallow depths within the crust and contain intermediate grain size and often porphyritic texture. They have textures between volcanic and plutonic rocks. Subvolcanic rocks include diabase and...

porphyry

Porphyry (geology)

Porphyry is a variety of igneous rock consisting of large-grained crystals, such as feldspar or quartz, dispersed in a fine-grained feldspathic matrix or groundmass. The larger crystals are called phenocrysts...

. Generally, the nature of the exposed rocks in Mount Sinai indicates that they originated from different depths.

Religious significance

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

According to Bedouin

Bedouin

The Bedouin are a part of a predominantly desert-dwelling Arab ethnic group traditionally divided into tribes or clans, known in Arabic as ..-Etymology:...

tradition, it was the mountain where God

Tetragrammaton

The term Tetragrammaton refers to the name of the God of Israel YHWH used in the Hebrew Bible.-Hebrew Bible:...

gave laws to the Israelites. However, the earliest Christian traditions place this event at the nearby Mount Serbal

Mount Serbal

Mount Serbal is a mountain located in Wadi Feiran in southern Sinai, sometimes identified in texts as Gebel Serbal. At high, it is the fifth highest mountain in Egypt. It is part of the St. Catherine National Park...

, 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

Mount Catherine

Mount Catherine also known as Gebel Katherîna is the highest mountain in Egypt, located in Saint Katherine city, in Southern provinces of Sinai Peninsula.-See also:*Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai*Saint Katherine city*Mount Sinai...

, following the guidance of Josephus

Josephus

Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...

'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

Georgians

The Georgians are an ethnic group that have originated in Georgia, where they constitute a majority of the population. Large Georgian communities are also present throughout Russia, European Union, United States, and South America....

from the Caucasus

Caucasus

The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...

moved to the Sinai Peninsula

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 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.

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

Textual criticism

Textual criticism is a branch of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts...

consider to be one of the oldest parts of the bible, suggests that Yahweh dwelt at Mount Seir

Mount Seir

Mount Seir formed the south-east border of Edom and Judah, it may also echo the older historical border of Egypt and Canaan.-Tanakh:Mount Seir is specifically noted as the place that Esau made his home . It was named for Seir, the Horite, whose sons inhabited the land...

, so many scholars favour a location in Nabatea (modern Arabia). Alternatively, the biblical descriptions of Sinai can be interpreted as describing a volcano

Volcano

2. Bedrock3. Conduit 4. Base5. Sill6. Dike7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano8. Flank| 9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano10. Throat11. Parasitic cone12. Lava flow13. Vent14. Crater15...

, and so a small number of scholars have considered equating Sinai with locations in northwestern Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...

; there are no volcanoes in the Sinai Peninsula.

St. Catherine's Monastery

(Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

: ) lies on the Sinai Peninsula

Sinai Peninsula

, at the mouth of an inaccessible gorge at the foot of modern Mount Sinai in St. Catherine city in Egypt

Egypt

at an elevation of 1550 meters. The monastery is Greek Orthodox

Greek Orthodox Church

The Greek Orthodox Church is the body of several churches within the larger communion of Eastern Orthodox Christianity sharing a common cultural tradition whose liturgy is also traditionally conducted in Koine Greek, the original language of the New Testament...

and is a UNESCO

UNESCO

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

World Heritage Site

A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place that is listed by the UNESCO as of special cultural or physical significance...

. 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

Monastery of Saint Anthony

The Monastery of Saint Anthony is a Coptic Orthodox monastery standing in an oasis in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, in the southern part of the Suez Governorate. Hidden deep in the Red Sea mountains, it is located southeast of Cairo. It is one of the oldest monasteries in the world, together with...

, situated across the Red Sea in the desert south of Cairo, also lays claim to that title.

Discovery of ancient unknown script – Caucasian Albanian

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. The most significant discovery was a palimpsest

Palimpsest

A palimpsest is a manuscript page from a scroll or book from which the text has been scraped off and which can be used again. The word "palimpsest" comes through Latin palimpsēstus from Ancient Greek παλίμψηστος originally compounded from πάλιν and ψάω literally meaning “scraped...

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

Tbilisi

Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...

, 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 Udi

Udi people

The Udis are one of the most ancient native peoples of the Caucasus.Currently they live in Azerbaijan, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and many other countries. The total number is about 10,000 people. They speak the Udi language. Among them are distributed also Azeri, Russian,...

s, who live in three villages in Azerbaijan and Georgia.

In 2001, Aleksidze was able to decipher his first word – "Thesalonike

Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki , historically also known as Thessalonica, Salonika or Salonica, is the second-largest city in Greece and the capital of the region of Central Macedonia as well as the capital of the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace...

," referring to passages in the New Testament that St. Paul addressed to the Thessalonians. and he later identified the text of some 300 pages as one of the earliest existing Lectionaries in the Christian religion (5th–6th centuries).

Ascent

There are two principal routes to the summit. The longer and shallower route, Siket El Bashait, takes about 2.5 hours on foot, though camel

Camel

A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as humps on its back. There are two species of camels: the dromedary or Arabian camel has a single hump, and the bactrian has two humps. Dromedaries are native to the dry desert areas of West Asia,...

s 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.

Summit

The summit of the mountain has a mosque

Mosque

A mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. The word is likely to have entered the English language through French , from Portuguese , from Spanish , and from Berber , ultimately originating in — . The Arabic word masjid literally means a place of prostration...

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

Tablets of stone

The Tablets of Stone, Stone Tablets, Tablets of Law, or Tablets of Testimony in the Bible, were the two pieces of special stone inscribed with the Ten Commandments when Moses ascended Mount Sinai as recorded in the Book of Exodus...

. At the summit also is "Moses' cave", where Moses was said to have waited to receive the Ten Commandments

Ten Commandments

External links

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

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