3-065-815 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Pharaoh's Island (Jesirat Firaou), with Jebel-El-Nur, 1874. Engraving from a sketch by John Milne - view '...from the south-west, on the opposite shore of the Gulf of Akaba, or Red Sea...This is a barren rock, with a strongly-fortified Saracenic castle, now in ruins, occupying its entire summit; on which island the dead body of the oppressor of the Children of Israel is said to have been cast ashore after he and his host were drowned in the Red Sea...some controversy has taken place regarding the correctness of the positions generally attributed to Mount Sinai and the other holy places connected with the history of the exodus of the Israelites...Dr. Beke came to the conclusion in his work "Origines Biblicae," published in the year 1834, that Mount Sinai must be situated to the east of the meridian of the Gulf of Akaba and valley of the Jordan, and not to the west of it, where it has universally been placed...[The] mountain is called Jebel el Nur, or the "Mountain of Light," as Dr. Beke thinks, because of the light which appeared on its summit and served as a guide to the Children of Israel in their flight from Mizraim (Egypt)'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.