3-065-826 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Ancient inscription found on a stone near Dr. Beke's Mount Sinai, 1874. 'Mr. Milne ascended this newly-discovered Mount Sinai, which has an elevation of about 5000ft., and on the summit he found numerous horns and skulls of sheep, with a few bones, it being the custom of the Bedouins, and also of occasional pilgrims, even from a great distance, to come here to perform their devotions, and to offer sacrifice...Half-way up the mountain the traveller came to a pile of four large boulders of granite, the material of the mountain, three of them standing up facing the north, and one at the back of the others facing the south, and on all of them are engraved inscriptions, which he copied. The stones, which are much weather-worn, are externally of a dark brown colour, against which the inscriptions make themselves visible from their being of a somewhat lighter colour. The lines of these "Sinaitic inscriptions" are about three quarters of an inch broad, and very shallow, being not more than an eighth of an inch deep. The incised figures are very rude: they can hardly be phonetic, neither is it easy to say what they are intended to represent'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.