Searching for Biblical Mt. Sinai
The case for Har Karkom in the Negev and the case for Saudi Arabia
Where is Mt. Sinai? At a 2013 colloquium in Israel, an international group of scholars debated the question. At the center of the debate was Har Karkom, a mountain ridge in the Negev Desert that archaeologist Emmanuel Anati believes to be the Biblical Mt. Sinai. Or could Mt. Sinai be in Saudia Arabia, where Moses was thought to have fled after escaping Egypt? In “Where Is Mount Sinai? The Case for Har Karkom and the Case for Saudia Arabia” in the March/April 2014 issue of BAR, Hershel Shanks examines these candidates.
Emmanuel Anati stands before Har Karkom, a ridge in the Negev that he believes inspired the Biblical Mt. Sinai. Photo: Hershel Shanks.
Biblical Mt. Sinai has never been identified archaeologically with any scholarly consensus, though several sites have been considered. According to Shanks, none of the scholars who attended the colloquium in Israel discussed the traditional location of Mt. Sinai—the mountain called Jebel Musa looming over St. Catherine’s Monastery in the southern Sinai. Jebel Musa’s identification as Mt. Sinai developed in the early Byzantine period with the spread of monasticism into the Sinai desert. Curiously, no Exodus-related archaeological remains have been recovered in the Sinai Peninsula—through which the Israelites must have traveled out of Egypt—dating to the traditional period of the Exodus, around 1200 B.C.E.
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Having conducted more than 30 years of archaeological work on and around Har Karkom—a 2,700-foot ridge in the southern Negev—Emmanuel Anati is convinced that he has found the Biblical Mt. Sinai. At Har Karkom, Anati discovered 1,300 archaeological sites, 40,000 rock engravings and more than 120 rock cult sites. Between 4300 and 2000 B.C.E.—what Anati calls the Bronze Age Complex—Har Karkom was a religious center where the moon-god Sin was apparently worshiped. Rock art depicting ibexes, animals with crescent-shaped horns that may have symbolized the moon, are abundant. Even more intriguing, Anati believes Biblical motifs are represented on some of the rock art.
An abundance of rock art can be found at Har Karkom, including some that Emmanuel Anati interprets as Biblical motifs. A rectangular grid divided into ten spaces suggests the Ten Commandments Moses received on Mt. Sinai. In other rock art pictured in BAR, vertical and curvy lines may represent a staff and snake, recalling the story of Moses’ brother Aaron turning a staff into a snake as he stood before Pharaoh. Photo: Emmanuel Anati.
It was Har Karkom, Anati suggests, that the Biblical authors envisioned when they referred to Mt. Sinai. One major obstacle to this conclusion, Shanks notes, is that the religious center at Har Karkom flourished at least 800 years earlier than the traditional date of the Exodus. Emmanuel Anati prososes that the Exodus should be re-dated to the late third or early second millennium—if the Exodus, as described in the Bible, occurred at all. Anati believes the Biblical authors had been inspired by Har Karkom regardless.
Watch Emmanuel Anati’s lecture “Har Karkom: Archaeological Discoveries on a Holy Mountain in the Desert of Exodus” and other full-length lectures from the Out of Egypt: Israel’s Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination conference, which addressed some of the most challenging issues in Exodus scholarship. The international conference was hosted by Calit2’s Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego in San Diego, CA.
Shanks proposes that we reexamine another theory: the “Midianite Hypothesis.” According to this theory, Mt. Sinai was not in the Sinai Peninsula, but in Midian in northwest Saudi Arabia. In the Bible, Moses fled to Midian after escaping Egypt (Exodus 2:15). While tending to the flock of Jethro, the priest of Midian who became Moses’ father-in-law, Moses came to “the Mountain of God” (Mt. Horeb–one of two names for the Mountain of God in the Bible) and there received God’s call to take the Israelites out of Egypt (Exodus 3:1,17). In contrast to the archaeologically empty Sinai during the traditional date of the Exodus, the region of northwest Saudi Arabia was thriving in the 12th century—as attested by the proliferation of Midianite ware, pottery associated with the Midianites. This distinctive painted ware had even made its way north to an Egyptian temple at Timna in the Negev Desert—but not into the Sinai.
Subscribers: Read more about the evidence at Har Karkom and in Saudi Arabia in the full article “Where Is Mount Sinai? The Case for Har Karkom and the Case for Saudia Arabia” by Hershel Shanks as it appeared in the March/April 2014 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
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This Bible History Daily feature was originally published on February 14 2014.
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It is not really a mystery that Mt. Sinai is in Arabia. Paul told us that in Galatians 4:25 — “Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children.” (NIV)
Plus, as mentioned in the article above, Moses fled to Midian. Every Bible map I’ve ever seen places Midian in Arabia.
In the book of Exodus it says that Moses fled to Midian ( which is in Arabia ) .The Israelites crossed the Red sea and went into Midiam . Moses new the land for he spent allot of time there before he returned to Egypt . (Exodus 2:11 ) .
Saudi Arabia location has already been explored by Ron Wyatt, Bob Cornuke, and Jim & Penny Caldwell through the past 50 years. Why are the bigger organizations just now getting to it?
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Read up on Ron Wyatt’s web site, wyattarchaeologicalresearch.com. He was there in 1984 and claims that in Saudi Arabia at Jabel el Lawz (the mountain of God) that all the things described in Exodus are found there. I have read both accounts ,the one in Negrev desert and I think Ron Wyatt was correct.
The description of Mt Sinai in Exodus is similar to ancient descriptions of erupting volcanos. We should be looking for an ancient volcano.
Har Karkom is NOT a volcano as the Bible expressly indicates. Neither is it in Midian where Moses began his journey and ended it with the Israelites. Just because a Roman women thought it might be in Sinai “scholars” have simply accepted her choice as fact.
The north-western arm of the Red Sea is a – if not THE – Reed Sea.
Why scholars should ever have thought (if they troubled to do that at all) that the Israelites in flight would have stayed in Sinai within Egyptian territory rather than go to a country – Midian – OUTSIDE Egyptian control. It was here that Moses worked and lived, had his family and connections and more importantly, knew the territory.
The Wilderness of Sinai
The harsh conditions found in the Sinai Peninsula are vividly portrayed in the Bible account of Israel’s wanderings. (Deuteronomy 8:15) So, could a whole nation assemble at the base of Mount Sinai to receive God’s Law and later withdraw to stand “at a distance”? (Exodus 19:1, 2; 20:18) Is there a place large enough to allow for such movement of a crowd estimated to have numbered three million?
A 19th-century traveler and Bible scholar, Arthur Stanley, visited the area of Mount Sinai and described the sight that confronted his party on climbing Ras Safsafa: “The effect on us, as on every one who has seen and described it, was instantaneous. . . . Here was the deep wide yellow plain sweeping down to the very base of the cliffs . . . Considering the almost total absence of such conjunctions of plain and mountain in this region, it is a really important evidence to the truth of the narrative, that one such conjunction can be found, and that within the neighbourhood of the traditional Sinai.”
http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/mp/r1/lp-e/Rbi8/1984/0
http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1001061223?q=Mt.%20Sinai&p=par
http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200275350
An appeal to Ron Wyatt is counter-productive and this fellow claimed to have discovered, not only Mount Sinai, but also Noah’s ark, the ark of the covenant, the blood of Jesus, and Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet he never had a single shred of proof for any of his claims. What he did do is to sell a bunch of DVD’s to gullible Christians.
As to the Saudi Arabian proposals for a location to Mount Sinai, none of them explain why the Israelites subsequently attempted to enter the Promised Land via Kadesh Barnea and only then had to circumnavigate around the land of the Edomites in order to approach the land of Moab.
A not-so-gullible Christian responds: Wyatt should not be considered an archaeologist. He’s a showman, and a rather poor one at that. To bring the discussion back to archaeology, we need to understand there are two approaches. One is a traditional approach that will allow for the miraculous provision of many Israelites living and traveling through a place with very few sources of water or food. This would put Jebel Musa back on the map. The other approach insists the myth of Mt. Sinai is either complete fabrication or at least something heavily exaggerated. This idea demands a naturalistic approach: the Israelites could have survived in NW Arabia easily enough, if they could get there. But before settling on one approach or the other, let’s stop pretending the argument can be settled by dismissing miraculous accounts as poo, just because we think we’ve seen it all. What lies at the heart of locating Mt. Sinai isn’t just scientific curiosity, after all.
I received newsletters from Ron Wyatt from when he first started looking for Biblical things.
He found chariot wheels with rims of gold and they can be found in a museum in Egypt.. He always told the Archeology people from each country what he found. Noahs Ark was found in Turkey and the Turkish Govt . was going to make it a tourist place but because of wars could not do it..Archeologists in Turkey know where it is and they tested the place..