(iii) Religious and Physical Features of Har Karkom

To date nearly 1000 archaeological sites in this area have been surveyed. The remains of numerous villages of the Late Stone Age and BAC periods are found in the valleys surrounding the mountain. The plateau is covered by sites of cult and worship; standing pillars, tumuli, stone circles, altar-like structures, geoglyphs or large ground-level pebble drawings, as well as a unique concentration of rock art including over 40,000 figures. Some of these drawings feature persons praying to an indefinable, abstract form. Most interesting for our purposes are the drawings of the rod and serpent (cf. Exodus 7:9) and the tablet with ten divisions (cf. Exodus 20:1-17 & 32:15).

In the Book of Exodus (19:12-23) we read where God forbade the people to touch the holy mountain. Now Anati has found that, whilst pilgrims came in multitudes to the foothills of Har Karkom, only "a few people climbed to the plateau to perform worship activities."⁽⁴⁷⁾ And he adds in a footnote on the same page:

"It is unlikely that the multitudes of the BAC camping sites at the foothill stepped on this ground. It seems that they had no access to the plateau which is likely to have been reserved to a very restricted number of people. An analogous situation is narrated in Exodus about the prohibition for the people to step on the mountain..."

I shall conclude this section by mentioning briefly three other of Anati's striking proposed similarities between Har Karkom and Mount Sinai.⁽⁴⁸⁾

(a) The Grotto, or Cleft in the Rock

The cleft on one of the two tops at Har Karkom forms a small rock-shelter; an uncommon feature in the Sinai peninsula, according to Anati.

"In the Book of Exodus, Mount Sinai is described as having such a characteristic: "And the Lord said, behold, there is a place by Me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock, and it shall come to pass, while My glory passeth by, that I will put thee in the cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with My hand while I pass by ..." (33:21-22)."

Again, this is a topographic feature that the Bible attributes to Mount Sinai.

(b) The Twelve Pillars

At the foot of the mountain, Anati and his team found a group of twelve pillars or standing stones facing a stone platform.

Concerning this distinctive situation, Anati wrote: "It is reminiscent of a passage in Exodus (24:4): 'And Moses ... built an altar under the hill (or mountain) and 12 pillars, according to the 12 tribes of Israel.'"

(c) The Shrine

On the Har Karkom plateau there are remains of a BAC shrine, with a stone platform (altar?) oriented toward the east. In the Book of Exodus, there are several references to a temple that is said to have been seen by Moses (Exodus 25:40; 26:7; 26:30; 27:8). "Some biblical scholars believe that Moses may have had a vision of a "celestial" temple while on the mountain, but the Bible says that there was a temple and this again is a topographic feature."

CONCLUSION

In this PART ONE, and in the preceding paper, "Is the Bible Fact or Fiction?", I hope that I (following on from other revisionists) have succeeded in showing that we can now historically pin-point Moses and his era to the late Old/Middle Kingdom period. Moses belongs to the era of those 'Egyptianised' Asiatics of whom we spoke earlier, who eventually quit Egypt en masse, and whose place was subsequently occupied by the non-'Egyptianised' Hyksos invaders. The Exodus event coincides with (was actually the cause of) the collapse of Egypt's Old Kingdom, ushering in the intermediate dark age of early Egyptian history.

Added to this, we now have a much firmer identification for the famous Mount Sinai that played so significant a role in Moses' life.

With this historical basis now properly established, we can the more confidently tackle PART TWO of this article, in which we are going to take a serious look at the language of the Book of Genesis, to see what light it may throw upon the traditional view that Moses compiled this book.

Notes and References

1. Although, according to tradition, Moses is supposed to have had a hand in producing most of the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers & Deuteronomy), it is really only the last four books of which he was supposed to have been the actual author. The New Testament, for instance, never says of Moses that he "wrote" any part of Genesis, as it does when referring to the remaining four books.

2. Mackey, D., "The Toledoths of Genesis", Computer Bible Series (AMAIC Sydney, 1996), in footnote (57).

3. Yahuda, A., "The Language of the Pentateuch in its Relation to Egyptian" (Oxford U.P., 1933).

4. Yahuda was, in fact, an expert in linguistics generally. He knew many of the ancient languages, including the old Aramaic, Akkadian and Arabic. He also knew the Coptic language. See op. cit., xi.

5. Ibid., xxix. Actually he has "leap to the eye".

6. According to the "revised" reconstruction of history that I am presenting in this computer Bible series, Moses led the Exodus right at the end of the Old Kingdom, which is separated in history from the beginning of the New Kingdom by many centuries. In previous articles I have given reasons why the "conventional" dates for the Old and New kingdoms of Egypt need to be lowered each by about half a millennium. So that when we encounter in the standard, or "conventional" texts the era "C3rd millennium BC" (for the Old Kingdom) and "C13th BC" (for part of the New), we ought immediately to reduce each of these figure in our minds by about half a millennium. See also footnotes (7 & 11). In this article, I use the word "conventional", "conventionalist", to designate the historical scheme (the "Sothic" chronology) that one encounters in the standard texts of ancient history. I reject this scheme. See also footnote (18). By contrast, I apply the description "revised", "revision", "revisionist", to the new chronology that I am following, and (hopefully) developing - and with which I am trying to acquaint the reader in this computer series.

7. These Archaeological Ages (Early Bronze, Middle Bronze, and also the Late Bronze) need to be lowered correspondingly (in accordance with the lowering of the dates for the Old, Middle and New kingdoms of Egypt) by approximately half a millennium from the standard date, according to what I have explained in the previous footnote.

8. See footnote (6) for an explanation of what I mean by this term, "conventionalist".

9. See footnote (6) again for explanation of this term "revised".

10. Anati, E., "The Mountain of God", Rizzoli (NY, 1986).

11. Anati, E., "Har Karkom in the Light of New Discoveries", Vol. 11 Studi Camuni (Edizioni del Centro, 1993). It is important to note that Anati, whilst finding that there is no evidence to support the view that the Exodus, or Wanderings of the Israelites in the desert took place during the Late Bronze Era (to which era these events are conventionally assigned) has not gone that important step further and re-dated the Late Bronze and the other Archaeological Ages according to the biblical information. Thus the revisionist scholar Dr. D. Courville wrote, concerning Anati's chronology (following on from Anati's identification of Har Karkom as Mt. Sinai), in relation to Courville's own scheme: "... I accept the recent thesis of Anati, which proposes a new nomination for the identification of Mount Sinai of Scripture. The evidence noted at this altered site for the Israelite encampment belongs to the end of Early Bronze, in agreement with my placement of this event. While Anati mentions my work in his report, he does not point out the obvious fact that acceptance of my thesis would allow this identification of the evidence for the Israelite camp without having to move the Exodus back into the 20th century - a suggestion that few indeed would be willing to accept". "The Exodus Problem and Its Ramifications", C&AH, V. 10, pt. 1 (January, 1988), 46.

12. "Har Karkom", 76.

13. Ibid.

14. Indeed, Anati is far from being a biblical 'literalist'. He does not baulk at rejecting as fact a given statement of Scripture for which he himself can find no factual evidence. Moreover, he appears to follow the liberal "Documentary Hypothesis" of scriptural interpretation that I have criticised in the previous article (and see also PART TWO of this article).

15. When Anati first saw this mountain, as "a young student, in 1954", it was called Jebel Ideid, Arabic for "Mountain of the Multitude". He had no idea then of its being Mount Sinai. When he returned to the site in 1980, "as head of the Italian Archaeological Expedition to Israel", the name had been changed to the Israeli name of Har Karkom, "The Saffron Mountain". "This name is apt since the mountain reflects this peculiar color at certain times of the day. It soon became clear that Har Karkom had been a very special mountain in the past. In 1983, after four years of archaeological survey, sufficient data was at hand to propose that this mountain might be the biblical Mount Sinai". Har Karkom, 7.

16. Especially the Upper Palaeolithic and Chalcolithic Stone Ages. For a revised placement of these so-called 'Stone Ages', the reader is strongly urged to read Dr. John Osgood's two papers, "A Better Model for the Stone Age" (Part One), Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, Vol.2 (1986), 88-102 & (Part Two), Ibid., Vol.3 (1988), 73-95. Osgood, for instance, dates Late Chalcolithic to the time of Abraham in Canaan. The question comes to mind (certainly Anati had thought of it): Why did this Har Karkom come to be revered as a sacred mountain? The only reason that I can suggest, in the light of Dr. Osgood's research (see previous paragraph), is that it, like Mount Moriah in Jerusalem where the Patriarch Melchizedech had lived (Genesis 14:18), had originally been the home of - or upon whose summit had worshipped - one of Noah's mighty descendants (whose era, according to the revised chronology, would approximate to the Palaeolithic Age, hence pre-Abrahamic). Apparently the Jews have a tradition that Melchizedech was none other than Noah's son, Shem.

17. I follow the biblical dating system so carefully worked out by Martin Anstey, "The Romance of Biblical Chronology", Marshall Bros. Ltd. (1913), and later summarised and slightly amended by Philip Mauro, "The Wonders of the Bible Chronology", Reiner Publications (1933). I consider Anstey's dating system to be by far the best chronology of the Bible that I have found so far.

18. In a successful MA thesis by the author, "The Sothic Star Theory of the Egyptian Calendar", University of Sydney (1994). This thesis has since been favourably reviewed by David Down in an article entitled, "University Scholar Attacks the Sothic Cycle", Archaeological Diggings, Vol.3, #2 (April/May, 1996), 23-24.

19. Cohen, R. "The Mysterious MBI People - Does the Exodus Tradition in the Bible Preserve the Memory of Their Entry Into Canaan?", BAR, Vol.IX, #4, 16-29.

20. According to Artapanus, there were many pharaohs in Egypt at the time of Moses. See C. McDowell's "The Egyptian Prince Moses", Proceedings of the Third Seminar of Catastrophism & Ancient History, C&AH Press (1986), 4.

21. "Is the Bible Fact or Fiction?", footnote (37). See also, D. Rohl's "A Test of Time. The Bible - From Myth to History", Century (1995), 341.

22. In a recent article in this computer Bible series, entitled "Queen of Sheba: Hatshepsut".

23. Yahuda, op. cit., ch.vi, 231-268.

24. On this point of early Mesopotamian dates, what Dr. Courville wrote in "The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications", Vol. II (Loma Linda CA, 1971), 289, about the efforts of historians to settle upon a fixed date for the era of the famous Babylonian king, Hammurabi, having "Hammurabi floating about in a liquid chronology of Chaldea ...", seems to apply also to Sargon of Akkad. At the start of this century it was thought that Sargon should be dated to about 3800 BC. In 1923, Stephen Langdon placed Sargon at about 2872 BC (CAH 1923, Vol. I, 403). His dates have now been lowered to about 2250 BC. The "Legend of Sargon" has been deemed by critics as being the literary basis for the story of Moses. D. Hickman, however, is of the contrary opinion. He wrote that: "... the "Legend of Sargon" was partially based on Moses' story and composed for the purpose of aggrandizing the Akkad king". In "The Dating of Hammurabi", C&AH, Proc. of Third Seminar (Parma, Ohio, 1986), 20-21.

25. "Mountain of God", 158. Anati actually uses this phrase in connection with the Sinuhe story, however. Extract from the "Legend of Sargon" taken from J.B. Pritchard, "ANET: Ancient Near Eastern Text Relating to the Old Testament", (Princeton UP, 1969), 119.

26. I do not anticipate, however, that the necessary chronological adjustment will be so radical in the case of Sargon that we shall find - as according to Hickman's ingenious reconstruction (see footnote 24) - that Sargon of Akkad is to be equated with the great Mesopotamian conqueror, Cushan-rishathaim, who harrassed the Israelites and actually ruled over them for "eight years" during the early period of the Judges (3:8).

27. Rohl, D., "A Test of Time. The Bible - From Myth to History", Century (1995), 271. Rohl is another scholar who, due to his dissatisfaction with the Sothic chronology, has found himself forced to search for an alternative system. In this interesting and beautifully illustrated book, he has weighed in with some further devastating criticisms of the conventional system. That, I believe, is the positive side of his book. Unfortunately, however, Rohl has - as I believe - "thrown out the baby with the bath water" with his "New Chronology", which departs from that absolutely fundamental identification of the Israelites with the MBI people. Hence, despite Rohl's own ingenious efforts to locate biblical events within an Egyptian context, he in fact misses out on practically every single wonderful synchronism that has already been so painstakingly worked out by previous revisionist historians. Except perhaps for brief moments in relation to the Thirteenth Dynasty, and the Hyksos invasion, Rohl's "New Chronology" is not contiguous at any single point with the one that I have been proposing in this series.

28. Interesting, from the point of view of this reconstruction, is the fact that the "Story of Sinuhe" is retrospectively dated (since the extant versions of it that we have belong to the New Kingdom) to the Twelfth Dynasty. This fits in nicely with our reconstruction for the time of Moses. What doesn't fit in, however, is that the pharaohs named in the Sinuhe document are the early Twelfth Dynasty pharaohs, Amenemhet I and his son Sesostris I. According to the present reconstruction, these pharaohs ought rather to be the mid-Twelfth Dynasty pharaohs, Amenemhet III and Sesostris III. But see next footnote (29) for an explanation of the hybrid (from an historical point of view) nature of the Story of Sinuhe.

29. "Mountain of God", 158. Whilst I most heartily concur with Anati's view that the "Story of Sinuhe" shares a "common matrix" with Moses' adventure in Midian, I think that Anati could have allowed his description to have a much wider application, to include a "common matrix" with other Old Testament stories as well (apart from that of Moses in Midian). Let me explain. The more that I study the "Story of Sinuhe", the more convinced do I become that, whatever it may have been like in its original form, it is now primarily an amalgamation of episodes from the life of several famous biblical characters, in somewhat jumbled form, viewed retrospectively from the New Kingdom period of Egyptian history. For instance:

- the early Twelfth Dynasty setting for the story suits JOSEPH, rather than Moses. So, perhaps, the obscure 'harem' incident, due to which Sinuhe found himself in trouble, reflects the incident of Joseph and Potiphar's wife (Genesis 39:6-20);

- Sinuhe's flight from Egypt, and his adoption by the chieftain of the desert, certainly reflects aspects of MOSES' flight to Midian and sojourn there, as Professor Anati has appreciated;

- Sinuhe's duel with the great warrior of Palestine - one of the most famous incidents in the story - is, as many agree, very similar to the biblical account of DAVID'S battle with Goliath. Thus J. Kaster wrote of the "Story of Sinuhe", in "The Literature and Mythology of Ancient Egypt" (The Penguin Press), 23: "The reader will recognize several motifs of the folktale in the story, among them the victorious fight with the boastful, overconfident giant, recalling David and Goliath." K. Simpson, in "The Literature of Ancient Egypt" (Yale UP, 1973), 64, n.12, has drawn the same conclusion, typically adding that the account of the fight in Sinuhe "may have served as a literary prototype [sic]" for the biblical account of the David and Goliath duel. I personally believe that, apart from some obviously Egyptian flavouring in the story (for instance, its setting during the Egypt of the early Twelfth Dynasty), the "Story of Sinuhe" reflects more the adventures of the Israelite hero, David (his flight from Saul, his adoption by the Philistine king and the battles that he fought for him, his protestation of innocence) than of any other biblical character, including Moses. Since: "No trace of the real Sinuhe...has yet been found through tomb reliefs, statuary, or stelae" (Simpson, op. cit., 57), we may well be dealing here with a real, non-Egyptian hero (hence Israelite?) whom the Egyptians later incorporated into their own folklore.

30. "Mountain of God", 158. Before him, this same conclusion had been reached by I. Velikovsky, "Ages in Chaos", Vol. I (Abacus, 1953), 18-26; and D. Courville, op. cit., Vol. I, 129-131. David Rohl, op. cit., 283, refers favourably to Velikovsky in relation to his reconstruction of the Exodus.

31. I accept Dr. Courville's view that the First Intermediate Period of Egyptian history was also the same as the so-called Second Intermediate Period. Op. cit., I, e.g. 226. In conventional history, these two periods have been artificially (so I believe) separated the one from the other by about four centuries.

32. Dr. John Osgood has identified the contemporary EBIV culture, which continued on in some cases after the destruction of the EBIII culture, as being essentially a Transjordanian, Moabite culture. In "The Time of the Judges - The Archaeology: (a) Exodus to Conquest", Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, Vol.2 (1986), 66.

33. Rohl, op. cit., 279.

34. Ibid., 279-280.

35. Anati, op. cit., 280.

36. Cohen, op. cit.

37. Har Karkom, 19.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid., 21-22. If Anati's identification is correct, the so-called "Sinai Peninsula" might have to be re-named. Interestingly, St. Paul has stated quite explicitly that "Mount Sinai [is] in Arabia" (Galatians 4:25). That description is appropriate to Anati's location, but cannot possibly be applied to the Sinai Peninsula.

40. "Har Karkom". Here, Anati adds the following useful footnote: "Despite the sophisms of some scholars, in the concept of the biblical narration, Mount Sinai, Horeb and the 'Mountain of God' appear to be one and the same, just like Yahweh, Elohim and Adonai appear to be one and the same." One will also find, in Anati's "Mountain of God" and "Har Karkom", most plausible identifications of the other biblical mountains in the vicinity of Mount Sinai - namely, "Mount Seir" and "Mount Paran."

41. "Har Karkom", 15.

42. Ibid., 75.

43. Like all scholars to date, Anati struggles with the early phase of the Exodus, in the environs of Egypt. He lso favours the view that the Sea through which the Israelites passed was Lake Serbonis, rather than the Red Sea. A more intensive study of the MBI trail should make clear the whole situation, since - as Anati himself testified when replying to criticism that: "A bunch of nomads in the desert do not leave traces." "This statement is simply wrong. At Har Karkom and in other areas of the Negev and Sinai, we found traces of numerous camping sites belonging to nomads, from Palaeolithic times to Islamic times, but none from the Late Bronze Age". "Har Karkom," 22-23.The interested reader is strongly urged to peruse Anati's own detailed discussion, in his two books, of the Exodus and, especially, of the Wanderings routes.

44. "Har Karkom", 22.

45. Ibid., 23.

46. Ibid., 28.

47. Ibid., 15.

48. Ibid., 33-35.

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