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Moonrise over Har Karkom, a mountain in the Negev which is
the latest "hot" candidate for being the Real Mount Sinai.
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"Sculpture Garden" of flint rocks on summit of Har
Karkom--presumably a Paleolithic shrine of some sort (ca. 25,000 B.C.E.?).
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Twelve pillars at foot of Har Karkom (cf. Exodus 24:4).
No, they're not how I imagined that passage either--but they are pretty typical of
"standing stones" in cult sites in the area.
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Ancient rock art on slopes of Har Karkom. Cf. Dt.
8:12-17
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Relief map of the fertile crescent, from the Tower of David
Museum in Jerusalem. Medallions mark Egypt, Palestine, Asia Minor, and Mesopotamia.
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Bedouin garden in a wadi at the end of the valley below
Jebel Musa (the "traditional" Mt. Sinai in the Sinai Peninsula, with St.
Katherine's monastery at its foot). Although the land is very dry and seemingly
infertile here (see next picture), the soil is actually pretty rich and with water (note
well on left edge of picture), will grow generous crops. This garden (Hebrew gan,
cf. Gen 2:8-9; Persian pardes, Greek paradeisos) had lemon trees, oranges,
apples, figs, pomegranates, pears, and aspen for wood. Wall is to keep out
tree-chewing animals.
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Bedouin shepherd girl (small dark figure in center) tending
goats very near Jebel Musa. In the deep desert it is the adolescent girls rather
than boys who tend flocks (cf. Ex 2:16). This photo was taken from the same spot,
but looking in a different direction, as the previous one.
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Oasis in the Sinai, in the Um Bugma area.
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Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions in a turquoise mine at
Serabit-el-Khadim, a mountain to which the richer Egyptian pharaohs sent turquoise-mining
expeditions (turquoise was more precious than gold). The "mines" are
fairly shallow indentations into the rock; the yellow-stained sandstone on upper left is
the turquoise-bearing stratum. These inscriptions, dating from the 1400s to 1100s
BCE, were until recently (1999) the oldest known alphabetic writing in the world.
The wavy line is water, mym, representing the "m" sound; the shepherd's
crook (lmd) represents an "L" sound, and the eye (`yn) represents
the gutteral consonant `ayin. The alphabet used here is a direct predecessor
of our own.
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On the summit of Serabit-el-Khadim. While the Semitic
workers were carving inscriptions in the mines themselves, the Egyptian overseers were
erecting stelae to Hathor, goddess of the Sinai and turquoise.
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Vineyards in Sorek Valley (on the Shephelah, as you travel
from the Judean highlands towards the Philistine territory on the coastal plain) cf. Isa
5:2 where NRSV "choice vines" is literally "Sorek"
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The Mediterranean Sea at Ashkelon
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Bedouin boys watering their flocks at a well in the Judean
wilderness (they pulled up water in a bucket to fill the trough). White-shirted boy
is busy filling the trough to his left; the yellow-shirted boy is holding his flock back
until the other boy's flock is finished.
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Olive trees growing on terraces in the Bethlehem area.
The natural limestone layering provides a start for the terraces which are then
built up by hand labor.
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Street in Jerusalem
Out of Doors in the Holy Land |
Gate of David, Jerusalem
Out of Doors in the Holy Land |
Winnowing
Grant, Elihu |
The ford of the
Jordan where Je |
