The Route Through Sinai: Why the Israelites Fleeing Egypt Went South
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Footnotes
See Rudolph Cohen, “Did I Excavate Kadesh-Barnea?” BAR 07:03.
A tel or tell is an artificial mound formed by accumulated remains. “Tel” is the spelling used in Hebrew site names; “tell” is the spelling used in Arabic site names.
Another view (held by Zvi Ilan and supported by some other scholars) is that the mountain of Seir is not located in Jordan, but in east central Sinai close to the Negev Highlands. According to this view, this route starts in the Temed area and goes north via the Wadi Watir, the Wadi Shaireh and Jebel Shaireh (notice the similarity between the Arabic name Shaireh and the Hebrew name Sinai) to Kadesh-Barnea (see dashed line on map). In this view, Horeb/Sinai should be located in the area of Temed because “there are 11 days’ journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir unto Kadesh-Barnea” (Deuteronomy 1:2).
The mountain of God is called both “Horeb” and “Sinai” at different places in the Bible (see, for example, Exodus 3:1 and Deuteronomy 1:6 for “Horeb”; and Exodus 19:20, 34:29 for “Sinai”).
See Emmanuel Anati, “Has Mt. Sinai Been Found?” BAR 11:04.
From 1971 to 1982 I headed an archaeological expedition, on behalf of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, that investigated the archaeology of southern and eastern Sinai.
See my article, “Fifteen Years in Sinai,” BAR 10:04.
For the earlier date, see John J. Bimson and David Livingston, “Redating the Exodus,” BAR 13:05; for the later date, see Baruch Halpern, “Radical Exodus Redating Fatally Flawed,” BAR 13:06).
Endnotes
Itzhaq Beit-Arieh, “A Pattern of Settlement in Southern Sinai and Southern Canaan in the Third Millennium B.C.,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 243 (1981), pp. 31–54.
William M. Flinders Petrie, Researches in Sinai (New York: Dutton 1906); see also Beit-Arieh, “Fifteen Years in Sinai,” BAR 10:04; and Beit-Arieh, “Serabit el-Khadim: New Metallurgical and Chronological Aspects,” Levant 17 (1985), pp. 89–116.