The Land of Midian (Revisited) Volume II Part 32

[EN#24] In Cairo generally called Espadrilles, and sold for 1.25 francs. Nothing punishes the feet at these alt.i.tudes so much as leather, black leather.

[EN#25] The explorers laid this down at a few hundred feet. But they judged from the eye; and probably they did not sight the true culmination. Unfortunately, and by my fault, they were not provided with an aneroid.

[EN#26] See Chap. V.

[EN#27] For the usual interpretations see Chapter I. The Egyptians, like other nations, often apply their own names, which have a meaning, to the older terms which have become unintelligible. Thus, near Cairo, the old G.o.ddess, Athor el-Nubi ("of the Gold"), became Asr el-Nabi ("the Footprint of the Apostle").

[EN#28] "The Gold-Mines of Midian," Chap. XI.

[EN#29] See Chap. XI.

[EN#30] Chap. XII.

[EN#31] Chap XV.

[EN#32] Chap. XV.

[EN#33] Vol. ii. Chap. X. I have also quoted him in "The Gold-Mines of Midian," Chap. VI.

[EN#34] My "Pilgrimage" (Vol. I. Chap. XI.) called it "Sherm Damghah": it is the "Demerah" of Moresby and the "Demeg" of 'Ali Bey el-'Abbasi (the unfortunate Spaniard Badia).

[EN#35] See "The Gold-Mines of Midian," Chap. VII.

[EN#36] The old being the cla.s.sical (Iambia Vicus), in north lat. 24. This is Yambu' el-Nakhil, in Ptolemy's time a seaport, now fifteen miles to the north-east (north lat. 24 12'

3"?) of the modern town. The latter lies in north lat. 24 5' 30"

(Wellsted, ii. II), and, according to the Arabs, six hours' march from the sea.

[EN#37] Vol. I. pp. 364, 365.

[EN#38] "The Gold-Mines of Midian," Chap. IX.

[EN#39] Chap. VI. describes one of the sporadic (?) outcrops near Tayyib Ism; and Chap. IX notices the apparently volcanic sulphur-mount near El-Muwaylah.

[EN#40] See Chap. IX.

[EN#41] "The Gold-Mines of Midian," Chap. XII.

[EN#42] See "The Gold-Mines of Midian," Chap. VIII.

[EN#43] "Pilgrimage," Vol. I. Chap. XI.

[EN#44] In "The Gold Mines of Midian" (Chap. IV.) I unconsciously re-echoed the voice of the vulgar about "the harbour being bad and the water worse" at El-Wijh.

[EN#45] This style of writing reminds me of the inch allah (Inshallah!) in the pages of a learned "war correspondent"--a race whose naive ignorance and whose rare self-sufficiency so completely perverted public opinion during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78.

[EN#46] Not Shaykh Hasan el-Marabit--"Pilgrimage," Vol. I. Chap.

XI.

[EN#47] "Pilgrimage," Vol. I. Chap. XI., where it is erroneously called "Jebel Hasan;" others prefer Hasa'ni--equally wrong.

Voyagers put in here to buy fish, which formerly was dried, salted, and sent to Egypt; and, during the Hajj season, the Juhaynah occupy a long straggling village of huts on the south side of the island.

[EN#48] There are now no less than three lines of steamers that connect the western coast of Arabia with the north. The first is the Egyptian Company, successively called Mejidiyyah, Aziziyyah, and Khediviyyah, from its chief actionnaire: the packets, mostly three-masted screws, start from Suez to Jeddah every fortnight.

Secondly, the Austro-Hungarian Lloyd which, with the subvention of 1400 per voyage, began in 1870 to ply monthly between Constantinople, Port Sa'id, Suez, Jeddah, and Hodaydah: it has been suspended since the beginning of the Russo-Turkish war.

Thirdly, the British India Steam Navigation Company sends every three weeks a s.h.i.+p from London via the Ca.n.a.l to Jeddah, Hodaydah, and Aden. A fourth is proposed; Bymen's (Winan's?) steamers are establis.h.i.+ng a London-Basrah (Ba.s.sorah) line, in whose itinerary will be Jeddah.

[EN#49] The observation was taken on board the Sinnar, by the first lieutenant Nasir Effendi Ahmed: of course I am not answerable for its correctness, although the lat.i.tude cannot be far out. Thus the difference of parallel between it and El-Wijh (north lat. 26 14') would be sixty-eight direct geographical miles.

[EN#50] Beni Kalb: so the Juhaynah were called in the Apostle's day.

[EN#51] The site was probably near the Shaykh's tomb, where there are wells which in winter supply water.

[EN#52] This is the volume which I have translated: see also Dr.

Beke's papers in the Athenaeum (February 8 and 15, 1873).

[EN#53] See "Mount Sinai a Volcano" (Tinsleys). For a list of Yakut's volcanoes, see Dr. Beke, "Sinai in Arabia," Appendix, p.

535.

[EN#54] Vol. II. p. 187.

[EN#55] "The Gold-Mines of Midian," p. 213.

[EN#56] As regards these and similar graffiti see (Athenaeum, March 16, 1878) an excerpt from the last Comptes Rendues of the Acad. des Inscript. et B. Lettres, Paris. The celebrated M.

Joseph Halevy attacked in their entirety (about 680) the rock-writings in the Safa desert, south-east of Damascus. The German savants, mostly attributing them to the Saba tribes, who immigrated from Yemen about our first century, tried the Himyaritic syllabaries and failed. M. Halevy traces them to the Beni Tamud (Thamudites), who served as mercenaries in the Roman army, and whose head-quarters we are now approaching. They contain, according to him, mostly proper names, with devotional formulae, similar to those of the Sinaitic inscriptions and the Kufic and later epigraphs which we discovered. For instance, "By A., son of B., in memory of his mother; he has accomplished his vow, may he be pardoned." The language is held to be intermediate between Arabic and the northern Semitic branches. Names of the Deity (El and Loo or La'?) are found only in composition, as in Abd-El ("Abdallah, slave of El"); and the significant absence of the cross and religious symbols remarked in the Syrian inscriptions, denotes the era of heathenism, which lasted till the establishment of Christianity, about the end of the third century. "At that time," M. Halevy says, "Christianity became the official religion of the Empire; doubt and scepticism penetrated amongst those Arabic tribes which were the allies of Rome, and amongst whom, for a certain time, a kind of vague Deism was prevalent until the day when they disappeared, having been absorbed by the great migrations which had taken place in those countries."

[EN#57] Some call it so; others Umm Karayat: I have preferred the former--"Mother of the Villages," not "of Villages"--as being perhaps the more common.

[EN#58] See Chap. XIX.

[EN#59] Vol. II. Chap. X.

[EN#60] This rock, a.s.sayed in England, produced no precious metal. As has been said, gold was found in its containing walls of quartz.

[EN#61] This is the valley confounded by Wallin and those who followed him (e.g. Keith Johnston) with the Wady Hamz, some forty miles to the south.

[EN#62] See the ill.u.s.tration, "Desert of the Exodus," p. 306.

[EN#63] Vol. II. Chap. X.

[EN#64] Described in "The Gold-Mines of Midian," Chap. XII.

[EN#65] Chap. XVIII.

[EN#66] The barbarous names, beginning from the west, are Jebels Sehayyir, 'Unka ("of the griffon"), Marakh (name of a shrub), Genayy (Jenayy), El-Hazzah, El-Madhanah, Buza'mah, and Urnuwah.

[EN#67] Dr. C. Carter Blake examined the four brought home, and identified No. 1, superior pharyngeal bone and teeth (Scarus); No. 2, inferior bone and teeth of a large fish allied to Labrus or Chrysophrys; No. 3, left side, pre-maxillary, possibly same species; and No. 4, lower right mandible of Sph?rodon grandoculis, Ruppell.

[EN#68] The MS. of this geographer was brought to light by Professor Sprenger, and Part I. has been published by Professor de Goeje in his "Bibliotheca Geographarum Arabicorum," here alluded to.

[EN#69] We have seen (Chap. II.) that the Arabs of Midian mistake iron for antimony; and the same is the case in the Sinaitic Peninsula.