The Fact Of So Many Inscriptions Being Found Upon The Rocks Near The
Summit Of This Mountain, And Also In The Valley Which
[P.609] leads from its foot to Feiran, as will presently be mentioned;
together with the existence of the road leading up to the peak, afford
strong reasons for presuming that the Serbal was an ancient place of
devotion.
It will be recollected that no inscriptions are found either
on the mountain of Moses, or on Mount St. Catherine; and that those
which are found in the Ledja valley at the foot of Djebel Katerin, are
not to be traced above the rock, from which the water is said to have
issued, and appear only to be the work of pilgrims, who visited that
rock. From these circumstances, I am persuaded that Mount Serbal was at
one period the chief place of pilgrimage in the peninsula: and that it
was then considered the mountain where Moses received the tables of the
law; though I am equally convinced, from a perusal of the Scriptures,
that the Israelites encamped in the Upper Sinai, and that either Djebel
Mousa or Mount St. Catherine is the real Horeb. It is not at all
impossible that the proximity of Serbal to Egypt, may at one period have
caused that mountain to be the Horeb of the pilgrims, and that the
establishment of the convent in its present situation, which was
probably chosen from motives of security, may have led to the
transferring of that honour to Djebel Mousa.
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