part four to six feet inside measurement, a few are larger, and many

of them contain one stone of larger size that was set up at one side of the enclosure and propped up by other stones. There were also some uprights without enclosures.

Similar uprights and enclosures are found in Syria; their devotional and commemorative origin is apparent from incidents related in the Bible.

Thus in the story of Jacob we read how, coming from Beersheba, he lighted on a certain place that was holy ground, and tarried all night because the sun was set. “And he took of the stones of that place and put them for his pillows” (Gen. xxviii. 11; LXX at his head). In the night he had his wonderful dream and on the following morning he set up the stone and poured oil on it and called it Bethel (_i.e._ house of El), saying, “And this stone which I have set for a pillar (_mazzebh_) shall be God’s house” (Gen. xxviii. 22). On another occasion he made a covenant with Laban in ratification of which he took a stone and set it up for a pillar (_mazzebh_), and called his brethren to take stones and make an heap (perhaps an enclosure), “and they did eat there upon the heap” (Gen. xxxi. 45, 46). Again when the Israelites camped in Sinai, Moses erected an altar, and set up twelve pillars (_mazzeboth_), and when they crossed the Jordan, Joshua took twelve stones from the river which he set up at the place which was known as Gilgal (Joshua iv. 1-9, 19-20). The name Gilgal in this case was associated with “rolling” away the reproach of Egypt (Joshua v. 9). But the word Gilgal signifies “circle of stone.”[26] In the Septuagint the word generally stands in the plural Galgala (Joshua iv. 19, 20, etc). If the single stones (_mazzeboth_) were set up inside circular stone enclosures, this would correspond with the way the uprights were set up at Serabit.

In the course of the Twelfth Dynasty, the Egyptians secured a foothold in Serabit where they erected inscriptions and steles, and commemorated the female divinity of the place under the name of Hathor. A statuette of Hathor was the usual gift to the shrine of the Pharaohs of this dynasty. Her cult was at first coupled with that of the moon-god Thoth as the representative of the neighbouring Maghara, later she appears alone or associated with the local divinity Sopd.

At Wadi Maghara, Hathor appears on one tablet following the ibis-headed Thoth, who faces the Pharaoh Amen-em-hat III (XII 6), as already mentioned (Fig. 5). On a corresponding tablet found at Serabit she is seen holding out to the same king a sceptre which supports the _ankh_ and the _dad_. There were many Hathors in Egypt, for Hathor here took the place of earlier mother-divinities in much the same way as the Virgin Mary took the place of local mother-divinities in Europe. The goddess Hathor in Sinai was generally represented wearing a head-dress that consists of a pair of horns which support the orb of the full moon, and she is described as mistress of the turquoise land, and later simply as mistress of turquoise (_mafkat_). Hathor stands for the unwedded mother-goddess who appears as Ishtar in Babylonia, as Ashtoreth in Canaan, and as the Queen of Heaven generally. At Serabit her name appears in script which may be Semitic. One of these inscriptions is on a figure of the usual squatting type that came out of the sanctuary (Fig. 7). Another is on a peculiar sphinx that is now in the British Museum. Others are on much-battered steles that were carved on the rock in the mine along the valley marked number 7 (Fig. 6). The name consists of a sequence of four signs, which Dr. Alan Gardiner reads as Ba-alat: “Almost every Egyptian inscription from Serabit names the goddess Hathor, and there could not possibly be a better equivalent for the name of this goddess than Ba-alat.”[27]

The name Ba-alat recalls Alilat whom Herodotus (_c._ B.C. 450) named as the chief divinity of Arabia (iii. 8), and who reappears as Al-Lat in the Koran (_c._ A.D. 630). Al-Lat had her sanctuary at Taïf, about forty miles north-north-east of Mecca, which consisted of a cave in an upland plain in which clothes, jewels, incense, silver and gold, were stored. The goddess was held to be incarnate in a white rock that was afterwards seen lying under the mosque, and which was described by Hamilton and by Doughty as a mass of white granite now shattered with gunpowder and shapeless.[28] Appropriated to the sanctuary at Taïf was a guarded and reserved tract of land, the _hima_, where no _idah_-tree might be cut and no animal hunted, and the reluctance of Mohammad to dislodge the goddess was shared by the Taïfites, to whom the gatherings near the shrine were a source of wealth.

Another cave sanctuary at El Nakhl, not far from Mecca, which was associated with El Uzza, likewise consisted of a cave with accumulated wealth and owned a reserved tract of land or _hima_.[29] The arrangement at Serabit was apparently the same, and proves the Arabian or Semitic origin of the place.

The excavations at Serabit, moreover, led to the discovery of temple furniture such as served the “Queen of Heaven” elsewhere.

Thus several short stone altars were found, of which one, broken in half, was 22 inches high with a cup hollow on the top, 3½ inches wide and one inch deep. Another was described as “well finished, and on the top the surface was burnt for about a quarter of an inch inwards, black outside and discoloured below. This proves that such altars were used for burning, and from the small size, 5 to 7 inches across, the only substance burnt on them must have been highly inflammable, such as incense,”[30]

Two rectangular altars cut in stone were also found, each with two saucer-like depressions, ten inches wide all over, and seven inches across inside, which “might well be for meat offerings, or cakes of flour and oil, a kind of pastry.”[31] According to a passage in Jeremiah, the Israelite women, who repudiated visiting the sanctuary of the Queen of Heaven without their husbands, which was forbidden to them, said, “And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink-offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink-offerings unto her, without our men?” (Jer. xliv. 19). The utterance shows that offerings in food and drink as well as incense burning was customary in the cult of the Semitic goddess.

Offerings that consisted of cakes continued in Arabia into Christian times. For Epiphanius of Cyprus († 403), in his book, _Against all Heresies_, denounced certain Christians as Collyridians, from the cakes which they placed under an awning and offered in the name of the Virgin.[32]

Hathor, however, was not the only divinity whose cult was located at Serabit. While the larger of the two caves was appropriated to her, the smaller adjacent cave was associated with Sopd, who was repeatedly named here from the reign of Amen-em-hat III (XII 6) onwards. One inscription of the sixth year of this king named him together with Hathor. Another of the forty-second year mentioned Sebek-didi who set up an inscription and described himself as “beloved of Hathor; mistress of the _mafkat_-country; beloved of Sopd, lord of the east; beloved of Sneferu and the gods and goddesses of this land.”[33]

The special association of Sopd with the Pharaoh Amen-em-hat III is shown by an open hall that was erected outside the temple at Serabit in the course of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the decoration of which caused Prof. Petrie to call it the hall of the kings. On the inner wall of this building are the figures of the divinities and the kings who were especially associated with Serabit. Among them is Sopd who is seen holding in one hand an _ankh_, in the other a staff of justice, and who follows the Pharaoh Amen-em-hat III.[34] Sopd during the Eighteenth Dynasty was reckoned the equal of Hathor. For the entrance to a mine that was opened conjointly by Queen Hatshepsut and her nephew Tahutmes shows Tahutmes offering incense to Hathor and Hatshepsut in a corresponding scene offering incense to Sopd.

The divinity Sopd has no place in the older Egyptian pantheon, and is to all appearance an Egyptianised divinity of Semitic origin. He is named among the gods who are favourable to the Pharaoh Sen-usert I (XII 2) in the so-called _Tale of Sanehat_, which describes an incident of the time and is looked upon as a genuine historical account.[35] The cult of the god seems to have gained a firm foothold in connection with the forced retreat of the Mentu people. For it says in a nome text of Edfu, “Shur is here Sopd, the conqueror of the Mentu, lord of the east country, and in Edfu golden Horns, son of Isis, powerful god Sopd.”[36]

One mention of Sopd in Egypt is on a tablet of Sen-usert II (XII 4) that was found in the temple of Wadi Qasus in the desert of Kossayr on the borders of the Red Sea. On it Sopd is described as “lord of the eastern foreigners (_sut_), and of the east (Neb-Apti).”[37]

The description “lord of the east,” refers to the cult of Sopd in the land of Goshen, the twentieth nome of Lower Egypt, the capital of which, Pa-kesem, was known also as Per-Sopd, _i.e._ the House of Sopd. The amulet of Sopd at Per-Sopd was of turquoise, which bore out his connection with Sinai. An Egyptian text, moreover, described Sopd as “noblest of the spirits of Heliopolis.”

Now the Syrians or Hebrews, as already stated, had a foothold at Heliopolis since the days of Abraham, while the land of Goshen, as we know, was allotted to the Israelites. The inference is that Sopd who had a sanctuary in Sinai, had sanctuaries in Heliopolis and in the land of Goshen also. The study of these sanctuaries shows that they had features in common with some of the early sanctuaries in Palestine.

The ancient city Per-Sopd in Egypt, known as Phakusa in Greek, and as Kesem in the Septuagint, is now called Saft-el-Henneh. The change from Sopd to Saft suggests a possible origin of certain place names in Palestine, including Tell-es-Safi, which is situated between Jerusalem and Gaza, and Safed, which is situated north of the Sea of Galilee. Both of these were hallowed by ancient religious associations.

Modern Safed occupies a conspicuous position on the summit of a mountain. Together with Jerusalem, Hebron and Tiberias, it ranked as a holy city of Palestine.[38] It is named Tsidphoth in the _Travels of an Egyptian Mohar_,[39] and is Tsapheth in the Talmud, and Sephet in the Vulgate of Tobit.

On the other hand Tell-es-Safi, situated between Jerusalem and Gaza, was identified as a High Place of Burning by recent excavations. Possibly it was Gath of the Bible, one of the five holy cities of Palestine. The excavations at Tell-es-Safi led to the discovery of features which recall the arrangements at Serabit in Sinai. At a depth of 11 to 21 ft. the pre-Israelite ground was reached, on which stood several pillars (_mazzeboth_), some of which were enclosed in the largest of several chambers that were built on slightly higher level. The long wall of the chamber which included the uprights, had a break, roughly in the form of an apse that was 4 feet 5 inches wide and 2 feet 4½ inches deep. A rude semicircle built of stone stood 20 inches high from the ground a distance of a few feet, facing it.[40] This apse corresponds with the recess at the back of the cave of Sopd in Sinai.

The likeness between the place names Per-Sopd, modern Safet in Egypt, and the place names Sephet, modern Safed, and Safi in Palestine, suggests that the cities in Palestine also were the site of a shrine of the Semitic divinity who figures in Egypt and in Sinai under the name Sopd. It is possible that Sopd is the verbal equivalent of the Hebrew word _shophet_, Phœnician _sufet_, which signifies judge. Among the early Semites the sanctuary was the seat of justice, and the priests were its administrators, who, in this capacity, gave out the pronouncements. As such they were sacred and, with reference to the joint divinities (El) of the tribes, they were at first called Elohim, later Kohanim. The word shophet itself indicates the Supreme Judge, as in the passage, “Shall not the Judge (shophet) of all the earth do right?” (Gen. xviii. 25), while the relation between the Judge and His administrators is indicated by the words, “And the heavens shall declare his righteousness, for Elohim is Shophet himself” (Psa. l. 6).

The shrine of Sopd in Sinai and the one at Per-Sopd in Egypt, perhaps the one at Heliopolis also, served the same purpose as the shrine at Tell-es-Safi. The priest would stand in the recess with his face towards the suppliant, who, at Safi, stood in the low semicircle.

In Sinai the cave of Sopd was adjacent to that of the moon-goddess (Fig. 8). According to information already cited, a shrine at Heliopolis where Sopd was “noblest of spirits” dated from the “Hermiouthians,” who came there with Abraham, while Hermiouthian sanctuaries were erected in Goshen by the brethren of Joseph. We are left to infer that a shrine of Sopd, presumably a centre for the administration of justice, was connected here also with the localised cult of the moon.

Other features at Serabit confirm the non-Egyptian character of the cult of Sopd. Thus, on the northern approach to the temple stood a stone tank measuring 54 by 32 inches, with a hollow of 37 by 17 inches. Inside the temple area, in one of the courts which were built in the Eighteenth Dynasty, stood a circular tank, 31 inches across with a hollow of 25 inches, and another rectangular tank, 44 by 30 inches stood in the same court, and a further rectangular tank in the hall on the approach to the lower cave. The disposition of these tanks was such that the worshipper who approached the temple from the north, passed the tank outside and the various other tanks on his way to the lesser cave. The use of tanks outside and inside the temple, is foreign to Egypt. They are in keeping with the _apsu_ or stone tank of the Babylonian temple; and with the regulations of Moses regarding the laver that stood between the entrance to the temple and the altar (Exod. xxx. 18). In Jerusalem in the temple of Solomon was a “molten sea” that was round about, and there were ten lavers of brass, five on the right and five on the left side of the house. (1 Kings vii. 23, 38, 39). A similar arrangement prevails to this day in the Arab mosque. Outside stands the well or place for legal washings _ghusl_, and inside is the circular tank for ablution _wazur_.[41] The tanks at Serabit were therefore connected with the cult of Sopd, and their presence confirms the Semitic character of the place.