Sinaï
or
Sina (
Σινᾶ). Now Jebel-et-Tur. A
cluster of dark, lofty, rocky mountains in the southern angle of the triangular peninsula
enclosed between the two heads of the Red Sea, and bounded on the north by the deserts on the
borders of Egypt and Palestine. The name, which signifies “a region of broken and
cleft rocks,” is used in a wider sense for the whole peninsula, which formed a
part of Arabia Petraea, and was peopled, at the time of the Exodus, by the Amalekites and
Midianites, and afterwards by the Nabathaean Arabs. Sinaï and Horeb in the Old
Testament are both general names for the whole group, the former being used in the first four
books of Moses , and the latter in Deuteronomy. The summit on which the Law was given was
probably that on the north, or the one usually called Horeb. There are a good many Nabathaean
inscriptions dating from the early centuries of our era carved on the rocks of Sinaï.
See Hull,
Mount Seir, Sinai, and West Palestine (London, 1885);
and
Euting, Sinaitische Inschriften (1892).