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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2011
One of the incidental, but, as it proved, important results of the Harvard Expedition to Mount Sinai in 1927 was the rediscovery of the Sinaitic inscriptions on Serabit el-Khadim, a desolate mountain in the interior of the peninsula, rendered famous by the ruins of a temple of the Egyptian goddess Hathor and by many exhausted turquoise mines.
1 To the literature on the subject mentioned in the Harvard Theological Review, XXI, 1928, pp. 1–3, 9–11, and in Revue Biblique, 1930, p. 146, should now be added articles in the Revue Biblique, 1925, pp. 597 ff.; 1927, pp. 275 ff.; 1928, pp. 158 ff., 613ff.;1930, pp. 146 ff. (with a full bibliography); also articles by A. E. Cowley, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 1929, pp. 200ff., and by J. Leibovitch, Zeitschrift der deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 1930, pp. 1ff., as well as Weill, R., La presqu'lle du Sinai, Paris, 1908Google Scholar.
2 We wish to emphasize how much we owe to the kindness of the Sinai Mining Company, and especially to Mr. Hoops, the financial agent at Umbogma.
3 Later on, Professor Blake found traces of copper carbonate in one of the Serabit mines; but it had not been worked.
4 We endeavored to find and photograph this graffito the following year, but a prolonged search was unsuccessful.
5 See Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, February 1931, pp. 27 f.
6 Petrie copied the inscriptions in the cave and it was formerly impossible to photograph there. We finally succeeded in getting some negatives of part of the inscriptions; these are reproduced in plates VIII, IX.
7 See plate VII.
