Note:According to Wikipedia, "The Tabun Cave contains a Neanderthal-type female, dated to about 120,000 years ago. It is one of the most ancient human skeletal remains found in Israel. A 2014 study of objects at Tabun suggests that ancestral humans used fire at the site on a regular basis since about 350,000 years ago."
I think that Tabun Cave marks the southernmost spread of the Neanderthals. The remains discovered at Skhul Cave seem to be Neanderthal-human hybrids of some kind:
"Skhūl yielded three fairly complete skulls and some well-preserved long bones. These resemble the remains of Neanderthals ... in having some rugged features (e.g., browridges), but they do not have the entire suite of unique traits that characterize Neanderthals. Some features of modern humans ... are also present." (Encyclopedia Britannica)
"Taking root around 12,000 years ago, agriculture triggered such a change in society and the way in which people lived that its development has been dubbed the 'Neolithic Revolution.' Traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyles, followed by humans since their evolution, were swept aside in favor of permanent settlements and a reliable food supply. Out of agriculture, cities and civilizations grew, and because crops and animals could now be farmed to meet demand, the global population rocketed—from some five million people 10,000 years ago, to more than seven billion today." Source: National Geographic.
"The wild progenitors of crops including wheat, barley, and peas are traced to the Near East region. Cereals were grown in Syria as long as 9,000 years ago, while figs were cultivated even earlier; prehistoric seedless fruits discovered in the Jordan Valley suggest fig trees were being planted some 11,300 years ago. Though the transition from wild harvesting was gradual, the switch from a nomadic to a settled way of life is marked by the appearance of early Neolithic villages with homes equipped with grinding stones for processing grain." (National Geographic)
"The Byzantine Empire was the continuation of the Roman Empire [see comment] in the Greek-speaking, eastern part of the Mediterranean. Christian in nature, it was perennially at war with the Muslims, Flourishing during the reign of the Macedonian emperors, its demise was the consequence of attacks by Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, and Ottoman Turks." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia.
Comment: The Byzantine Empire is usually referred to as the "Roman empire in the East," but I've never thought there was anything particularly Roman about the Byzantines. Romans weren't Greek-speaking Christians; they were pagans who spoke Latin. If you ask me, the real Roman empire had already ceased to exist for all practical purposes by the time Italy and the western provinces were overrun by Germanic tribes in the fifth century AD. The Byzantines retained Roman institutions, but they were essentially an Oriental kingdom, a kind of hybrid of western and eastern traditions.
According to this view, the Roman Empire collapsed as a culture long before it was conquered militarily. When Rome fell in the West, that was the end of it. Parts of its territory still remained, however, most of it in the East, but it's hard to see these surviving territories as Roman.
The picture is very complicated, naturally. There were similarities and differences beween the Roman and Byzantine empires. It would be surprising if nothing had carried over from the old world. As a general rule, civilizations aren't suddenly obliterated, leaving no trace behind. Collapse doesn't work that way. Kingdoms and empires rise and fall and evolve into new political systems, usually after a period of chaos and warfare. Zombie civilizations are common in history -- nations that still exist long after their cultures have died or changed out of all recognition. Christian Rome and the Roman Byzantine Empire are both good examples, I think, of zombie empires.
The Byzantine empire was a "continuation" of the Roman Empire in the sense that it was once part of the Roman empire with all of its legal and political institutions, but it was Roman in name only. The main difference, I think, was religious. Paganism had been outlawed and driven underground, replaced by Christianity, an essentially Oriental religion.
Here's a modern analogy. Let's say that the United States becomes a Muslim caliphate, but keeps all of its current institutions in place. There's a White House, a Congress, a Supreme Court, and so on. People still vote, but all the candidates are Muslims. The county courthouse still looks the same, but Christianity is illegal and the courts enforce Shariah Law. Then the western half of the country is invaded and overrun by savage barbarians who settle down and take over the existing legislative machinery. The eastern half of the country still survives as an independent nation, but is it American? The answer is obvious.
"'Yahweh came from Sinai' (Deuteronomy 33:2; Psalms 68:18). It is in Sinai that Moses first encounters Yahweh; it is back to Sinai that Moses leads Yahweh’s people from Egypt; and it is from Sinai that, two years later, on Yahweh’s order again, Moses sets off with them to conquer a piece of the Fertile Crescent.
"But where is Sinai, with its Mount Horeb [the mountain where God gave Moses the 10 commandments]? Exodus unequivocally places it in the land of Midian ...
"And where is Midian? Greek authors unanimously place it in northwestern Arabia, on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Aqaba [see map]. Even Paul the Apostle, who spent three years in Arabia, knew that 'Sinai is a mountain in Arabia' (Galatians 4:25). It was not before the 4th century that the biblical Sinai was misplaced in the Egyptian peninsula, probably for geopolitical reasons (Egypt was within the control of the Roman Empire, unlike Arabia, under Persian influence). But placing the biblical Sinai west of the Gulf of Aqaba didn’t make any sense, since that region had always belonged to Egypt (archeology has confirmed it). Why would the Israelites have settled there when chased by the Egyptian army?" Source: "The Arabian Cradle of Zion," by French historian Laurent Guyenot, The Unz Review. Image from World Atlas.
Comment: Whether you agree with Laurent Guyenot in general, he's right about one thing, at least. The idea that the biblical Mount Sinai / Mount Horeb is located on the Sinai peninsula doesn't make any sense at all. If the Jews were fleeing Egypt, why would they settle on Egyptian territory? Assuming this is actual history we're talking about here -- a very big assumption -- they would have left Egypt altogether and crossing the Gulf of Aqaba into Arabia would have been a good way to put some distance between them and the pharaoh. If that's what actually happened -- if the real Mount Sinai is in Arabia and not on the Sinai peninsula -- it would overturn centuries of accepted religious doctrine:
"The biblical Mount Sinai is one of the most important sacred places in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions. The summit [in Egypt] has a mosque that is still used by Muslims, and a Greek Orthodox chapel, constructed in 1934 on the ruins of a 16th-century church, that is not open to the public. The chapel encloses the rock which is considered to be the source for the biblical Tablets of Stone. At the summit also is 'Moses' cave', where Moses was said to have waited to receive the Ten Commandments." (Wikipedia)
The supposed Mount Sinai in Egypt. Is this just a pile of rocks in the middle of the desert?
I'm not sure how many Christians, Jews and Muslims still accept the idea that Mount Sinai is in Egypt. Some Christians, at least, have come around to the belief that the mountain is in Saudi Arabia and the idea seems to be gaining in popularity. The UNZ Review article quoted above points out the effect this is having on Middle Eastern politics:
"The growing popularization of the Arabian Sinai cannot be unrelated to the NEOM project announced in October 2017 by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: a high-tech, ultra-connected, transnational mega city and economic zone, covering 10,230 square-miles (about the size of Massachusetts), which happens to correspond roughly to ancient Midian."
There's a lot that could be said about the Saudis, the NEOM project and the war in Yemen, among other things, but never mind all that. The UNZ Review article is as much about the current politics of the region as it is about the actual location of the mountain where YHWH gave Moses the ten commandments, but I'm just interested in the ancient history here. I'm not going to comment one way or another about the political stuff, but I will say that there is something deeply sinister about the NEOM project.
Getting back to where Mount Sinai is actually located, it would be interesting to know if the conventional wisdom has been wrong all these years, but I'm not sure how anybody could prove that this or that pile of granite in the desert is the biblical mountain. You would need an ancient map or some kind of non-biblical documentary evidence to do that and nothing of the sort has been discovered as far as I know. But even if the question could be settled conclusively, what difference would it make?
Scholarly interest aside, the importance of all this depends on whether you believe that the Old Testament stories are true. Call me a skeptic, but I don't believe that YHWH appeared on a mountaintop in the form of a burning bush and gave Moses a list of commandments. I don't believe that YHWH exists in the first place and Moses himself is probably a mythological character:
"The modern scholarly consensus is that the figure of Moses is a mythical figure, and while, as William G. Dever writes, 'a Moses-like figure may have existed somewhere in the southern Transjordan in the mid-late 13th century B.C.', archaeology cannot confirm his existence. Certainly no Egyptian sources mention Moses or the events of Exodus–Deuteronomy, nor has any archaeological evidence been discovered in Egypt or the Sinai wilderness to support the story in which he is the central figure." (Wikipedia)
The Exodus itself, the founding myth of the Israelites, probably never happened as well:
"The consensus of modern scholars is that the Bible does not give an accurate account of the origins of Israel, which formed as an entity in the southern Transjordan region by the 13th century BCE from the indigenous Canaanite culture. There is no evidence that the Israelites were ever enslaved in ancient Egypt or even lived there and scholars broadly agree that the Exodus has no historical basis. There is a widespread agreement that the composition of the Torah or Pentateuch, the biblical books which contain the Exodus narrative, took place in the Middle Persian Period (5th century BCE), although the traditions behind it are older and can be found in the writings of the 8th-century BCE prophets." (Wikipedia)
In light of all this, the question of where Mount Sinai was located seems pretty much irrelevant.
"Until the 1980s, the Roman frontier in modern Jordan was among the least studied of the empire’s far-flung border regions. From 1980 until 1989, the Limes Arabicus Project investigated the frontier east of the Dead Sea. Excavation focused on the late Roman legionary fortress of el-Lejjun as well as soundings of four smaller but contemporaneous forts. The project’s regional survey recorded over five hundred other archaeological sites in the area, dating from the Paleolithic to the Late Islamic periods." Source: "The Roman Frontier in Central Jordan, Final Report of the Limes Arabicus Project," 1980-1989, Harvard University Press.
"This frontier, known as the LimesArabicus, spanned more than 1,300 kilometers from northern Syria to southern Palestine and the edges of the Arabian Peninsula. Recent research and excavations have done much to augment scholarly knowledge of this frontier, which served as the south-eastern defense of the Roman Empire for over six centuries, until it was eventually overrun by the Arab Muslim conquerors in the 630s. This frontier consisted not only—nor even primarily—of fortifications and watchtowers, but also of major nomadic tribal confederations, allied to Rome, which patrolled the desert and ensured the security of the eastern provinces by exercising control over nomadic movements both within and, to a certain degree, beyond the boundaries of the Roman Empire." Source: Ballandalus.
"Qasr Bshir [aka Mobene] belongs to the chain of forts and watchtowers that is known as the Limes Arabicus and was meant to protect the province of Arabia against roaming desert nomads. They were not extremely dangerous or exceptionally violent, but their dromedaries made them swift, and if trouble arose, they could pillage large parts of the Roman countryside. The Limes Arabicus had to counter this threat, and Mobene was one of the fortifications." Source: Livius.
Note: According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, the term limes originated "as a surveyor's term for the path that simultaneously marked the boundaries of plots of land and gave access between them. It came to be used in a military sense, first of the roads that penetrated into enemy territory and thence, as further conquest ceased, of the land boundaries that divided Roman territory from non-Roman. At this stage a whole paraphernalia of border control grew up--frontier roads with intermittent watchtowers and forts and fortlets to house the provincial garrisons which moved up to the frontier line. The term limes comes to embrace the totality of the border area and its control system."
Comment: Unlike the United States and Western Europe, the Romans understood the concept of borders.
"Jerash is the site of the ruins of the Greco-Roman city of Gerasa, also referred to as Antioch on the Golden River. Ancient Greek inscriptions from the city support that the city was founded by Alexander the Great and his general Perdiccas, who allegedly settled aged Macedonian soldiers there during the spring of 331 BC, when he left Egypt and crossed Syria en route to Mesopotamia. However, other sources, namely the city's former name of 'Antioch on the Chrysorrhoas', point to a founding by Seleucid King Antiochus IV, while still others attribute the founding to Ptolemy II of Egypt." Source: Wikipedia.
Note: According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), the city was "probably a Seleucid foundation."
"After the Roman conquest [of the region] in 63 BC, Jerash and the land surrounding it were annexed to the Roman province of Syria, and later joined the Decapolis league of cities. The historian Josephus mentions the city as being principally inhabited by Syrians, and also having a small Jewish community. In AD 106, Jerash was absorbed into the Roman province of Arabia, which included the city of Philadelphia (modern day Amman). The Romans ensured security and peace in this area, which enabled its people to devote their efforts and time to economic development and encouraged civic building activity." (Wikipedia)
"Jerash is considered one of the largest and most well-preserved sites of Roman architecture in the world outside Italy."
Note: According to Wikipedia, "The earliest Arab/Semitic inhabitants, who lived in the area during the pre-classical period of the 1st millennium BCE, named their village Garshu. The Romans later Hellenized the former name of Garshu into Gerasa. Later, the name transformed into the Arabic Jerash."
Before the Roman conquest, Gerasa / Jerash was captured by Alexander Jannaeus (103 - 76 BC), the second Hasmonean king of Judaea. The city "remained in Jewish hands until in 63 BC it became part of Roman Syria and of the Decapolis," according to the OCD. "It's prosperity, dependent on caravan trade, increased later when Trajan annexed Nabataea[1]. Gerasa, having become part of the Arabian province, enjoyed a 'golden age' under the Antonines."
[1] "Nabataea remained independent from the 4th century BC until it was annexed by the Roman Empire in AD 106, which renamed it Arabia Petraea." (Wikipedia)
"One particularly important temple in the city of Gerasa was the Temple to Artemis, built during the reign of the Emperor Antoninus Pius (138-161 AD). The temple was built on a prominent hill. The major temple for which the city is known was built during the reign of Antoninus Pius, circa 150 AD, but there is evidence of an earlier, smaller sanctuary to Artemis that existed as early as 79 AD. This indicates that the veneration of Artemis was already important in the city before the Antonine period. In addition to the temple to Artemis, there is also a temple to Zeus, another important deity in the city, to the south." Source: Ancient Origins.
"The city of Jerash went through many changes during its long existence, going from a Semitic village to a Greco-Roman metropolis, and eventually to an Arabized metropolis. The city however remained inhabited and was able to adapt to each epoch in which it found itself. It is for this reason that it could be considered an everchanging city."
"...Whereas many open-air settlements are thought to be short-lived and chosen for specialized tasks, 'Ein Qashish appears to be the site of repeated occupations each of which hosted a range of general activities, indicating a stable and consistent settlement system. The authors suggest that within a complex settlement system, open-air sites may have been more important for prehistoric humans than previously thought."
Comment: It's possible that early Christians borrowed elements from the cults of Mithras and Osiris when they were developing their new Jesus religion, but it's also possible that the similarities between these three savior gods simply reflect a common strain of religious ideas that had been in circulation in the ancient Mediterranean world for millennia.
Mithras and Osiris are much older than Jesus. The first mention of Osiris dates back to Egypt's Fifth Dynasty (~2494 to 2345 BC) and Mithras was "an ancient Indo-Iranian god adopted in the Roman empire as the principle deity of a mystery cult which flourished in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD), 3rd ed. revised.
The Osiris cult spread through the Roman empire after the Roman conquest of Egypt. Mithraism, popular with the legions, was introduced after the Roman conquests in the East. Christianity, an obviously syncretic religion with many pagan elements, evolved from a combination of Egyptian, Roman, Asiatic and Hellenized Jewish influences. In many cases, the early Christian church simply appropriated pagan ideas and festivals as part of its ongoing culture war against paganism.
Mithraism has many similarities to other religions of the time. The beliefs of the cult have to be pieced together from inscriptions and artwork, however. According to the OCD, "the cult is known primarily from its archaeological remains. Over 400 find-spots are recorded, many of them excavated meeting-places. These and the ... dedicatory inscriptions give a good idea of cult life and membership."
In the case of Christianity, it's hard to know whether the beliefs of the Jesus cult simply emerged through a process of syncretism or whether the Christians just stole their ideas from the pagan belief systems they were competing against. Both of these things probably happened at the same time. One way or another, the "new" religion was hardly original and it could have lost the culture war to Mithraism if it hadn't acquired enough secular power to suppress its competitors.
Is The Real Mount Sinai In Saudi Arabia?
"'Yahweh came from Sinai' (Deuteronomy 33:2; Psalms 68:18). It is in Sinai that Moses first encounters Yahweh; it is back to Sinai that Moses leads Yahweh’s people from Egypt; and it is from Sinai that, two years later, on Yahweh’s order again, Moses sets off with them to conquer a piece of the Fertile Crescent.
"But where is Sinai, with its Mount Horeb [the mountain where God gave Moses the 10 commandments]? Exodus unequivocally places it in the land of Midian ...
"And where is Midian? Greek authors unanimously place it in northwestern Arabia, on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Aqaba [see map]. Even Paul the Apostle, who spent three years in Arabia, knew that 'Sinai is a mountain in Arabia' (Galatians 4:25). It was not before the 4th century that the biblical Sinai was misplaced in the
Egyptian peninsula, probably for geopolitical reasons (Egypt was within the control of the Roman Empire, unlike Arabia, under Persian influence). But placing the biblical Sinai west of the Gulf of Aqaba didn’t make any sense, since that region had always belonged to Egypt (archeology has confirmed it). Why would the Israelites have settled there when chased by the Egyptian army?" Source: "The Arabian Cradle of Zion," by French historian Laurent Guyenot, The Unz Review. Image from World Atlas.
Comment: Whether you agree with Laurent Guyenot in general, he's right about one thing, at least. The idea that the biblical Mount Sinai / Mount Horeb is located on the Sinai peninsula doesn't make any sense at all. If the Jews were fleeing Egypt, why would they settle on Egyptian territory? Assuming this is actual history we're talking about here -- a very big assumption -- they would have left Egypt altogether and crossing the Gulf of Aqaba into Arabia would have been a good way to put some distance between them and the pharaoh. If that's what actually happened -- if the real Mount Sinai is in Arabia and not on the Sinai peninsula -- it would overturn centuries of accepted religious doctrine:
"The biblical Mount Sinai is one of the most important sacred places in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions. The summit [in Egypt] has a mosque that is still used by Muslims, and a Greek Orthodox chapel, constructed in 1934 on the ruins of a 16th-century church, that is not open to the public. The chapel encloses the rock which is considered to be the source for the biblical Tablets of Stone. At the summit also is 'Moses' cave', where Moses was said to have waited to receive the Ten Commandments." (Wikipedia)
The supposed Mount Sinai in Egypt. Is this just a pile of rocks in the middle of the desert?
I'm not sure how many Christians, Jews and Muslims still accept the idea that Mount Sinai is in Egypt. Some Christians, at least, have come around to the belief that the mountain is in Saudi Arabia and the idea seems to be gaining in popularity. The UNZ Review article quoted above points out the effect this is having on Middle Eastern politics:
"The growing popularization of the Arabian Sinai cannot be unrelated to the NEOM project announced in October 2017 by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: a high-tech, ultra-connected, transnational mega city and economic zone, covering 10,230 square-miles (about the size of Massachusetts), which happens to correspond roughly to ancient Midian."
There's a lot that could be said about the Saudis, the NEOM project and the war in Yemen, among other things, but never mind all that. The UNZ Review article is as much about the current politics of the region as it is about the actual location of the mountain where YHWH gave Moses the ten commandments, but I'm just interested in the ancient history here. I'm not going to comment one way or another about the political stuff, but I will say that there is something deeply sinister about the NEOM project.
Getting back to where Mount Sinai is actually located, it would be interesting to know if the conventional wisdom has been wrong all these years, but I'm not sure how anybody could prove that this or that pile of granite in the desert is the biblical mountain. You would need an ancient map or some kind of non-biblical documentary evidence to do that and nothing of the sort has been discovered as far as I know. But even if the question could be settled conclusively, what difference would it make?
Scholarly interest aside, the importance of all this depends on whether you believe that the Old Testament stories are true. Call me a skeptic, but I don't believe that YHWH appeared on a mountaintop in the form of a burning bush and gave Moses a list of commandments. I don't believe that YHWH exists in the first place and Moses himself is probably a mythological character:
"The modern scholarly consensus is that the figure of Moses is a mythical figure, and while, as William G. Dever writes, 'a Moses-like figure may have existed somewhere in the southern Transjordan in the mid-late 13th century B.C.', archaeology cannot confirm his existence. Certainly no Egyptian sources mention Moses or the events of Exodus–Deuteronomy, nor has any archaeological evidence been discovered in Egypt or the Sinai wilderness to support the story in which he is the central figure." (Wikipedia)
The Exodus itself, the founding myth of the Israelites, probably never happened as well:
"The consensus of modern scholars is that the Bible does not give an accurate account of the origins of Israel, which formed as an entity in the southern Transjordan region by the 13th century BCE from the indigenous Canaanite culture. There is no evidence that the Israelites were ever enslaved in ancient Egypt or even lived there and scholars broadly agree that the Exodus has no historical basis. There is a widespread agreement that the composition of the Torah or Pentateuch, the biblical books which contain the Exodus narrative, took place in the Middle Persian Period (5th century BCE), although the traditions behind it are older and can be found in the writings of the 8th-century BCE prophets." (Wikipedia)
In light of all this, the question of where Mount Sinai was located seems pretty much irrelevant.
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