Dophkah

harlotscurse (65)in #exodus • 7 years ago (edited)

Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah – Part 29

Part 1

Dophkah

After entering the Wilderness of Sin, the Israelites next encamp at a place called Dophkah. This, the Ninth Station of the Exodus, is included in the list of forty-two stations in the Book of Numbers, but neither it nor the Tenth Station (Alush) is mentioned in the Book of Exodus:

And they took their journey out of the wilderness of Sin, and encamped in Dophkah. And they departed from Dophkah, and encamped in Alush. (Numbers 33:12-13)

In the parallel narrative in the Book of Exodus, the Israelites pass directly from the Eighth Station, the Wilderness of Sin, to the Eleventh Station, Rephidim:

And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin, after their journeys, according to the commandment of the Lord, and pitched in Rephidim: and there was no water for the people to drink. (Exodus 17:1)

In the last two articles in this series, we came to the tentative conclusion that Wilderness of Sin referred to a coastal plain on the western side of the Sinai Peninsula, between Suez and Pharaoh’s Bath. We also saw that had the Israelites continued to follow the coast south of Pharaoh’s Bath, they would have been confronted with precipitous seacliffs at Jabal Hammam Fir’awn (Jebel Hammam Far’im, or the Mountain of Pharaoh’s Bath). It stands to reason that they must have turned inland somewhere north of Jabal Hammam Fir’awn and ascended one of the many wadis (seasonal river valleys) that lead up to the Tih Plateau in the interior of the peninsula. This is also what we would expect if the Israelites were now making for Midian, the homeland of Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro.

The wording in Numbers 33 seems to imply that Dophkah was reached after the Israelites had left the Wilderness of Sin behind them—that is, after they had begun their ascent up one of the wadis. But which wadi would they have ascended? There are only a few prospective candidates between Ras Sedr, which we have tentatively identified with the Seventh Station (By the Yam Suph), and Jabal Hammam Fir’awn:

The Sinai Peninsula

Wadi Wardan: This wadi enters the Gulf of Suez a few kilometres south of Ras Sedr. It does ascend all the way up to the summit of the Tih Plateau in the interior of the Sinai Peninsula, but if the Israelites took this route so soon after leaving Ras Sedr, they would not have had to encamp in the Wilderness of Sin, which is the next Station.
Wadi Gharandel: This valley reaches the Gulf of Suez about 10 km north of Jabal Hammam Fir’awn. It can be followed all the way up to the Tih Plateau, making it a plausible route taken by the Israelites. Its mouth lies about 40 km south of Ras Sedr. If the Israelites were covering 20-30 km per day, they would have had to camp overnight between the two—the Eighth Station of the Exodus, the Wilderness of Sin.
Wadi Useit: This is the last wadi before Jabal Hammam Fir’awn. It is not as long as Wadi Gharandel and does not reach all the way to the summit of the Tih Plateau. If Israelite scouts had reconnoitred this valley, they might have eliminated it as a viable route. Nevertheless, its upper reaches come close to the Wadi Gharandel, so perhaps it would have been possible to pass from the one to the other.

Many scholars have opted for one of the wadis south of Jabal Hammam Fir’awn (eg Wadi Humr (= Wadi Baba), Wadi Sidri, or Wadi Feiran). Some of these scholars may not have realized—or accepted—that Jabal Hammam Fir’awn would have presented an insuperable barrier. At low tide, it may be passable, though probably not with a slow-moving caravan of animals and people. Others, such as James K Hoffmeier, envisage the Israelites circumventing the bluffs before returning to the Gulf coast south of them (Hoffmeier 164-169). If, however, the Israelites were making for Midian, there is no reason why they would have returned to the coast once they had turned inland north of Jabal Hammam Fir’awn. It all depends on the location of their immediate destination.

Looking South-East Across the Debbet Er-Ramleh

Jabal Et-Tih

Jabal Et-Tih is an arid plateau that lies at an altitude of about 1 km in the interior of the Sinai Peninsula. The name is Arabic for Mountains of Wandering, which has led some scholars to associate it with the Exodus (Hoffmeier 44). Even if this is true, it does not follow that the name goes back to the time of the Exodus. It may have been bestowed on this region many centuries later simply because it was then thought that this was the scene of the Wandering in the Wilderness.

But why, one might ask, would the Israelites have taken the trouble of climbing to the top of the Tih Plateau when they could all the more easily have circumvented it by travelling east across Sinai to the north of the plateau. There are two possible answers to this conundrum:

In the interior of the peninsula, the higher one ascends, the cooler it gets (Hoffmeier 46). It may very well have been worth the extra effort to ascend the plateau in order to avoid the blistering heat of the lower ground. According to the Biblical accounts, it was early summer when the Israelites first reached this region. What’s more, the Israelites were heading south. Not only was it getting hotter day by day, it was also getting hotter the further south they went.
I am working on the hypothesis that Moses was currently making for his father-in-law Jethro’s home. Jethro lived in Midian, but in an earlier article in this series we concluded that Midian in those days covered a much larger region than it did a few centuries later. We also surmised that Jethro’s home lay in the vicinity of the Mountain of God, where Moses was soon to receive the Tablets of the Law.

It is quite possible that Jethro’s home lay in the mountains of southern Sinai. This would certainly explain why most traditions place the Mountain of God in this region. It also means that Hoffmeier’s route—circumventing Jabal Hammam Fir’awn before returning to the coast, and only heading inland by the Wadi Humr, Sidri or Feiran—comes back into play. I still think, however, that ascending to a cooler altitude as soon as possible would have made more sense than trudging through the lowlying desert in the Plain of El-Markha. The Plain of El-Kaa, which lies further south still, would have presented an even more unforgiving environment.

Temple of Hathor, Serabit El-Khadim

Egyptian Mines

Today the Tih Plateau is a barren and sparsely populated region: an unforgiving place to traverse in the best of conditions : an inferno in the worst. But in Pharaonic times, it was not completely desolate. The mountains of the plateau were well forested (Eckenstein 6-7) and constituted an important source of copper and precious stones for the ancient Egyptians:

Copper and turquoise were mined in the area of Wadi Maghara and Serabit el-Khadim in south-central Sinai. In these areas, hundreds of Egyptian texts have been found, ranging from simple graffiti to official inscriptions on large stelae, dating from the Third Dynasty (ca. 2650 b.c.) down to the Twentieth Dynasty (ca. 1100 b.c.). The Egyptians, Canaanites, and other Semites worked this region for copper, turquoise, and possibly lapis lazuli. (Hoffmeier 36)

These dates are, of course, those of mainstream Egyptology. In the Short Chronology, the Third Dynasty certainly preceded the Exodus—though Emmet Sweeney believes that the Exodus took place at the very end of this dynasty (Sweeney 30). The Twentieth Dynasty is placed much later, in the 4th century (c 380-343 BCE). Beads of turquoise have also been found in pre-dynastic tombs in Egypt, which suggests that the mines in Sinai had been worked for millennia (Eckenstein 3).

Some scholars have identified Dophkah with either Wadi Maghara or Serabit El Khadim. One scholar, Lina Eckenstein, has even identified Serabit with Mount Sinai, where Moses is alleged to have received the Tablets of the Law (Hoffmeier 166, Eckenstein 67).

While there is some similarity between the Biblical toponym d-ph-k-h and the Egyptian word for turquoise, mfk’t, only textual corruption can explain how the initial Egyptian m became the Biblical d. James Strong derives the name from a primitive Hebrew root meaning to knock, which tells us nothing. One of his alternative meanings, to overdrive, could be indicative of the fact that the Israelites were now negotiating a difficult uphill passage, requiring them to drive their beasts beyond their wonted strength (Orr 3067).

Strong’s Number 1850: Dophqâh

māfek, does not mean copper but refers to the light-blue stone known as turquoise. From this root, which involves the senses of light, blue, one can derive the sense: “to be enchanted, charmed, delighted” ...

Mafka, land of mafek, Sinai. (Pierret 193-194)

The Hieroglyphs for Māfek (Turquoise) and Mafka (Land of Turquoise)

The Mountain of God

Sooner or later we will have to confront the problem of identifying the Mountain of God. According to the list of the Stations of the Exodus in the Book of Numbers, there were four encampments between the Seventh Station (By the Yam Suph = Ras Sedr?) and the Twelfth Station (Wilderness of Sinai), where the Israelites camped before the mount (Exodus 19:2). If they covering 20-30 km per day, the route they followed must have been about 100-150 km long.

As the crow flies, Mount Sinai (Jebel Musa) and Mount Catherine lie about 170 km from Ras Sedr. Jebel Serbal lies 140 km away. Each is a potential candidate—especially if we are willing to accept that the list of stations in Numbers may be incomplete. Several stations mentioned in Numbers are not mentioned in Exodus. If the list in Exodus is incomplete, might not the list in Numbers also be incomplete? Nevertheless, Jebel Serbal is a better fit than the other two. On the other hand, the latter have more support in the scholarly community and are favoured by long-standing traditions.

But the Israelites were not crows. They were on foot, and their route was necessarily circuitous, as it followed the winding anfractuosities of the wadis. Serabit El-Khadim is only 95 km from Ras Sedr as the crow flies. On foot, it’s about 150 km via Wadi Gharandel, and less than 130 km via Hoffmeier’s route around Jabal Hammam Fir’awn and up Wadi Humr. If this was the Israelites’ current destination and if Moses had travelled this way before, he would have known the traditional route used by the Egyptian miners—believed to be via Wadi Humr and the Debbet Er-Ramleh, or Plain of Sand (Hoffmeier 165).

Perhaps we should take a closer look at Lina Eckenstein’s theory before proceeding.

Wadi Samra, Between Serabit El-Khadim and Wadi Maghara

To be continued ...

References

Lina Eckenstein, A History of Sinai, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London (1921)
Wilbur Fields, Exploring Exodus, College Press, Joplin MO (1976)
James K Hoffmeier, Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2005)
James Orr (General Editor), The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Volume 5, The Howard-Severance Company, Chicago (1915)
Paul Pierret, Vocabulaire Hiéroglyphique, F Vieweg, Paris (1875)
James Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Eaton & Mains, New York (1890)
Emmet Sweeney, The Pyramid Age, Ages in Alignment, Volume 2, Algora Publishing, New York (2007)