The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-10-05
GREAT TEMPLE NEAR SINAI
CENTER OF WORSHIP AND SAC
 RIFICE OF SEMITIC WORLD.

Discoveries Regarding the Exodus of
 the Jews From Egypt-ResuIts of Dr. Petrie's Explorations Among the
 Remains of the First People of the Earth.
 By a series of bold and brilliant dis coveries the reward of arduous and sustained labor, Dr. Flinders Petrie has remolded the history of the East | ern Mediterranean during the last ten years. Spelling out the records of broken stone and shattered pottery, says the London Chronicle, he has given a new meaning to the word an- cient."
 l Greeks and Romans are now seen to have been mere moderns, almost tread | ing on our own heels, while far back we look down a long vista of culture and civilization, lasting through many thousand years and stretching, around the whole basin of the Inland Sea. 1 He and his friends-for I take him simply as the most prominent man of a group-have given us a new concep- tion of history, new reading of the l modern world, new idea of human l growth. They have literally dug out 1 from the bowels of the earth, in the | heat and solitude of exile, a new his 1 tory of man.
 Now they are extending their work further Hitherto Dr. Petrie's work has been mainly, I think entirely, in Egypt. But, like Moses, he has not always been on the best terms with 1 Pharaoh, and this year a small differ ence as to State rights has led to an exodus. Shaking the dust of Egypt from off his feet-happily without in sisting on any plagues-Mr. Petrie has gone several days, camel journey with the tents and his WOrkmen off into the wilderness, to dig there. Following l closely in the track of his precursor in exile, MT Petrie has gone to Sinai, and the results of a seasons work there are shown in small, crowded room with in the building of the London Univer- 1 sity in Gower street.
 Briefly, these stones seem to explain why Moses and his people wanted to go into the wilderness, for here, close to Sinai, Prof. Petrie and his workers have found what Is little less than a sort of Semitic Delphi-a great center of worship, prayer and sacrifice for the l whole Semitic world. It was Niebuhr who first discovered that there was a temple near Sinai. But it might have 1 3,,e n1a a to Osiris Isis or any of that motley crowd who dog the day and haunt the night of the modern Egyptian tour ist
 It has now been thoroughly dug up and has been discovered to be Semi tic temple, q temple for the Jews and their kindred races. It contains vast number of cubicles for pilgrims who went to dream dreams after the man ner of Jacob and Joseph, and hun dreds of. little Bethel" stones, which they erected, even as Jacob did. to celebrate really fortunate dream. Of course Dr. Petrie is much too cautious a student to- suggest any connection between this temple and the Jewish Exodus. , But may not the suggestion { at any. rate be thrown out that it was to this spot that Moses first wished to lead the Jewish exiles? Pharaoh, acting after his kind, refused to compromise, jI but are we quite sure that if he had the Jews might not have gone to Sinai, sacrificed there, and returned to Egypt?
 We cannot tell. When all, is said and done, the excavators in Egypt have come across very few traces of the Jewish captivity. That episode of Egyptian history figured very small in the immense perspective of dynsties The Egyptians probably regarded the Jews as very little people,. and looked over their heads with true im- perialist disdain. This" they said ''is the day of big empires" They had many such troubles with small nations l-wandering desert tribes, Philippians, "vile sons of Cush," and what not
 The Psychologists have done their best for the British Public, jealous of the Old Testament.
 There were so many civilizations in Egypt-so many tracks have been cov- cred up-that we must not be surpris- ed at finding few direct traces of the stay of the Jews. So many people were carried captive that Che memory of the Jews was lost among them. But that is what adds to the value of this Semitic temple at Sinai.
 One most astonishing thing about the find is the discovery of a great mass of burnt ashes, the remains of many thousands of burnt offerings, by other Semitic visitors-perhaps from Tyre or Sidon, or other parts of that great lSenite world which was eclipsed by the rise of Assyria. Some of the pilgrims who tried through the gate of dreams, to forsee the future must have died in that sterile valley. for Dr. Petrie has discovered tombs unlike any in Egypt -tombs built in the shape of beehives, and containing curious bracelets of shell. Or perhaps these were the lone- ly tombs of the Egyptian miners far from the embalmers, digging here for turquoies. Those miners kept their food in jars, and when they went home to Egypt they buried their jars for safety in the soil below their huts. Dr. Petrie has found many of these jars just as they were left. The min- CTS who left them never returned to dig them up. Who can tell what hap