The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1915-07-31

of the wilderness, a place hardly,
known to any human being before that
time; that there one of the most stu
pendous Genes in the history of man
kind was enacted-the revelation OF
the Ten Commandments to a people,
that was to transmit it to mankind.
The finding of the great Egyptian
temple near the Mount of Revelation
will be news to a large part Of the
thinking world, and will compel them
to very considerably revise their ideas
of the revelation. Now, perhaps. we
shall understand more fully. what is
meant in the Bible by that strange
story of the making of the golden calf
and its worship by the people.
Place Of the Golden Calf.
When the Israelites came to the
mountains of Sinai they found there
a well appointed Egyptian temple ded-
icated to Hathor, the mistress of the
turquoise; for here were great tur-
quoise mines upon which the Egyp-
tians had been drawing from time
immemorial, or ever since the first
dynasty, something like $3.50 B. G.
Here Flinders-Petri found a tablet of
victory inscribed in the nam of King
Senerkhat of this first dynasty; one
in the name of Senefru, 1850 B. c..
and other tablets, among which was
one of Khufu ", the builder of the
pyramid. But, most interesting yet.
there are tablets bearing the names
of Rameses ii, the Pharaoh of the OPP
preston of the ~Israelites, and OF
Merenpthah, the Pharaoh of the Exc
dus, proving that the temple was be-
ing used at the very time when the
| Israelites came to Mt. Sinai.
There are 1920 square miles of
comfortless country in the Sinai pc
n~insula, which forms Asia's juncture
with Africa. 1t was over this bridge
and through the Sinai desert that the
| Israelites wandered 40 years toward
their promised land, says the National
Geographic society.
PeopIed by sedouins.
The Suez canal divides Sinai from
Africa. The bordering Sinai is 230
miles long and $50 miles wide, OF
about the size of Ireland. Its whole
population does not exceed 5000, and
practically all of these are Bedouins,
who tent along the intermittent
streams and pasture their focks Of
goats and sheep in the deserts grudg-
ing oasis. The Wady Firan Is the
! most fertile and the best known of
these GASES. 1t is called the Pearl OF
Sinai" and here alone, 1t is said, has
earth enough of paradise to make the
Persian bulbul, sweetest of bird sing
ers, forget his roses and, content with
out them, sing his thousand songs.
In the early years of Christianity
the Sinai region was sought by many
of the sterner-purposed hermits, who
filled the numerous caves of its honey
combed hills and mountains.
Sinai has been called the best des-
ert in the world" by n Of its en-
thusiastic friends. However, with its
fearful scarcity OF water. with its end
less, burning stretches of yellow and
gray sands, with its bare and brown
ish rock masses, and with the night
songs of those children of the desert,
the iackal and the hyena. as the kind
est break in its monotony, 1t is GER
tain that those fighting in Sinais waste
will find their theater a fttingly grim
stage for the work they have to do.
boys or youths trained to the profess
sion by older actors. The first &C
tresses seen on the English stage APP
peared in a troupe OF French play
ers. male and female. which appeared
in London in 1929, more than ten
years after Shakespeare's death, and
their appearance was regarded az an
unauthorized invasion of English Gus