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Number

HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

HOW THE CODEX
WAS FOUND

A NARRATIVE OF

TWO VISITS TO SINAI

/

From Mrs. Lewis's Journals
i 892- 1 893

BY

MARGARET DUNLOP GIBSON

CambrfoGe

MACMILLAN AND BOWKS
1893

CAMBRIDGE

PRINTED BY JONATHAN PALMI

ALEXANDRA STREET

CONTENTS

PAGE

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI i

IDENTIFICATION OF THE CODEX ... 70

A GREEK DESCRIPTION OF SINAI, from Perikles

Gregoriados . . . . .82

ST. SYLVIA OF AQUITAINE . . . .108

SECOND VISIT TO SINAI . . . .124

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACSIMILE PAGE OF THE CODEX (Luke vii. 39

—VIII. 2) .... Frontispiece

ST. CATHERINE'S CONVENT, MOUNT SINAI page 41

HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI

The narrative of these two journeys is of
special interest, because the first one, that
made by my twin sister, Mrs. Lewis, and
myself, in 1892, led to the discovery of an
early and important codex of ancient Syriac
gospels, as well as of three other valuable
codices of later date ; while that made by us
this year in company with the late Professor
Bensly and his wife, Mr. J. Rendel Harris,
and Mr. and Mrs. F. C. Burkitt was under-
taken for the purpose of deciphering the
precious manuscript to which we have
alluded.

2 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

Abler pens than mine will write about
these Syriac gospels. It is impossible to
predict what may be their future influence
on theological thought ; yet on me devolves
the task of telling how the codex was found,
having been, to use a scriptural expression,
an eye-witness of these things from the
beginning. Many inaccurate statements have
been made by too hasty writers in our public
prints, and it has occurred to me that the
best means of removing misconceptions on
the subject is to reprint my sister's journal of
our trips to Sinai in 1892 and 1893, from
the columns of the Presbyterian Churchman y
which has welcomed the narratives of all her
journeys for the last twelve years. A con-
temporary account written from day to day
by the chief actor in any event, however
artless and unrestrained in style, is of the
first quality in historical value. I will there-
fore confine myself to filling up the gap

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 3

between the two journals, and giving a short
account of the convent of St. Catherine.
Suffice it to say here that only three persons
were present when the codex was found in
February 1892, viz. Father Galakteon, the
monk-librarian of the convent, Mrs. Lewis,
and myself. Two of this trio being com-
pletely innocent of Syriac, my sister was
practically alone in discovering the codex,
though she will never cease to feel grateful
to the distinguished scholar who had put her
on the track of it.

For many years my sister had been
desirous of going to Mount Sinai, simply on
account of its hallowed associations, and
because my dear husband had visited it
before our marriage on his way to Petra.
I cannot say that the library or its MSS.
were chiefly in her thoughts, but the publica-
tion by Mr. J. Rendel Harris in the winter
of 1 89 1 of the Apology of Aristides, which

4 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

he had found there two years previously,
renewed her eagerness, and Mr. Harris
himself did more than encourage her by
vigorously expressing the opinion that some-
thing more might be got out of the early
Estrangelo MSS. in the convent library, and
by his suggestion that she should allow him
to teach her the art of photographing such
MSS. He even designed a MS. stand for
us, in order to avoid the difficulties he had
himself experienced ; but while we went to
Sinai, he went to Jerusalem and Athos. We
had a secret consciousness before starting
that we were otherwise not badly equipped
for the task of finding something valuable, if
there were anything valuable to be found.

We had many years previously studied
ancient Greek with the modern pronuncia-
tion (for which idea, it need hardly be said,
we were indebted to our genial friend, Pro-
fessor John Stuart Blackie), and whilst

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 5

travelling through Greece we had found our
pronunciation invaluable, and had acquired
some fluency in the modern idiom. We had
been lodged on several occasions in Greek
monasteries, and found intercourse with their
inmates both pleasant and amusing ; we had
also occasionally had instructive interviews
with dignitaries of the Greek Church, so that
we anticipated no difficulty in making friends
with the custodians of the library. My sister's
book, too, " Glimpses of Greek Life and
Scenery," published by Messrs. Hurst and
Blackett in 1883, and translated into Greek
by Dr. I. Perbanoglos, had won for her the
reputation of being a Philhellene among a
people who, whatever may be their faults,
can never be accused of want of gratitude,
as they have shown to my sister in many
unexpected ways.

After having studied Arabic and then
Hebrew for some years, Mrs. Lewis had not

6 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

found Syriac at all difficult, and had been
instructed in it by the Rev. R. H. Kennett
of Queens' College. Mr. Kennett has not
yet visited the Highlands, so can hardly be
credited with the gift of second sight, yet it
is a fact that he said to her one day shortly
before she left for Sinai, " Mrs. Lewis, you
will be editing a Syriac book one of these
days." Little did either of them think what
book it was to be.

Without further preface, I will now proceed
to introduce Mrs. Lewis's diary for 1892.

I
Towards the end of 1891 my sister, Mrs.
James Y. Gibson, and I resolved to carry
out our long-cherished plan of visiting the
scene of one of the most astonishing miracles
recorded in Bible history — -a miracle which
has hitherto baffled the most determined
opponents of the supernatural in history to

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 7

explain^ away ; the passage of the Israelites
through the desert of Arabia, and the spot
where a still more impressive event occurred,
the secluded mountain-top where the Deity
first revealed Himself to mankind as a whole,
not simply to the few chosen ones whom He
had, from time to time, consecrated to be the
exponents of His will to their fellow-men.

Our intentions soon became known to a
few of our Cambridge friends, and we were
almost overwhelmed by offers of kindly help
and suggestions as to how our visit might
be made useful. Mr. Rendel Harris, who
visited the Convent of St. Catherine in 1889,
and there made the happy discovery of the
Apology of Aristides, not only insisted on
teaching us photography, but lent us his own
camera, and accepted with Christian resigna-
tion all the little injuries we did to it. As
he reported the existence in the convent of
some hitherto unpublished Syriac MSS., I

8 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

began to study the grammar with the help of
the accomplished young Syriac Lecturer of
Queens' College, whilst another equally
enthusiastic scholar, Mr. F. C. Burkitt, was
kind enough to teach me how to copy the
ancient Estrangelo alphabet.

The Regius Professor of Divinity asked
us to collate two tenth-century MSS. of the
Septuagint, and the Professor of Geology to
bring him a specimen of what is called
"granite graphites," a variety where the
hornblende has so disintegrated itself from
the rest of the stone as, when polished, to
present a surface suggestive of being written
over in Arabic characters. Sceptics pretend
that Moses deceived the children of Israel
by showing them a bit of this as the Tables
of the Law, but of course this is pure non-
sense, for a rock that is common to the whole
district of Horeb must have been quite
familiar to the Hebrews. So our journey

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 9

promised to be none the less interesting
because we expected to make some scientific
profit out of it, and we could afford to laugh
at the prediction that, being women, we
might possibly be refused admission into a
Greek convent. Our only fear was that,
being such utter novices in photography, and
having got our own camera only two days
before we started, we might be quite incapable
of doing justice to a unique opportunity.

II

The most impressive sight we saw in
Cairo were the royal mummies, which are
exhibited in their gorgeously painted coffins,
under glass, in the museum. Whatever may
be said in the way of discrediting the histories
narrated in the Old Testament, it must hence-
forth be impossible for the most hardened
sceptic to deny that the Pharaohs, at least,
have existed. The features of Rameses the

io HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

Great'"" are somewhat shrunk in the six years
since his body was unswathed, but there are
others who look almost like life, notably,
Sethi I., his equally great father. It is no
exaggeration to say that for days after we
looked on that tranquil, good-natured, dark
face, we have seen at least a dozen negroes
in the street who are exceedingly like him.
The very flesh, and the very expression of a
man who lived 3000 years ago are thus
vividly before us. We spent much time
in the American schools, listening to the
children's lessons, both English and Arabic.
But as our object in coming to Egypt was to
prepare for a trip to Sinai, we first engaged a
dragoman named Hanna, under Dr. Watson's
kind advice, and then sought, through other
friends, an introduction to the chief dignitaries
of the Greek Church, who have the pastoral

* The Pharaoh whose daughter, it is supposed, found
Moses.

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI n

care of the monks in St. Catherine's Convent.
The Rev. Nasr Odeh, Bishop Blyth's Syrian
Missionary to the Cairene Jews, was kind
enough to show us his own schools, and then
to conduct us to the dwelling of the Patriarch.
The Patriarch himself was absent in Alex-
andria, but we were received by his Vicar,
Ignatius, Metropolitan of Libya, with whom
we had half-an-hour's conversation in his
own tongue. He was extremely gracious,
but said that we ought to have addressed
ourselves to the Archbishop of Mount Sinai.
For this prelate he gave us his visiting-card,
and we found him at the convent, where our
dragoman had already hired the camels which
were to convey us across the desert. The
Archbishop gave us a most kind reception,
especially after he had read a letter to the
monks written for us by the Vice-Chancellor
of Cambridge University, and remarked its
interesting seal, viz. the open Bible in the

12 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

centre of a cross guarded by lions. He was
surprised to learn that we had a printed
catalogue of the Greek MSS. in Sinai, and
good-naturedly took it into his head that our
object in going there was not only to make
some collations of the Septuagint codices,
but to further a plan by which the English
might be persuaded to pronounce Greek
correctly. " We are a poor little nation," he
said, " but our lanoaiaee is ereat, an d we are
striving to purify it, so that now there is
nothing vulgar about it." Both the Metro-
politan of Libya and the Archbishop gave
us their blessing at parting, wishing us
immortality in this world and in the world
to come. The latter promised to write to
the. monks and ask them to give us every
facility for our researches in the library —
he even promised us immunity from the
khamseen winds !

Dr. Watson has nineteen students in his

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 13

theological class, and of these nine were to be
licensed as preachers on the 3rd of February
following, and then sent to work amongst
the villages of the Delta. We sat in his
lecture-room for two hours, listening to a
discussion on the tenth chapter of Romans ;
and on our last Sunday in Cairo he preached
an eloquent sermon to them from the text,
"Who is sufficient for these things ? "

The railways are very much better managed
than they were in 1886. When we arrived
at Suez we were much surprised to find that
a perfectly new town, named Port Tewfik,
had sprung up at the mouth of the canal.
We were told that the French engineer carried
the canal away from Suez because the gover-
nor of that ancient town was pursuing a
dog-in-the-manger policy. Suez is therefore
dwindling, whilst her young rival thrives.
This is surely a warning to ourselves to be
careful in choosing our municipal officers, and

14 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

also to make our old institutions accommodate
themselves to the wants of the age.

Some of the rulers of this country, British
and native, with whom we had the honour of
conversing, say that the spring of its wealth
has astonished them, and that there is no
limit to the blessings which a decent govern-
ment can bestow. We were delighted to
observe the look of thorough contentment in
the faces of the natives, so different from
the scowls we sometimes got in 1886, and
altogether different from the resigned expres-
sion of the Algerians, to whom the French
have shown themselves very hard task-
masters.

Ill

On Thursday, January 28th, we crossed
the Gulf of Suez in a sailing-boat, and landed
on the shores of Asia to find that we must
wait two hours for the arrival of our camels,

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 15

who had to cross the canal and pass through
a troublesome Custom-house by a pontoon
bridge higher up. We amused ourselves
during luncheon with the antics of some
baggage camels, each of which had a front
leg tied up to prevent its wandering. Some
hopped about on three legs, whilst others
walked on two hind feet and two front knees.
One got a good beating on its long neck
from its angry master, and filled the air with
the thunder of its growls.

The sheikh, who had been presented to
us on the previous evening, appeared at half-
past one with three dromedaries. He was
a mild-looking young man (for the office is
hereditary), nearly blind of both eyes, who
showed his appreciation of the situation by
saying to Hanna, " The ladies command you,
and you command us." The feat of mounting
having been successfully accomplished, we
started across a desolate plain of sand,

16 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

following a beaten track which is constantly
being effaced by the wind-blown sand, and,
like other desert routes, is sometimes only to
be discerned by the help of a tiny pile of
stones, placed there by the Bedaween. At
four o'clock we reached a patch of palm-trees
and gardens fenced by low mud walls, clus-
tering round the brackish wells of Ain Mousa,
the spot where Miriam is supposed to have
begun her song of triumph. As we gazed on
the interminable succession of low, sandy
ridges to our left, we could not help thinking
that the host of Israel had some excuse for
grumbling at a leader who v "hem

where no food and no watei aid ^

The Pillar of Cloud > in^l i] .
moving along the very pat ve ' :v~e r-

sing ; but it must have beer a£ hard for them
to believe in its Almighty gPfee as it is for
us to trust in our Divine Leader when the
course of this world seems going against us.

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 17

He does not always explain His purposes.

But the events which have made this district

immortal in history are now stamped on the

memory of the human race ; they were one

of the first lessons taught to mankind by our

Creator : that He is a just God, and a God

in whom we must implicitly trust.

Whilst our tents were being- pitched, a

man named Andreas invited us into a tiny

square hut, separate from his house, spread

some matting over the sandy floor, and placed

some cushions on a shelf that we might rest.

He also gave us a cup of Turkish coffee.
•- >

Our f1 tent was most comfortable,

eful night, as the wind was

v we^ v *ed it might blow us down.

•se g . h&h >st six, but the Bedaween

were so slow ii\ getting the camels loaded

that we didsjxpt start till a quarter to nine.

Our path ran through the limitless desert,

over very stony ground, where a few tufts of

i8 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

sapless heath or of spiky thorns enticed our
camels to stop and nibble. Sometimes the
ground was sprinkled with flakes of shining
white quartz, suggesting manna. We lunched
on a hillock at one o'clock ; then rode for
three hours-and-a-half over a perfectly flat
plain, with now and then a glimpse of the sea
to our right and of interminable sandy mounds
to our left. We often crossed the tracks of
flood torrents, and our Bedaween guides told
us that a month ago this plain was like a lake.
They have had rain four times this winter,
and each time several men with their camels
have been washed into the sea. We reached
our tents at half-past five, just as the sun was
setting. They were pitched on a little stony
eminence surrounded with tufts of shrubs.
The place is called Wady Sadur. The wind
blew fiercely on the tent, but we hoped it
might change with the new moon which was
to appear that night. Next morning we rose

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 19

at six, and at half-past seven we started on
foot over a flat expanse of sand, leaving our
men to pack up. At half-past eight our
dragoman, Hanna, overtook us with our
dromedaries, and for five hours we marched
along, glad when an occasional sand hillock
broke the monotony of the landscape, or a
glimpse of the sea, with the blue mountains
of Africa beyond it, made us content that we
were on the safer side, for the hills on which
we were gazing are seldom explored by
Europeans. Our only diversion was an occa-
sional attempt to read a Hebrew psalm, which
though in clear large type, bobbed up and
down in a way that was fatiguing to our eyes.
So we had to be content with listening to the
chatter of our Bedawy escort in a dialect which
was only partially intelligible to us. The
only times when we understood them perfectly
was when they spoke to our Syrian dragoman.
We also encouraged Saleem, my sisters guide,

20 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

to imitate the gurgle in the camel's throat.
The men themselves were an interesting
study. The skin of their bare black legs is
hardened by time and dirt into real hard
leather, their feet are protected by the thinnest
of goat-skin sandals ; their clothing consists
of a single flowing cotton garment, more or
less white, and a black abbaya of goat-skin,
sewn together with twine, and well patched.
Their only signs of luxury are the gay silk
kafiyet which forms part of their turbans, and
the long pipe which they hand to each other
by turns, lighting it with the spark from a
flint. All carried the most primitive of
swords, and Saleem was burdened with a long
gun which suggested doubts as to its ability
to go off. My guide, A'agi, had made a pet
of the seven-year old camel which carried me,
ornamenting its pretty brown furry neck with
a shell-sewn red collar ; sharing with it an
occasional bit of maize bread, and pulling for

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 21

it choice bits of the dry desert shrubs. At
half-past twelve we dismounted, just where
the ground was getting broken up into little
sand hillocks, and real rock mountains were
coming into view. The sheikh came up with
the baggage camels whilst we were lunching,
and it was here that the first dispute between
us and our dragoman took place.

We had, in our contract with him, reserved
to ourselves the ri^ht of choosing the resting
places ; and had intimated our intention of
always resting on Sundays. The natural
place to stop that night, after an eight hours'
ride from Wady Sadur, would have been
Wady Amarah, or else A in Howarah, two
hours further on. Both claim to be the site
of Marah, and in neither is there now water
near the surface, although Ain Howarah has
a little pasturage for camels. I told Hanna
we must stop for the night at one of these
places, as neither of us felt quite well after

22 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

our first experiences of camels and wind-
shaken tents ; we had told him at Cairo that
eight hours a day was the utmost we could
do ; but that, for the camels' comfort, we were
willing to ride two hours further on Sunday
morning to Wady Ghurundel (Elim), where
there was abundance of forage and chalky
water. Hanna thereupon deliberately ordered
the sheikh to go on straight with both tents
and camels to Wady Ghurundel. It was a
very arbitrary proceeding, but it was he who
had hired the Bedaween, and our only means
of bringing him to account for it was by
resolving to deduct £2 from the present we
intended to give him at the end of the journey.
We had unfortunately contracted to pay him
a stated sum for the whole trip, and an entire
Sunday's rest meant that he would deduct
that day's pay from the Bedaween, though he
had told us in making our contract that
resting days would be charged the same as

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 23

travelling days. I also heard him tell the
sheikh that we wished to stay a day at Elim,
on account of our photographing, a statement
which I resolved to take my own way of

correcting.

Starting at two o'clock, we passed through
Wady Wardan (the Valley of Roses) so
called, ironically, because its surface is strewn
with bits of black flint. The setting sun now
showed us the first shadow of a hill that we
had yet seen, and the cloud shadows on the
desert are wonderful ; when you see one you
ride on thinking to get into it ; then all at once
the black thing vanishes, and re-appears
further away to the right or left. It was
almost dark when we passed the solitary
palm-tree of A in Howarah. We reached
Wady Ghurundel at a quarter to seven, our
last half-hour being done quite in the dark.
This we did not consider at all safe in a
country where the path can only be discerned

24 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

by the foot-prints of those who have gone a
few hours before us. How delighted we
were to see the glimmer of our tent candles !
and how pleased to dismount and wait till
Hanna had unrolled our beds, and Khalil, the
cook, had sent us in a cup of black coffee,
preparatory to a good dinner extracted out
of the flesh-pots of Egypt, which truly we had
brought with us !

A little rain fell through the night, and
the morning sun awoke our bevy of hens,
turkeys, and doves, released from the durance
vile of their coops, and wandering over the
desert in a vain quest for worms.

A'agi asked me if we had stopped at
Ghurundel to photograph, and I replied, " No,
the first day of the week is the Lord's Day.
If we were at home we should go to church,
but as we cannot do so we must keep it
sacred from work."

Protestant travellers, who do not speak

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 25

Arabic, can never know how much of their
influence is lost through the misrepresen-
tations of their dragoman. How much more
these primitive people would respect us if we
were not so often ashamed of confessing our
faith !

Wady Ghurundel is a long valley, filled
with a host of little sandy mounds, covered
with a shrub like the arbor vitse, which is
much cut down for camp-fires. A few palms,
and the stumps of others which have come to
an untimely end, reminded us of its ancient
glories when it had twelve springs of water,
and three-score and ten palm-trees. The
Arabs, like the Greeks and Italians, are very
wasteful in the matter of their wood. A little
careful culture might make the Wady Ghu-
rundel a splendid oasis. But it is no man's
business, though at present it is a vital question
for the good of all.

We started on Monday morning at half-

26 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

past seven on foot, Saleem accompanying us
to show us the path. I made him thoroughly
understand that we had come to this country
to see the way by which Neby Mousa led the
Israelites ; and that we consider it a figure of
how God leads us along the hard path of our
earthly life. I told him also why we rested
on Sunday, because God told Neby Mousa
we were to do so, from the top of Sinai, but
that the dav was changed because on the first
day of the week our Lord the Messiah rose
from the dead, with the promise that we too
shall rise to be with him in heaven. To all
this Saleem assented. The path led all day
betwixt limestone hills. We passed through
Wady Useit (the rival Elim) with its few
plundered palm trees, and soon saw a heap of
stones marking the grave of a mare whose
owner spurred her to death. Each one of
our guides kicked some sand on it with his
bare feet, and spat, to show his abhorrence of

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 27

the deed. We lunched under two palm-trees
in Wady Ethal, and photographed them ; we
also administered a quinine pill to A'agi, who
had been unable to eat any breakfast. A
stranger came and ate with the other men,
helping himself freely from their pots.

It had rained on the previous day in
Wady Tayibeh, for there was a little rill,
whose water, like all in this limestone region,
had become bitter. We reached the sea-
shore at half-past four, and here H anna's
camel had a fight with its master, who tugged
and jerked at the rope round its nose. The
rocks here are very beautiful, showing
alternate layers of yellow and red sand-stone.

W T e reached our tents at half-past five.

IV

Next morning (Feb. 2nd) we had a long
ride along the sea-shore, and at one time had
to dismount and cross a ridge of limestone

28 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

rocks where the camels could barely find a
footing. The white cliffs were very fantastic,
and across the blue waters is the fine
mountain outline of the African shore. At
noon we turned up the Wacly Shellal and
lunched beneath a cliff. In the afternoon we
passed several Arab caravans, the leaders of
which greeted our guides, all being of the
same tribe, with great effusion. They would
first call out " Salaam," touching their fore-
heads and breasts, then approaching they
took each others hands, and laying their
cheeks together made a sound like kissing,
but without their lips actually touching.
They then said, " Rahmet Allahi wabarakathu
ma'ak!" — " The mercy of God and His bless-
ing be with you ! " The cliffs became very
fantastic ; they were composed of a black rock
with red sandstone, surmounted by pink gra-
nite peaks. The sand was of a pink colour,
and pink granite boulders were strewn about.

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 29

At half-past four we found our tent pitched
in Wady Buderah. This was in consequence
of my having scolded Hanna in the morning,
about his making us hasten on so fast ; there
was light enough left for me to photograph
the camp.

We started at a quarter-past seven next
morning and walked an hour over a rocky
ridge, then rode through defiles betwixt hills
of pink granite seamed with trap rocks and
sandstone. At half-past eleven we stopped in
Wady Mukattab, and photographed inscrip-
tions. These have been already published
and deciphered by Professor Euting. They
are in an ancient Semi lie character, and are
chiefly greetings to departed friends, having
apparently no historical value.

We started at a quarter-past two and rode
betwixt bare craggy, granite mountains into
Wady Feiran, with the lofty peak of Jebel
Serbal towering before us. We passed a flock

30 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

of goats, the first animals we had met since
leaving Suez, and observed a great variety of
light-coloured stones embedded in the ground,
probably brought down by the winter rains.
My camel ate of a little dry heath, which
grows in tufts, but he preferred a thorn with
fearful nail-like spikes, and did not disdain
wood ! We reached our camp in Wady
Feiran after the moon and stars were out,
and our camels showed they could walk
quickly if they liked.

Next morning we walked for half-an-hour
till our camels overtook us, and stopped to
photograph Hasy-el-Khattatin, a huge fallen
boulder, which Arab tradition declares to
have been the first rock struck by Moses.
It is supposed that the Amalekites had
stopped up the rills from springs in the
beautiful oasis higher up the valley, so the
people murmured when they saw that they
could not get water without fighting for it

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 31

At eleven o'clock we reached the little oasis
of El Hesweh, and were pleased to see
palm-trees surrounded by gardens, well and
carefully tended. The Wady then became
overgrown with the torf-shrubs, from which
a yellow gum exudes. Some suppose that
this was the manna, but the quantity that can
be furnished is infinitesimal compared to what
would be required by the thousands of Israel.
A little rill trickled along the sand, so we
stopped beside it for lunch. A girl, closely
veiled, but with lively black eyes, came to see
us. She was acquainted with our escort, and
her husband was one of those whom we had
met in Wady Tayibeh. Her first exclama-
tion was : "Ma feesh hareem ?" — " Are these
not women ? " She could not grasp the idea
of our going about with uncovered faces.
She did not know her own age, but A'agi
suggested twenty-five. She had been three
years married, and had two children. I

32 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

showed her my dear husband's portrait, and
also coloured pictures of Cambridge Colleges,
but the green turf was quite beyond her
comprehension. She was much pleased at
being photographed. Her clothes were very
dirty, but she wore magnificent bracelets of
coral and amber.

We also photographed a hill, which com-
mands an extensive view on both sides just
where there is a bend in this longest of
Wadies. Here it is supposed that Moses I
viewed the battle with the Amalekites for;
access to their springs, whilst Aaron and Hur
held up his hands. The mountain-sides are
full of caves and niches, once the homes of
Anchorites. Soon a gorgeous sight burst on
our view, the great oasis of Feiran, a forest
of magnificent palm-trees, in a narrow Wady,
overlooked by the lofty granite peaks of Jebel
Serbal, which rise sheer from one side of it.
It seemed at once as if we were transported

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI $ 5

to some luxuriant spot in the heart of Africa.
It is identified with the Paran or Rephidim
of Exodus. For fourjriiles we rode amongst /
these trees, all enclosed and tended. We
spoke with several people, and observed a
little cemetery right amongst the gardens.
Graves here were marked simply by a small
headstone and a footstone, just picked off the
hillside, with no name or inscription, and
perhaps a wisp of straw, which may be nibbled
by any passing camel. At one place we had
to dismount because torf trees, growing under
the palms, would not allow of our passage.
These trees gradually became less thick, till
we were again upon barren sand, and we
passed through a narrow way betwixt steep
rugged rocks into the little Wady where our
tents awaited us.

Next morning we started at seven o'clock,
and plucked the first flower we had seen since
leaving Ain Mousa. We were photographing

34 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

two " nawamees " or pre-historic houses,
curious huts of unhewn stone, built without
mortar, and crowned with a roof like a bee-
hive, when we saw a distant funeral procession
of Bedaween. It reached a little cemetery,
and the body was laid in the ground before
we could get our camera adjusted ; but A'agi
told us that not a single prayer was offered
on such occasions, and that the business
would be finished when they had found
stones suitable for putting up. The Towarah
Arabs do not go through any ostentatious
devotions like other Mohammedans, but they
have a formula which they repeat to them-
selves daily. It is in their salutations to
each other that the Creator's name is chiefly
remembered.

Hanna said that a Bedawee woman does
not wish her husband to get rich, and that
she will actually try little tricks to prevent
his earning too much money ; the reason

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 35

being that she fears being supplanted in his
affections.

In the afternoon we turned into Wady
Djenneh, where we saw a rabbit. Our tents
were pitched at the foot of the Nugb Hawa,
and there to our great delight we met Dr.
Grote, an Anglo-German missionary to the
Bedaween, who had been spending the three
months of winter in the convent, and had
made good use of the time in exploring its
Greek library. He had no tent, but slept on
an air bed just on the sand, and ate with his
Bedawee escort. He reported that most of
the Towarah are simply starving, and very
thankful for the doles of bread they get from
the convent. He had been trying to persuade
the Archbishop to open a school for their
children, and had done them a real service by
getting the Egyptian Government to release
them from a very unnecessary quarantine.'""

* This quarantine, unfortunately, is now re-imposed.

36 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

No epidemic could well travel from Syria
over these barren sands.

Next day we climbed the pass of Nugb
Hawa on foot, followed by our dromedaries.
Soon the peak of Ras Sufsafeh burst on our
view, and we stood on the great plain of Er-
Rahah, just before the mountain which burned
with fire, where the voice of God was heard
in thunder by the multitude beneath.

At length the convent appeared in view,
nestling in a narrow valley, surrounded by a
walled garden, and overlooked on the one
hand by the cliffs of Jebel Mousa, and on the
other by a mountain named after two Greek
saints, Galakteon and Episteme. The con-
vent is a medley of buildings belonging to
every epoch since its foundation by Justinian
in the fifth century. Strongly built, low-roofed,
vaulted passages lead into a court-yard, where
modern rooms of mud and plaster open on to
wooden galleries. The gradual degeneracy

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 37

of the occupants might almost be traced in
their style of building, run up to suit temporary
wants. The outer wall, built as that of a
fortress, is the most ancient and imposing.

Whilst our tents were being pitched beside
a well of delicious water, amidst the cypresses,
olives, and flowering almond trees of the
garden, we were received by the Hegoumenos,
or Prior, and by Galakteon the librarian,
whose eyes sparkled with sincere pleasure
when he read our letter to himself from
Mr. Rendel Harris. " The world is not so
large after all," he exclaimed, " when we can
have real friends in such distant lands."

We had a peep at the outer Library where
some of the Greek books are kept ; and then
attended the afternoon service in the church.
It lasted for two hours. There was some
very fine singing, but far too many repetitions
of H agios Theos and Kyrie Eleison. It was
the last of their services we attended. They

38 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

chant the liturgy of their church no less than
eight times in the twenty-four hours, each
monk being required to assist at least twice
during the day and twice at night.

V

On Monday, February 8th, we worked for
seven hours in the Library, beginning at 9
a.m. The manuscripts are very much scat-
tered ; some Greek ones being in the Show
Library, and the Arabic partly there and
partly in a little room half-way up a dark stair.
The Syriac ones, and those supposed to be
the most ancient, are partly in this little room,
and partly in a dark closet, approached
through a room almost as dark. There they
repose in two closed boxes, and cannot be
seen without a lighted candle. They have
at different times been stored in the vaults
beneath the convent for safety, when attacks
were threatened from the Bedaween. They

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 39

were there exposed to damp and then allowed
to dry without any care. It is a wonder that
the strong parchment and clearly written
letters have in so many cases withstood so
many adverse influences.

Galakteon gave us every facility for photo-
graphing. He spent hours holding books
open for us, or deciphering pages of the
Septuagint. The fact that Englishmen
should be so anxious for a correct version
of the sacred writings as to have sheets of
paper printed on purpose for scholars to
collate them with all the extant manuscripts,
filled the monks with a profound respect for
our nation. The only drawback to our
comfort was the bitterly cold wind, the
temperature in our tents at night being
below zero, and as there was no glass in the
Library windows, we had some difficulty in
keeping ourselves warm. This we could only
do by a smart walk out of the narrow Wady,

40 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

where the shadows lay so long, into the bright
sunshine of the plain, Er-Rahah. But who
may describe the beauty of the sunsets, when
tall cypresses towered from the glorious
masses of white almond trees against a back-
ground of bare granite cliffs, all touched with
the gold of heaven ; or the moonlight in that
silent Wady, so clear and strong, which made
the olive boughs look like fairy lace work ;.
and the ground beneath them, strewn as it
was with fallen almond blossoms, gleaming as.
if snow lay on it, whilst a few upward steps
out of the garden revealed a panorama of
lofty cliffs, where intense silence brooded ;;
and our thoughts went forcibly back to the
time when they shook and rocked at the touch
of the Divine Glory.

It was on Saturday that we climbed the
mountain. Whilst preparing to start at seven
in the morning, we observed from our tent
door that the monks were wending their way

. fi/J Stiff -J^T ~Z-Z^1

42 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

from the cemetery chapel situated near us,
where they had been holding a service,
towards the convent. We said, " Good
morning" to our particular friends amongst
them, and at last, seeing the Hegoumenos, I
deemed it courteous to go out and shake
hands. He sent me a shower of holy water
from the silver vessel he was carrying, and I
said, " thank you." He then held up a small
silver cross, telling me in Greek to adore it.
I stepped back involuntarily, for I was taken
by surprise. " Adore it ! " exclaimed the
Hegoumenos, somewhat peremptorily. A
monk who stood behind him remarked, " Her
form of worship is different from ours."
" Adore it," said the Hegoumenos aeain. I
saw no way out of the difficulty but that of
suppressing my predilections. So I kissed
the cross and said, " I adore the Saviour, who
died upon a cross." Had I done otherwise,
I should have thrown the poor Hegoumenos

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 43

into a state of great perplexity; he would have
thought me an atheist, for his intellect was
not capable of understanding my notions.
But it was a lesson to me never again to
approach a Greek ecclesiastic when walking
in procession.

A lay brother, clad in a blue frock, accom-
panied us as a guide. We climbed a very
stony path till we reached a spring of delicious
water, called " The Fountain of the Shoe-
maker," because St. Stephen, a cobbler of
Alexandria, once dwelt there. Arab tradition
makes it the spot where Moses watered the
flocks of Jethro his father-in-law. It is an
interesting query where these flocks were
pastured. A little rain fell and dark clouds
gathered about the mountain tops, but they
passed off as we reached the little " Chapel of
the Bursar." Then we mounted a flight of
rock-hewn steps by the old way of pilgrims,
and passing under an ancient arch turned back

44 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

to gaze on a magnificent prospect of bare
mountains and desert valleys extending to
the horizon. Then we went under another
archway and came in sight of a few cypresses
near the Chapel of Elijah at the foot of the
peak named "Jebel Mousa," the proper name
for the mountain range beingr Horeb in its
lower, and Sinai in its upper part. Within
the Chapel is a cave, said to be that in which
the prophet was fed by ravens. We gazed
on the mountain top, and resolved to defer
climbing it till another day, and to direct our
efforts towards the higher summit of the Ras
Sufsafeh, which is supposed to be the Moun-
tain of the Law. We climbed amongst
magnificent cliffs, pausing now and then to
get a draught of delicious water, or to pick
up a fine bit of granite graphites,'" till we
reached the foot of the highest precipice :
then began a very difficult ascent in which

* Which was not the right thing after all.

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 45

hands and knees had to be constantly used,
and the ready help of the monk and Hanna
accepted. The monk pulled sprigs of hyssop
for us, and the Bedaween found pretty den-
drolites for the Woodwardian Museum.
Our eyes were much irritated by the dust
thrown off by an ill-smelling plant called
Sphaka, which it was often necessary to grasp
in order to get over some boulder. At length
we reached the foot of the great inaccessible
rock which crowns the summit, a rock which
no human foot has ever rested on, and peering
over a wind-swept ledge had a magnificent
view of the extensive plain of Er-Rahah
beneath us. The monk, who was named
Euphemios, had brought only bread and
cheese for his lunch. The agility which he
had displayed in climbing tempted us to think
that he had the advantage of us flesh-eaters ;
but a glance at his sunken cheeks banished
the thought. He told us that he had been

46 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

fifteen years in a tailor's shop in Athens, and
had come to Sinai after the death of his wife,
having no children. He had often attended
Dr. Kalopothakes' services, and received
much instruction from them ; this enabled
him to understand exactly what our form of
worship is. Hanna, who is a Roman
Catholic, struck a false note by making a
disparaging remark about Moses, having
probably picked it up from some German tra-
vellers. This was no proof of his sense, for
we should certainly not have employed him
to bring us there had we not believed in the
divine mission of Moses.

As I knew there were three roads by
which we might descend, I asked Hanna
three times which of these we were on, saying
we should prefer to return either by the
path we had come up, or by a steeper and
shorter one which led directly to the convent.
Hanna, thereupon, directed Euphemios to

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 47

lead us down the very longest way possible,
by a path that brought us into a Wady on
the side of Jebel Mousa, farthest from the
convent, so that we had still five miles to
walk over rough stones, in fact, to make a
half circuit of Horeb at its base. I was very
angry, and scolded Hanna for not consulting
me. We were not consoled by being con-
ducted through two little olive gardens
belonging to the convent, in other Wadies,
nor even by being shown the genuine rock (a
big boulder) which Moses struck in anger. I
was so tired that I could hardly walk, and
long after the moon had risen I was obliged
to sit down on stones to rest. We reached
our tents at eight o'clock, an Arab coming out
with a lamp to meet us. Our excursion had
occupied eleven hours, ten of which we had
spent in quick walking and climbing over the
roughest of rocks and stones — so it may be
imagined we lost no time in retiring to rest.

48 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

Next morning being Sunday, we were told
that a lady and gentleman were about to
arrive from Tor. Tents were certainly
pitched outside of the convent, just where
the Wady ed-Deir opens into the plain, Er-
Rahah. So in the cool of the evening we
went down to pay our first call. We found
two young North Germans, who said they were
a party of four, and had come for the sake of
sport, having sailed in a boat which brought
them from Suez to Tor in the space of four
days. Their dragoman was a Polish Jew
who had never been in the desert before.
They had never imagined that there would
be so much difficulty in getting water. We
were, perhaps, too communicative in telling
them about our work in the Library, and the
Syriac palimpsest of 358 pages which we
were photographing.

We found next morning that Galakteon
expected a visit from the whole party, and

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 49

asked our leave to bring them into the room
where we were working. " If they come," he
said, "please go on with your work, and do not
begin any conversation." To this we assented,
seeing that silence is the rule in European
reading-rooms. All the monks were greatly
excited, because they had been told that one
of the German party was a Count, a near
relative of the ex-king of Greece. At length
Galakteon brought the four young men into
the room where we were working ; they were
accompanied by their three servants, and
made themselves intelligible by means of one
of the party speaking ancient Greek, with the
modern pronunciation, as it is now taught in
Germany, and the dragoman speaking
Russian to Galakteon. When they had left
I was told that the youth from Leipsic wished
to work in the Library next day, and had
asked particularly for the Syriac book I was
transcribing and photographing. I said he

5 o HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

might have it for a couple of hours. The
Germans sent in the afternoon to ask
the monks for a guide to ascend Jebel
Catarina. Galakteon shook with laughter at
this proposal to start on an excursion which
would require at least twelve hours of day-
light, and at length flatly refused to help
with it.

Next day after vainly trying to settle a
dispute between the Germans and their
Bedaween escort, Galakteon conducted us to
see what he believes to be the very rock
struck by Moses. It is not a boulder, but a
fissure in the rock of the mountain side, from
which a little rill of clear cold water still flows,
giving sustenance to a few olives and almonds.
The place looks as if it had been rent by a
blow.

As we walked back, some Bedaween came
and appealed to Galakteon to bring the
Germans to reason. He has become quite a

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 5r

judge amongst them, having been for twenty
years Bursar of the convent before he became
librarian. They come to him even about
their quarrels with their wives.

Later in the evening both the Bedaween
and the Germans' dragoman appealed to
Hanna. The truth was that the travellers had
come into the desert quite without money,
and the Bedaween, having been often swindled
by dragomans, invaribly insist on being paid
for their camels beforehand. Hanna declined
to lend anything, saying that he could not
fulfil his obligations to us if he did, for he
required all the money he had to take us
home.

The Germans left next morning, Galakteon
having enabled them to do so by lending
them ^12. They had never returned our
call, nor even shown us the slight civility
usual in the desert of offering to carry our
letters to Suez. We had been longing for

52 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

news of the outer world, and especially for
information as to the health of our beloved
Queen, but of this they did not give us the
least chance. Never again can we accept the'
fiction that our own countrymen are less
sociable than Teutons ! The monks were
puzzled as to why the Count had never come
with his friends into the convent. When we
returned to Suez we ascertained that the
existence of that young man was a deliberate
fabrication.

We had by this time photographed no
pages of the Syriac Codex, Book 16, the
same in which Mr. Rendel Harris found
the Apology of Aristides. We had also
taken the whole of a Syriac palimpsest of
358 pages, into which no eyes but our own
had for centuries looked. Its leaves were
mostly all glued together, and the least force
used to separate them made them crumble.
Some half-dozen of them we held over the

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 53

steam of the kettle. The writing beneath is
red, partly Syriac and partly Greek. The
upper writing of this palimpsest bears its own
date, a.d. 698 ; * it is all the lives of women
saints. The under writing must be some
centuries earlier ; it is Syriac Gospels, and
something in Greek, not yet deciphered. A
Palestinian Aramaic MS. of which we photo-
graphed four pages, is the second example of
its kind known to exist — that in the Vatican
Library having been hitherto considered
unique. We photographed also specimens
of other volumes, and finished our remaining
exposures with eighth or ninth century
Arabic translations of the New Testament,
which we guessed might prove interesting
to our friends of the Bible Society. They
show that the monks of this convent had at
one time a wish to instruct the Bedaween.

* A closer examination shows that it is more probably

A.D. 778.

54 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

There has evidently been a gradual de-
generacy amongst the occupants of this place.

Some of the Greek codices catalogued by
Gardhausen are actually in the handwriting
of priors of the convent, who corresponded in
Arabic (for their letters are there), with the
heads of other monastic houses. Galakteon
laments greatly that there ever was a defection
of the Arabs to Islam. It seems to us,
however, that this must have occurred, because
priests and monks had neglected the duty of
instructing them in the Scriptures. During the
fifteen centuries that this convent has existed,
prayers have arisen from it night and day, the
liturgy and the sacraments having been con-
tinually repeated. But as for being a centre
of light to the population around, it might
as well never have existed.

This seems to me, though I am open to
correction, to be the inevitable tendency of
what we call "sacramentarianism," i.e. attention

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 55

to a ceremonial worship which leaves neither
time nor energy for the instruction of the
multitude.

My sister looked at it in a different light.
" The lesson we may learn here," she said,
" is that our ritualists are not up to the mark.
The Greek Church, which they imitate, cele-
brates its liturgy eight times in the twenty-
four hours, and insists on a fast which they
cannot approach to. We must tell them
about it."

The Lenten fast began on March 5th, and
all the nice little conversations and occasional
merriment we had had in the library ceased.
We worked indeed, and the monks helped us
as heretofore, but they looked sleepy, useless,
and miserable. Galakteon seemed very much
puzzled as to how we could reconcile neglect
of what he thought a plain duty with sincere
faith. I tried to set his mind at rest by
writing after our names in the visitors' book :

56 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

" There are diversities of administration, but

the same Spirit."

The day before our departure we inspected

the church, which is full of ancient and costly

silver candelabra. In the apse is the shrine

of St. Catherine, of white Greek marble.

Beside it are two very costly shrines covered

with silver and jewels, sent by the two

Empresses Catherine of Russia, to hold their

patron saint's remains. But the monks keep

these in their original resting-place. Below

i

this is the chapel of the Burning Bush, whose
site was discovered by the Empress Helena
in a.d. 530, with the help of Arab tradition.
The apse has a roof of the richest and best-
preserved mosaic we have ever seen. One
would rather see the rock. We then inspected
a little psalter, which contains all the 150
Psalms on twelve pages, faultlessly written.
Galakteon explained that the monastery had
got into the habit of feeding a number of

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 57

Bedaween, and must continue to do so,
although it is getting very poor owing to the
loss of its landed property in Roumania and
Russia. On the last evening of our stay the
Bursar, the Holy Deacon Nicodemus, took
us round the gardens, which he called " the
only consolation of the monks," and where
blooming almonds and olives sheltered beds
of beans and onions.

We left the convent on Tuesday morning,
March 8th. We walked for an hour to the
junction of Wady ed-Dayr with Wady esh-
Sheikh, thus striking into a different route
from that by which we had journeyed from
Suez. At a quarter-past eleven we found a
beautiful shady niche in a rock to take luncheon
in. Here we had a tussle with Hanna, who
was most unwilling to let us escape the noon-
tide heat by resting until three o'clock. We
had previously resisted his attempt to make
us start two days later, and thus force our-

58 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

selves to do the journey in six-and-a-half
days instead of the usual eight-and-a-half.
It was all to put an additional four pounds in
his own pocket. We rode till half-past five
and then walked an hour longer, for my back
felt as if it were broken with jolting on a
saddle which would never keep straight. We
got a fright by Hanna tumbling over the back
of his camel as he was dismounting. He had
been in too great a hurry to wait till the camel
had finished kneeling. There were fifty Beda-
ween encamped round our tents, and very
picturesque they looked in the brilliant moon-
light. We were greatly edified by listening
to a furious quarrel betwixt Hanna and the
Sheikh Mohammed. We learnt for certain,
what we had before suspected, that an inferior
animal had been supplied to me, and that
Hanna had not troubled himself to inspect
either dromedaries or saddles before leaving
the convent.

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 59

We started at half-past six next morning
and walked for an hour along Wady esh-
Sheikh. Before noon my saddle became so
uncomfortable that I dismounted and insisted
on exchanging camels with Hanna. He had
not been on my camel a few minutes when he
discovered that the two horns of the saddle
were not in a line with each other, and that
no adjustment of packages would make the
rider comfortable ; so he took care never to
mount that camel a^ain.

We lunched in Wady Suleif, and I had an
altercation with Hanna, who declared that
the Bedaween would not allow me to keep to
the easy-paced animal which I had taken
from him, and which had carried him from
Suez to Sinai. At half-past five we found
our tents pitched in Wady Igne, though I
had told Hanna that we particularly wished
to make a long day of it, so as to spend the
noon of next day photographing at Sarabit el-

60 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

Khadim. We told him that the tents must
be taken up and the camels reloaded ; then
we walked along in the bright moonlight,
trusting that they would follow us. At length
we espied an old Bedawy racing after us. He
told us we were getting off the track, and that
the path for a long distance would be across
a mountain-ridge, over stones, where a tent
could not be pitched. We agreed to encamp
at the foot of this ridge ; but up came Hanna
and said the old Bedawy was telling lies. He
persuaded us to cross the ridge in the moon-
light. My sister walked the whole w r ay, as
she would not trust a camel's feet on the
loose, rough stones ; but I mounted wherever
there was an ascent. At ei^ht o'clock all our
baggage camels passed us, both the cook
and the Bedaween greeting us with " Kzvaiss
kiddi ! " — " This is lovely ! "

At length Hanna made them stop, and our
sleeping tent was pitched with much difficulty

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 61

by its cords being weighted with stones — not
as usual by staves driven into the ground.
After it was fixed, a string of laden camels
came against a rope which was in shadow
and knocked it down. The roof of the tent
collapsed, Hanna being inside, and bobbed
up and down as he was trying to set it up
again. The Bedaween cut the scanty brush-
wood for their fires and for their camels'
supper, and as our dinner was cooked in the
moonlight, about nine p.m., a more weird
scene could hardly be imagined. Amidst all
this discomfort the patient good-will of the
Bedaween was remarkable.

We rose next morning at daybreak and
walked down the stony, narrow valley, whose
sides were dotted with bunches of pale green
plants up to the hill-tops, whilst its bed
sheltered plenty of the white-flowering torf,
which resembles broom. When the camels
came up we had to insist on my saddle being

62 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

transferred to the one I preferred riding.
Hanna stormed at the Bedaween, though we
believed this to be the outcome of his own
management ; and he stormed still more when
he found that the camera had been left behind.
On emerging from this narrow valley our path
lay across deep white sand for five hours, until
we dismounted at the foot of a stony precipice.
Here my sister found that her foot, which had
been swollen since the day she climbed Ras
Sufsafeh, had got a wound on the rough
stones, and was so painful that she could not
walk. This was awkward, for the descent to
Sarabit el-Khadim was too steep and rugged
to be altogether safe for camel-riding. Yet
Hanna at first hurried on, leaving us without
a guide, and it was only my shouts which
brought a Bedawy to our assistance. We
made my sister remount, and under the
shadow of a rock, which seemed once to
have been a colossal statue, we found that

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 63

her heel was badly hurt. All remains of
ancient grandeur are here in the very last
stage of decay, statues whose outlines can
only be guessed, and inscriptions being fast
assimilated by wind-blown sand to the surface
of their native rock. I took two photographs
of the very confused and extensive ruins, and
was thoroughly glad to reach our tents in the
Wady Suwig.

Our tents were pitched on Saturday night
in the Wady Ghurundel. They were fastened
to trees, and I slept fearlessly in spite of the
high winds. But after midnight I was awoke
by a strong gust, and found the canvas wall
beside me was beino- lifted from the ground,
with every prospect of the pole falling on my
sister's side, and we ourselves being left with-
out shelter in the bright moonlio-ht. I held
down the rod next me as well as I could,
whilst my screams awoke the Bedaween, and
brought my sister to help me. The former

64 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

came running at once, and for ten minutes
they were tugging hard against the wind,
shouting to each other and to us, whom they
could not see. They at length told us we
were quite secure, and we went to sleep
again.

Next morninof we saw the one well which
now remains at Elim, a mere hole dug in the
sand, where the water sometimes runs very
low. In the afternoon we were cheered by
the arrival of three travellers, the Rev. Dr.
MacCallum, of Glasgow, and Messrs. Morrow
and Small, of Philadelphia. The latter were
friends of Mr. Rendel Harris, they had come
on from Wady Sadur, because their tents
were nearly blown down, and they thought
these would be safer fastened to the trees of
Elim. They were the first who gave us
news from Europe since we had left Suez
two months previously, and we, of course,
took charge of their letters. My sister was

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 65

poulticing her heel daily, and these gentlemen
strongly advised her not to walk with it.

The next two days were spent in a dreary
journey over sandy plains, where we suffered
greatly both from heat and thirst. As no
rock, with its welcome shade, was to be
expected, we insisted on the kitchen tent
being taken and pitched for us during our
mid-day rest. Even within it we became
covered with wind-blown sand. My sister
rode without a shoe, and several times told
me that there was something always knocking
against her wounded heel. At one time it
would be the stalks of a bunch of thorny
plants which the Arabs had slung on to her
camel for its supper, at another time a water-
bottle. We were at our wit's end to get
anything drinkable. Sucking at the little
filter became well nigh hopeless, Hanna being
of opinion that the very dirtiest water he
could find was the thing to supply it with,

66 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

and it naturally rebelled against such treat-
ment. Khalil became very ill with the effects
of the unhltered water, which, in this limestone
district, contains a strong infusion of Epsom
salts. On the night that we encamped
between Elim and Wady Sadur he had a
furious quarrel with Hanna, who threatened
to deduct something from his wages if he
were unable to do the washing-up after
dinner; whereupon Khalil shouted, " Anta
Jchuda I "■ — " Thou art a Jew ! " We were
surprised at the expression, for the Jews
are known to be very kind to their suffering
brethren, and it was passing strange to hear
the children of the bond-woman use the name
of the free woman's children as a term of
reproach.

Our last encampment was betwixt Wady
Sadur and Ain Mousa. The wind blew
straight on us over the sandy plains from
the sea, which was about two miles distant ;

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 67

it shook the tent, and even shook my bed
all night. There were no trees to fasten
us to, but the Arabs carried our tent ropes
beneath the ground before fastening them to
the stakes.

Next day, at half-past ten, the Bedaween
raised a shout of triumph, almost equal to
Miriam's, as the crest of a sandy ridge brought
us a fine view of the oasis of Ain Mousa,
with a glimpse of the Gulf of Suez on the
horizon. They almost ran, and so did the
camels, and we were consequently well shaken
before being deposited (and photographed by
my sister) beneath some stately palm trees.
In vain Hanna brought me another pot of
filthy, sandy water. I dashed it on the
ground, and a Bedawy, seizing it up, returned
in a few moments with some clear but treach-
erous fluid, which my little filter was graciously
pleased to accept, and return as a wholesome
beverage. I then negotiated with our men

68 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

for the purchase of their sandals. It required
a little tact, for one of them told me he would
as soon part with his eyes ; doubtless, because
he did not wish to return barefoot to Sinai.
The sandals were only a rough piece of goat-
skin cut to fit the sole of the foot, and held
on to it only by a projection which is passed
between the first and second toes. We re-

I crossed to Suez the same evening in a sailing
boat, and thirty-six hours after embarked for
Marseilles on the Messageries steamer,
Saghalien, having taken a regretful farewell
of our Bedawy escort, of Khalil, and even of
Hanna, whose little tricks we might possibly
not have found out so readily if we had not
understood Arabic, or had lacked the power
of getting information from the monks.

My sister suffered greatly from the injury
to her heel on the way home, and this led
gradually on to a serious illness. We learned
to appreciate the full meaning of one of the

FIRST VISIT TO SINAI 69

blessings which God bestowed upon die
Israelites during their forty years' wander-
ings in a region where the strongest English-
made boots soon give way on the rough
granite stones : " Thy raiment waxed not
old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell
these forty years." " I have led you forty
years in the wilderness," said Moses. " Your
clothes are not waxen old upon you, and thy
shoe is not waxen old upon thy foot."

IDENTIFICATION OF THE
CODEX

The reader will see from the preceding pages
that we came home laden with treasure in
the shape of a thousand undeveloped photo-
graphs. We were not a little nervous on
passing through custom-houses, lest some
over-zealous official should mistake our pho-
tographic rolls for quids of tobacco, and
let in a ray of light before we could do
anything to prevent it. Happily this danger
did not occur, and we landed our freight in
Cambridge undisturbed. We set about
developing the negatives ourselves, and
succeeded with them beyond what our inex-
perience justified. A curious circumstance.

IDENTIFICATION OF THE CODEX 71

deserves to be noticed. While Mrs. Lewis
was photographing the palimpsest from clay
to day at Sinai, and I was holding the heavy
volume on the stand and turning its leaves
for her, a task in which Galakteon often helped
me, it happened one day that I lost my place,
and so caused her to take duplicates of about
thirty of its pages. As we were developing
our films at home, and consulting all our
friends who had any experience in the matter,
one of the latter advised us strongly to send
a roll or two to a professional photographer
to be developed, in order that we might have
a standard to work up to. We sent one roll
of the palimpsest and half a roll of scenery
(the roll contains 24 films). They came home
much fainter than those we had developed
ourselves, so faint indeed, that few of the
films could be printed from, and thus about
24 pages of our palimpsest seemed irretriev-
ably lost, and we were greatly distressed.

72 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

What was our delight as we went on with
our developing, to find that, owing to my
mistake at Sinai, we had good duplicates of
them all !

Perhaps I had better pause here, and
explain to the uninitiated what a palimpsest
is. In the days when papyrus had become
scarce, and paper was not yet invented, the
old monks used to write on vellum, i.e. finely-
prepared skins of animals. Occasionally,
especially in out-of-the-way places like Mount
Sinai, vellum also became scarce, but the
literary ardour of the brethren was not to be
restrained by such a contemptible difficulty,
so the existing writing on the already-used
vellum was carefully erased and scraped with
v knife or pumice-stone ; and when this had
been done to the scribe's satisfaction, he
proceeded to use it again for his immediate
purpose, and to write on it something wholly
different, with no regard, or less than no

IDENTIFICATION OF THE CODEX 73

regard, to the probably far more valuable
script that lay beneath his pen. There is
nothing that does not leave its mark, however,
in this serious world of ours, and it is happily
possible often to see traces of the earlier or
under-writing: on the margins and between
the lines of the later or upper writing. Such
a manuscript is called a palimpsest.

When our thousand photographs were all
developed, and prints made from them, our
next task, and that a very troublesome one,
was to arrange them all in proper order. My
sister took charge of all the Syriac films,
leaving the Arabic ones to me. I own to
having had very hard work with mine, having
to find out in each photograph what passage
of Scripture it represented, and get them all
into sequence, as well as their tender
negatives, in time to exhibit a codex of the
four Gospels and another of four Epistles
at the Ninth International Congress of

74 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

Orientalists, which was held in London in
September 1892. Before that time came our
labours had been more than rewarded by the
decipherment of a little bit of the under-
writing of our precious palimpsest. It is not a
little amusing now to look back, and think of
how nearly several eminent Syriac scholars
amongst our friends just managed to miss
discovering its value. My sister, when at
Sinai, was aware that this under-writing was
the Gospels in ancient Syriac, at least the
Synoptic gospels, for had she not seen
' Evangelion,' ' Mathi,' ' Marcus,' and ' Luca '
on its pages, and recognised similar words in
the photographs as she was arranging them ?
I may here mention that arranging was for
her a still harder task than it was for me.
I could find what each of my Arabic photo-
graphs was with the help of a concordance ;
but she had nothing to guide her but the top
lines of the pages which she had copied from

IDENTIFICATION OF THE CODEX 75

the MS. at Sinai, and these top-lines were
often blurred by the under-writing, or even
altogether absent from the photographs. To
go over 360 lines for each photograph could
not but take up a great deal of her time, and
was very trying to her patience. It required,
too, the greatest care and attention to keep
all that mass of material in order, and not
mix up films already printed from with those
as yet strangers to the printing frame.

My sister told several of her friends of the
work she was doing, and that she was reading
the upper writing, that it consisted of the
lives of female saints, and that she had copied
its date from the MS. at Sinai, and calculated
it to be a.d. 698. Closer inspection this year
has convinced her that it is nearly a century
later, but even this is considered surprisingly
early for a palimpsest. It was natural, that,
convinced as she was that she had got in her
hands a fac-simile of ancient Syriac Gospels,

76 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

she should long to know precisely what
version it was, and what its exact value.
It was one day in July that Mr. and Mrs.
F. C. Burkitt were lunching with us. After
all our guests had gone but they and Miss
Mary Kingsley, my sister spread out her
photographs on the piano for Mr. Burkitt to
look at. She told him what the upper writing
was, and that the under-writing was Syriac
Gospels, which she hoped with his keen young
eyes, he might be able to decipher. He
became at once intensely interested, and asked
if she would entrust some dozen of the photo-
graphs to him for a few days. This was on
Friday, and on the following Sunday morning
she received a card from Mrs. Burkitt to say
that her husband was in a state of great excite-
ment, that he had written down a portion of
the palimpsest the previous night (Friday)
and had been to Professor Bensly with it,
and that they had discovered it to be a copy

IDENTIFICATION OF THE CODEX 77

of the Cureton Syriac. It was only on the
19th of March last, on the evening before
we left Sinai for the second time, that we
discovered how Mrs. Burkitt, in her excite-
ment, had not given us a perfectly correct
account of the transaction. We learnt that it
was the photographs themselves, and not
merely a transcription from them, that
Mr. Burkitt had taken to Professor Bensly.
'The two had deciphered the under-writing
together, the older and more experienced
scholar being the first to recognise the
Cureton Text. What Mr. Burkitt had really
written out at home was only a part of the
Greek which follows it, and which is hardly
yet identified.

The importance of the discovery was at
once apparent. The text which Dr. Cureton
found in 1842 among the MSS. brought from
the Nitrian desert nine years previously by
Archdeacon Tattam, and deposited in the

78 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

British Museum, is recognised as of the
highest value to Biblical scholars and critics,
as it is the earliest version made from the
original. But Cureton's MS. is sadly deficient.
It contains —

Matthew, from i. i to viii. 22.

,, from x. 32 to xxiii. 25.

Mark xvi., from 17 to 20.
Luke ii. 48 to iii. 16.

„ vii. 33 to xv. 21.

,, xvii. 24 to xxiv. 44.
John i. 1 to 42.

„ iii. 6 to vii. 37.

„ xiv. 10 to 12, 16 to 18, 19 to 23,
26 to 29, —

St. Mark's Gospel being present only in its
last four verses, and it is well known that the
last twelve do not occur in the earliest Greek
MSS. Here was a MS. which, even from
the photographs of it, one could see contained
a great deal of St. Mark.

IDENTIFICATION OF THE CODEX 79

To return to our narrative. The same
morning Mr. Burkitt brought a letter from
Professor Bensly to himself to show us.
This was a request to us to keep the matter
secret till once we could get the palimpsest
transcribed. We did keep it secret to some
extent — at least to the extent of not publish-
ing it, and of telling only a few friends
whose advice we were in need of. Professor
Bensly himself was so much excited that he
forgot an engagement to dinner, and the very
next day six of us had resolved to make the
journey to Sinai six months later, and had
communicated our resolution to each other.
It seemed an instinct with us all to wish for
the transcription of that manuscript. My
sister and I beean also to uree on Mr. Rendel
Harris the desirability of his accompany-
ing us.

Professor Bensly's new edition of the
Cureton text was already advertised. With

\

So HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

true English courage, he volunteered to cross
the desert in spite of his precarious health
and inexperience in camel-riding. It would
be a matter of poignant sorrow to us could
we think that this resolution had cost the
loss of so valuable a life. He came home,
alas ! but to die, and the place that once knew
him in Cambridge now knows him no more.
But it was not the desert journey, which he
went through so bravely, that caused this
misfortune. It was at Rome that he after-
wards caught the chill which proved so
quickly fatal. The day of each man's death
is fixed by Heaven, and we must bow to
the will of the Almighty, who mercifully
spared his loving widow and ourselves the
unspeakable pain of having to bury him in
the desert sand, as might so easily have
happened. Now his loved remains rest
anions those of his relatives till the hour of
the Resurrection, and it must be a consolation

IDENTIFICATION OF THE CODEX 81

to those who mourn for him that his last
energies were spent in so high and holy a
service.

We cannot well estimate the loss which
we have thus sustained for the edition of our
manuscript ; nor the still greater loss for the
critical text of the Old Syriac version, which
it was hoped Professor Bensly would edit
from the two manuscripts. We may be
allowed to express the wish that this im-
portant task may yet be accomplished by
a British scholar.

A GREEK DESCRIPTION OF
SINAI.

I translate the following description of the
Convent of St. Catherine from a Greek book
entitled — " The Holy Monastery of Sinai,"
by Perikles Gregoriados, Professor in the
Theological School of the Holy Sepulchre
(Jerusalem, 1875).'"

" In the midst of a dry and parched wilderness
there rises up before the eyes of the traveller,
wearied by the heat of the sun and the barrenness
of the land, a green oasis, refreshing and com-
forting. In the midst of an almost entire absence
of human labour, in the midst of a silence like that
of the dead, where there is no living creature and

* 'H lepa Movr) rov 2^5, vvh HepiKKeovs TpTjyopidSov, Kadir]yr]rov iw
rfj ®eo\oyiKrj ^x°^V T °v Koivov tov Ylavayiov Tatyov (eV 'Upo(ro\v/j.ois >
1875).

A GREEK DESCRIPTION OF SINAI 83

no social intercourse, suddenly there appears a little
hearth of industry and a light cooling breeze of life.
And above all, in the midst of a land in which
otherwise neither the nightingale of the Muses sings
the song of civilisation, nor the peaceful trumpet of
the Gospel is heard teaching the salvation of the
world — there, in the midst of bald mountains and
steep rocks, the exiled worship of Greek letters
found a home for itself ages ago, and the dove of
orthodoxy, flying from the deluge of religious
bigotry, built her nest in the loved tabernacles of
the Lord. A handful of men, flying from the noisy
world, following the mystic voice of the earthquake
and the echo of old-world trumpets,* surrounded
the awful Mount of God, and pitched their tents in
those places where Jehovah in cloud and smoke
and thunder and lightning carried out the moral
education of ancient Israel, that they might bring
their earthly lives as an offering to God, carrying
about with them Hellenism and Orthodoxy.

" Barren nature was amazed at their adamantine
morals ; the savageness of the aborigines, or of
the nomade inhabitants, who were often infuriated
against them, was diminished or subdued, and
cringed in astonishment at their feet. Emperors
* Exodus xix. 13 — 19.

84 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

honoured their virtue ; conquerors were pleased
with their tried prudence ; popes showed their
goodwill ; kings and dukes scattered gifts upon
them ; the great Napoleon, in granting them pri-
vileges and honours, was seized by a sweet emotion
and a great admiration when he found their house
inhabited l par des homines instrnits et polices an
milieu des barbares die desert ' ; and above all,
crowds of pious and learned men sail the seas and
cross the wilderness that they may be witnesses of
these things, that they may behold this strange
juxtaposition of things so opposite, and reverently
visit the hoary monuments which have escaped the
deluge of barbarism, and the overturning spade of
the centuries. Such is the Monastery of Sinai.

" The sacred historical reasons for such a building
existing in this place are, first, the wonderful Bush,
which the Hebrew law-giver, Moses, saw burning
and not consumed ; and secondly, the well where
the fair daughters of Jethro watered their father's
flocks with trouble. * Therefore both these spots
were embraced in the great enclosure of Justinian,
which was four-square, 245 Parisian feet in length
and 204 in breadth. Within this enclosure are
likewise the many small and somewhat rotten cells
of the fathers, an unsymmetrical number of little

A GREEK DESCRIPTION OF SINAI 85

chapels and temples, the historical and miraculous
Ottoman mosque, the time of whose erection is not
accurately known, but which must be much earlier
than A.D. 1 38 1, when we have the first recorded
mention of its existence ; and last, not least, the
most important of all, the splendid Catholic temple,
and the shabby, ill-placed, crumbling rooms which
contain many biblical treasures. Of these two the
Catholic temple is still in splendid condition, a
proof of imperial piety and magnificence, a fine
and hoary monument, admirable as a work of art,
in the truest and best taste, and in particular a
valuable relic of the Byzantine style in workman-
ship, but entirely in the midst of a dreary desert,
amid gigantic masses of mountain and towering
rocks, a tender shoot of fragrant rose or slender
lily in a ground bearing thorns and briars. All the
other parts of this temple are surpassed by the holy
altar, where nature and art, where matter and spirit,
rivalling one another, have produced works in which
a glorious harmony is reflected, most grateful to
the soul of the beholder.

" In this holy temple we must also mention the
three sarcophagi of the Virgin-Martyr, of which the
oldest is marble of exquisite workmanship ; the
other two are silver, one having been sent as a

S6 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

pious gift by the Empress Catherine the Great, the
other being the fruit of Christian subscriptions.
Yet the holy remains of the Saint are kept in the
first-mentioned.

" Amongst the collections of many books, stowed
away in divers rooms, may be found not only many
valuable examples in which is developed the
mystery of the art of caligraphy, which flourished
in an extraordinary manner before Gutenberg's
inventions, but also monuments having a great and
important influence, on account of their contents, on
the spread of ecclesiastical philology. The study
of such treasures has a double and a weighty use ;
for noble souls, taking refuge from time to time in
this asylum of solitary meditation and tranquillity,
treasured them up in this intellectual oasis of the
Sinaitic desert, aided by the philosophic custom of
condemning those who had broken the rigidity of
monastic rules to make copies of the manuscripts.

" We are all well acquainted with the story of the
sacred Codex, called the 'Sinaiticus,' which escaped
shipwreck for nearly fifteen centuries, having been
safely buried here till these latter days, when
Constantine Teschendorf, so expert in sacred
palaeography, out of the vaults, as he said, brought
it to the light, and succeeded in obtaining it for

A GREEK DESCRIPTION OF SINAI 87

publication, at the Sinaitic Synod held at Cairo in
1859, from the newly-elected, but not yet conse-
crated, Archbishop Cyril, Constantine I. having
just died ; he received it nominally for a time (ad
temptis), but practically, and in truth, till it should
be finally and eternally given away by the young
Archbishop.*

" Of this venerable relic of so many ages,
written on fine yellow vellum, the overjoyed finder
prepared a splendid fac-simile edition, with the
help of imperial Russian funds — an edition which
he described as 'sufficient as far as possible for
the learned who are curious about such relics, and
worthy of the prince at whose expense it has been
made.' But what a strange impression is caused by
the sight of the original, of which I succeeded in
seeing at Sinai only a few decayed leaves, strangely
separated from the bindings of other books, and
treasured here ! Besides this, there are still there
many important vellum MSS. of the Fathers of the
Church, and also writings upon paper of other
learned men, among which I may mention the
valuable MS. of Athanasius Ypsilantes, three only

* Donee in perpetuum datum esse (eum Codicem) Archie-
piscopus collegii nomine significant. TlpP\. Tio-xeyS. e'/cS. 1862,
and also Cahiriner Verhandlwizen and Das erreichte Ziel.

88 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

out of whose twelve books were published a few
years ago by the late learned Sinaite, Germanus
the Aphthonides.

4< In order to make an exhaustive study of all
the Sinaitic books, one would require to know not
only the Greek language, but also Slavonic, Syriac,
Arabic, and Iberian, in each of which there are
valuable manuscripts which awaken the admiration
of the masters of learning. Many European
students visit the convent every year, but very few
of them, or rather none of our scholars, have been
able till now, so far as I know, to see and investigate
scientifically the Greek books, and especially to
examine the various manuscripts of ancient liturgies
and other ecclesiastical books ; which, if they were
well studied and received the attention they deserve,
might throw light on many things, and fill up many
blanks in our modern study of liturgiology."

A very full and scholarly catalogue of the
Greek books has been made by a Russian
Archimandrite named Antoninus ; it re-
mains at the convent, and is much prized
by Galakteon, who will never give out a

A GREEK DESCRIPTION OF SINAI 89

Greek book without solemnly reading you a
full and particular description of it from the
said catalogue. This catalogue has never
been printed. Gardhausen's catalogue, which
borrows largely from it, is very bald, and gives
no idea of the beauty and interesting contents
of some of the magnificent martyrologies
which I saw on my last visit. But of the
Semitic books there has never till now been
a catalogue made.

The exploit of Tischendorf seems to have
made the monks so suspicious of western
scholars, that they have hitherto refused
permission to anyone to ransack their shelves,
and I therefore felt as if I had accomplished
a daring feat this year, when at Cairo I
persuaded the Archbishop to let me under-
take the task. It so happened that the day
on which this permission was given, was my
own and my sisters birthday. To return to
Gregoriados :

90 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

" On account o( the want of a proper catalogue
of the library, and of a decent arrangement of the
books, I cannot, unfortunately, tell anything exactly
about their whole number. Therefore it is super-
fluous to say, that the most crying want in this
holy monastery is the building of a proper library,
and the making of an exact list of the books, in
order that these valuable relics may not become
food for moths and other abominations. I call them
relics, because, besides other things, it appears that
at least during the last two centuries not a few of
the books have been taken away, partly through
ignorance, partly through the beneficence of the
monks in more recent times. Thus Lord W.
Turner (Journal, London 1820, Vol. II. page 443),
brought away from there to Europe not a few
choice manuscripts, such as one of Hephaestion
about ' Measures,' a Speech of Isocrates, the
three first books of the ' Iliad,' ' Tragedies of
^Eschylus,' the 'Medea' of Euripides, the beginning
of ' Hippolytus,' and other similar volumes. And
these disappeared for the most part after the
publication of the great Codex (the Sinaiticus). . .
The cause of their loss was the want of a proper
library and a regular catalogue. Perhaps one of
these two evils will be lessened by the catalogue

A GREEK DESCRIPTION OF SINAI 91

which has been made during the last few months
by the learned Archimandrite of the Russian
communion, K. Antoninus, who during a visit to
the convent six years ago spent whole months
working among its books. The study of this
library offers a profitable field, especially to those
of our scholars who have devoted themselves to
the study and filling up of the pages of our early
history."

These remarks of Gregoriados apply to the
Greek library only, but he seems to have
known little about the Semitic one. We can
only emphasise his remarks about the
necessity of a suitable room, and we may add,
suitable book-cases, in which such treasures
should be housed. Gregoriados continues :

History of the Convent

"When, on the one hand, the dawn of Gospel-
preaching began to chase the thick cloud of
idolatry, and on the other hand, frightful storms
and torrents of persecution arose, which bursting
upon cities and villages troubled and frightened the

92 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

faithful, then the ardent votaries of the new doctrine
of the Cross, ran, some of them, into the arena
of confession and martyrdom, while others, with-
drawing themselves quietly from the world, fled to
the deserts, seeking there for meditation and peace
of mind. Of all lands Egypt was most distinguished
in this respect, and the Theban deserts could see
in their bosom Paul of Thebes (a.d. 250), the
founder of monastic and anchorite life, and Antony
the Great (261 — 356), who 'caused the cities to
be deserted and the deserts to be populated/ as
the Church sings in extolling him; on account of
which, the sojourn in these places being dangerous
and adventuresome, the sacred names of Sinai and
Horeb, and the regions around them, drew from
every direction crowds of monks, upon the Mount
of God, upon the holy place of the Mystic Bush, by
the well of the daughters of Jethro, and about the
cave of the awful visions and ecstasies of the
Tishbite. Thus the deserts of this land were truly
peopled, and thousands of Christians fled into the
asylum which they offered, fearing captivity and
butchery at the hands of the Saracens. This is
testified to, first by Dionysius of Alexandria about
A.D. 205 ; secondly, it is clearly shown by the
miraculous transportation by angels to these

A GREEK DESCRIPTION OF SINAI 93

mountains of the body of the Virgin-Martyr
Catherine (A.D. 307), and thirdly, by the visit to
these parts of the Abbot Silvanus, who remained
there and superintended many anchorites ; *
fourthly, the narrative of Ammonius the Cenobite
(about A.D. 373) coming from Palestine to Sinai to
worship, and the still more faithful narrative of the
Eparch Neilus (A.D. 390 — 451), who both relate
frightful massacres and atrocities by the savage
tribes ; and above all by the existence of ruins of
old monasteries in many places, and of caves of
hermits, which all testify that in truth many
thousands of anchorites and other Christians had
crowded to these inhospitable regions long before
the time of Justinian. The life and the conduct of
these holy exiles was truly 'an exact study of
death ' as says Procopius of Cesaraea of the
Sinaites of his day ; for eschewing all evil as much
as was possible to men, cultivating the tree of
ascetic virtue with enthusiasm, they dwelt far from
one another with humility and austerity in the
mountains and caves and holes of this cheerless
land, from which they came down and assembled
every Lord's day in the church, where they cele-

* Tillemont, Memoires pour servir a Fhistoire eccl. X.
p. 448. No authority is mentioned for the second proof.

94 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

brated the Divine Mysteries and feasted together,
the most learned among them imparting instruction
to the others. According to tradition and to the
testimony of an Arab historian, this church was
built over the Holy Bush, round which the Empress-
Mother, Helena, raised a tower for the protection of
the monks from attack, about which nevertheless
we have no other trustworthy historical information.

" But this little colony of saints in the peninsula
of Sinai could not so easily find peace and security.
For so early as the reign of Diocletian the barbarous
tribes of Blemmua laid waste the coast towns and
massacred the fathers who dwelt at Raitho (Tor),
while on the same day the monks of Sinai were put
to death, and everything belonging to them was
destroyed without mercy. Even in later times the
scourge of such attacks never ceased to trouble the
weak anchorites, nor did the rocks of the holy
mountain ever cease to be stained with their
innocent blood, till nearly the middle of the sixth
century, when a new leaf was turned in the history
of the Sinai monks, and a new epoch was conse-
crated under the sway of one of the great Byzan-
tine emperors.

"After the death of Justin I. (518—527) the
sceptre of the Byzantine kingdom was taken by

A GREEK DESCRIPTION OF SINAI 95

his nephew Justinian, who during his long reign
greatly raised the dignity of the state, and who
was distinguished for unwearied activity and the
greatest magnanimity. But what no less than
political activity and martial successes adorns and
distinguishes the name of the great Justinian among
the kings of the earth is his great and wise piety
about holy things, and his noble generosity in the
erection of philanthropic buildings, especially of
convents and churches. Procopius of Cesaraea
relates that Justinian the Emperor was asked by a
deputation from the monks at Sinai — since they
had nothing of what they required, they who were
superior to all men — nothing in the way of
possessions, nor even what was necessary for their
bodies, nor even anything that they could buy in a
hurry — to build a church, which he dedicated to the
Virgin, so that they might live there in prayer and
sacrifice. He did not fear the overthrow of this
church from the mountain above, but he feared it
from below. For it is impossible for a man to pass
the night on the top of the mountain, seeing that
constant knockings and other divine noises are
heard there at night, astonishing the power and wit
of mankind. Before such a clear testimony of a
contemporary all doubt is taken away that the

96 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

present Monastery was built by the Emperor
Justinian, and another testimony is to be found in
the inscriptions on the beams of the Basilica (the
Catholic temple) of which the one on the sixth
beam says, ' For the salvation of our pioas Emperor
Justinian] and the one on the seventh, l For the
remembrance of the repose of our late Empress
Theodora!

" A much clearer and more exact account than
that of Procopius is that furnished to us about the
building of the Monastery by Eutychus, Patriarch
of Alexandria, who flourished in the second half of
the ninth century, in the Arab chronicle attributed
to him, the original of which is in the Sinai library,
but most of which is embodied in Greek in the
sacred history of Nektar of Crete (published in 1 805)
who was afterwards Patriarch of Jerusalem (1661 —
1669), which has attracted much attention from
modern travellers. He relates that the Emperor
Justinian, granting the request of the Sihaitic
anchorites, commanded the Eparch of Egypt to
supply the necessary funds out of the Egyptian
taxes, and also himself sent a skilful superintendent
of the work. This superintendent laid the foun-
dation of the Monastery upon its present site, on
account of its being the easiest spot for the purpose,

A GREEK DESCRIPTION OF SINAI 97

and because there was water there, and one did
not hear the echoes and thunderings as one does at
the summit of the mountain.* Besides this, the
Emperor sent to guard the monks a hundred
families, and commanded a hundred more to be
sent from Egypt, and appointed Doulas as their
ruler. The architect was certainly Stephen, as is
testified by the inscription on the thirteenth beam
of the church, which runs thus : ' O Lord God, who
hast revealed Thyself in this place, save and have
mercy upon Thy servant Stephen, the maker of this
monastery! etc.

" We know nothing of the history of Sinai
immediately after this epoch, except that about the
end of the same century the new building was
visited by Antony the Martyr, who found in it
many monks, among whom were three speaking
four languages.

" But about the same time the birth at Mecca of
Mohammed, the reformer of the Arab race, was
destined to give a new turn to the history of Sinai,
as a new people, till then nearly strangers, were
brought into close relationship with it, and carried
the teaching of the new leader amongst the tribes

* The Bedaween hearing this echo, say that the spirit of
Moses descends from Sinai.

98 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

of the Nabataeans and Saracens, and to the little
guard whom Justinian had sent to protect the
colony. This relationship, and the influence of
Mohammed and his immediate followers, is not
apparently confined to that alone, but assumes a
more particular character and a more immediate
contact, by means of which the Sinaites were able
to survive after the destruction of so many of their
companions, and to escape many storms of terrible
evil. In the second year of the Hegira (A.D. 624)
two Christian leaders attacked some of Moham-
med's followers, and put them to flight. On
hearing of this the Prophet hastened with more
than three thousand warriors, gave battle to these
Christian princes, and in conquering them gained
his first success in arms. The Christians around
the Red Sea having received quickly news of the
power of the Apostle of God, ran to pay homage
to him and to give their submission, whereupon the
prudent Sinaites, understanding the signs of the
times, went also and did homage and asked
protection for their Monastery. The eloquence of
these clever monks was such, that the young Arab
conqueror was charmed, and he did not confine
himself to showing his friendship and pleasure by
word alone, but after a year he came to Sinai in

A GREEK DESCRIPTION OF SINAI 99

person, honoured and worshipped the holy
mountain, and commanded all those with him to
revere that sacred place, 'where God revealed to
Moses a thousand and one words.' Then the
monks received him with bows and salutations, and
so gratified him that he gave them the celebrated
Testament as an assurance of everlasting protection.
"The Arabs of the district preserve the tradition
of Mohammed's visit to Sinai, and on the summit
of Jebel Mousa they show the print of his camel's
foot imprinted in the porphyritic granite, and lead
travellers to the place where the beloved of God
sat in judgment. This document (the Testament)
wrought many miracles in the hands of the clever
Sinaite who obtained it. Having built an Ottoman
mosque inside the monastery, he ran here and there
and succeeded often in obtaining from the Moslems
advantages and privileges, not only for himself, but
for all the orthodox clergy and for the religious
observances of our race."

Administration of the Convent.

" The first point that attracts our attention when
we try to say something about the mechanism
which moves the affairs of the hoary Convent of

ioo HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

the God-trodden mountain, is the strange pheno-
menon, unusual in ecclesiastical history, the exist-
ence in it of a consecrated Archbishopric. Why
should a land uninhabited by man, devoid of a
spiritual flock, yet have a bishop, not to say an
archbishop, while time has brought changes to so
many other lands, both near and far, troubling and
diminishing the elect of the Church, depriving them
of a name, and extinguishing them ? We can
account for it only by summing up all the evidence
we have been able to gather, from which it appears
that the seat of the bishopric in these parts was at
Feiran, and this bishopric survived till the middle
of the seventh century, when it was dissolved, and
gave rise to the creation of a new bishopric called
definitely that of Sinai. Therefore we find in later
times an episcopal see in that famous monastery,
always meeting with the care and favour of the
Byzantines in Egypt, by command of the rulers
of Constantinople; and with the removal of its
centre hearth at Feiran the colonies of Christians
around that place gradually ceased. Some have
maintained that Justinian established a bishopric
at Sinai, but even after the time of that emperor no
mention is made of any bishop till after the middle
of the ninth century. From the beginning of the

A GREEK DESCRIPTION OF SINAI 101

tenth and onwards we have a continuous chain of
bishops till A.D. 15 io, when the throne was vacant
till 1540, and again from 1547 till 1567, from which
time till now there have been seventeen archbishops.
The second of these intervals is very important
(1547 — 1567), because then the bishopric was dis-
solved in Egypt by the three assembled Patriarchs
of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. The reason
for the dissolution of this archiepiscopal see was
the constant rivalry between the Patriarchs of
Alexandria and Jerusalem about their jurisdiction
at Sinai, especially on the part of the Alexandrian
prelates, who left no stone unturned to lay their
despotic hand on the monastery and episcopate of
Sinai, from which endeavour many scandals arose.
" In short, one who has gone through the history
of this episcopate learns that its order and its origin
in the arrangement of the eastern orthodox hier-
archy was one of the most burning and important
phenomena in the history of the Sinai convent.
The question was raised in different ways, and
never once argued according to ecclesiastical
canons ; it had important consequences from time
to time, not only unsettling the welfare of the
convent, but also throwing the whole Church into
convulsions. . . .

102 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

"Time and the Church have solved the problem
of the Archbishop of Sinai's place in relation to the
ecclesiastical hierarchy somewhat as follows :

" He is an archbishop, having a canonical descent
and relation to the Patriarch of Jerusalem. It
follows that the archbishop must

"I. Be consecrated by his own Patriarch (olrcelov)
canonically and without bribery, otherwise his con-
secration will be null and void.

" 2. Remember the name of the Patriarch who
consecrated him (in his prayers, no doubt).

"3. Be called QeotyikearaTos or Se/Saay-uavraro?.

"4. Be summoned at will by the Holy Patriarch
of Jerusalem.

" 5. Not have the right to send pacificals or other
synodical letters, nor give letters of absolution.

" And to these the Archbishop of Sinai is bound,
by canonical right.

" But the Prelate of Sinai is not only an arch-
bishop, but also abbot of the convent, and on
account of that, other important conditions have
to be observed :

" 1. Each archbishop is elected by the synod and
brotherhood of the Sinaite fathers as their abbot,
as his rule is given to him by no one except the
community of the monastery.

A GREEK DESCRIPTION OF SINAI 103

" 2. He is consecrated afterwards by the Patriarch
of Jerusalem simply as bishop, but the independence
of the monastery in no way suffers from this relation
of the archiepiscopate to the throne of the Holy
City.

" 3. The episcopal character of the Sinaitic pre-
late does not affect the monastery, for he is only
abbot of it, and not bishop, as his pastoral staff is
stretched out over the country alone. Therefore
he has no right to sit on the throne ; which stands
there that no confusion may exist in things which
cannot be confused, and that not even the most
zealous bishop may violate the autonomy and
independence of the monastery, as some have tried
to do. There are in the Church most emphatic
commands and decisions on this subject.

" 4. From all this it appears that the archiepis-
copate of Sinai has a double character, that in the
prelate's appointment there must be co-operation
between the convent and Jerusalem, the one electing,
the other consecrating. ... If the monastery wishes
to accuse him of a fault, it can only turn to the
Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Palestinian synod,
to whom it presented him for consecration ; thus, if
the worst comes to the worst, and there are cross-
accusations for grave faults, and a rupture between

io 4 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

archbishop and monastery, abbot and brotherhood,
the appeal of the accusers is directed canonically
to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who can punish
according to his judgment, even to the deprivation
of the archbishop, but he cannot deprive the abbot
of the autonomous monastery ; yet canonically he
would be justified in punishing the offending arch-
bishop, also as abbot, if accused by the monastery.
And no other Patriarch has any jurisdiction here.

" Strange to say, beside the Archiepiscopate and
the authoritative Abbacy, there exists also another
powerful force in the monastery of Sinai, the Holy
Syndicate (Zvva^is), which represents in the most
aristocratic way the whole Sinaitic brotherhood,
has the greatest influence in its affairs, directing
and bridling the possibly arbitrary conduct of the
archbishop, and through him and with him regulat-
ing the mechanism of the monastery, both internal

and external This syndicate consists of the

leaders among the monastic brethren. Its number
varies, and there are Patriarchal decrees limiting it
to twelve ; the syndics are chosen by the archbishop
and the other members, excepting those who are at
the time AUaios (sub-prior?) %Kevo$vka% (warden,
also librarian), and OUovo/bLos (bursar), who are
always members of this syndicate.

A GREEK DESCRIPTION OF SINAI 105

" This Holy Syndicate, being thus formed, is en-
trusted with all the administration of the monastery.

"All official documents must be countersigned
by this syndicate, and be sealed with the great seal
of the monastery. (This great seal is circular in
shape, and in its middle is represented the bush,
the mountain, and the monastery ; Moses, Aaron,
and St. Catherine, surrounded by the legend, ^ The
Holy Monastery from the Great Justinian in the
holy and God-trodden Mount of Sinai in the year
of Christ, 529 ij«)*

"The AUcllos has the place of abbot, as we have
said, being the first in the monastery after the
archbishop. He has the care of ecclesiastical order,
of the good conduct of the fathers, of the entertain-
ing of strangers, of the service and monastic edu-
cation of novices, fulfilling and lightening in these
things the duties of the Holy Syndicate and of the
archbishop.

"The Z fcevotyvXai; is entrusted with the keeping
of the church in order, the care of the holy relics,
etc. He holds his office for life, and must never go
far from the monastery.

* This seal is stamped on the book from which I am
translating, a gift from the Prior to myself.

106 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

" The duties of the OUovo/jlo^ are to superintend
all the victuals of the monastery, submitting from
time to time to the syndicate a list of what is
necessary, and receiving his commands from it.
He manages all the relationships of the monastery,
judges all its complicated affairs, punishing and
rewarding, engaging camels, guaranteeing the
comfort of travellers and pilgrims, commanding the
tribes of the Kaphyra, himself providing all means
of transport, and in general, superintending every
direct and indirect connexion of the monastery with
the Bedaween, who refer to him as their leader and
judge.

" Besides this private and select syndicate, in
special 'circumstances, when general measures have
to be adopted, during the journeys of the arch-
bishop to and from the monastery, in the temporary
vacancy of the throne, at the election of a new
archbishop, and so forth, a general synod (Svva&s)
of all the brethren is called together, from the
humblest monk to the highest archimandrite, who
all sign the synodical acts, regulate and legislate,
having the whole management of the monastery
in their hands.

" The whole synod, besides its duties as described
above, has also the duty of preserving its canonical

A GREEK DESCRIPTION OF SINAI. 107

relations towards the Orthodox Church in general
and the Patriarchate of Jerusalem in particular.
The Patriarchs have the care of it, and in the
treaties is expressly mentioned their obligation to
observe the ritual of the church, of the table and of
the other monastic customs. Such are the com-
plete abstinence from animal food in the monastery,
the prohibition of private meals in the cells, of the
storage of wine, and other such things ; the exact
performance of rites, both daily and at feast-days,
according to the variety of monastic customs, upon
the basis of the ritual of St. Saba as reformed by
the Stoudites, no intercourse being allowed in the
monastery with the outer world, nor voluntary
excursions either to Egypt or within the peninsula ;
and the fulfilment of the duties of service towards
the Altar, and the leavening of bread &c."

ST. SYLVIA OF AQUITAINE

Although we were the first women who
had ever worked in the convent library, we
were by no means the first who have travelled
to Sinai, and established friendly relations
with its monks. During the reign of the
Emperor Theodosius, as is supposed, i.e.
between a.d. 385 and 388, St. Sylvia, a native
of Aquitaine, undertook a pilgrimage to the
holy places of the East, and has left behind
her a journal, the beginning of which is
unhappily lost, but which contains a very
faithful description of the scenery around
Sinai, nearly a century before the present
convent was built. She bears witness to the
fact that a community of monks had estab-

ST. SYLVIA OF AQUITAINE 109

lished themselves around the well of Jethro
at that early period, and a few quotations
from her diary will suffice to show that they
were of the same kind and hospitable dis-
position as we found in their successors of the
present day.

"We arrived at a certain place," says Sylvia,
" where the mountains betwixt which we were
travelling opened out into a huge, wide, and very
fair valley,* and beyond this valley there appeared
the Mount of God, Sinai. The very spot where
the mountains opened is joined to the place in
which are the traditions of the murmuring. When
we arrived at this spot the guides reminded us of
it, saying : ' It is customary for those who come, to
offer a prayer here, when the Mount of God is first
seen from this place,' and this we did. The
distance thence to the Mount of God is about four
miles in all, through the valley, which I said was a
great one. This is a very extensive valley, lying
under the side of the Mount of God, which mea-
sures, as far as we could estimate by seeing, or as

* The great plain Er-Rahah.

no HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

the people themselves said, in length about 60,000
paces, in breadth about 4000. We had to cross
this valley in order to reach the mountain. This
is the huge and wide valley in which the children
of Israel sojourned in those days, when St. Moses
ascended into the Mount of God, and was there
forty days and forty nights. This is the valley in
which the calf was made ; the place is shown to
this day, for a great stone stands fixed on the very
spot. This therefore is the very same valley at
the head of which is the place where St. Moses,
whilst feeding the flocks of his father-in-law, was
spoken to by God in the Burning Bush. And
whereas our path was such that first we had to
ascend the Mount of God which here appears, the
ascent was better from where we had come, and
from thence again we must descend to the head
of the valley, that is to where the Bush* was,
because the descent from the Mountain of God was
better there. It was pleasant therefore when we
had seen everything we wished to see, in
descending the Mount of God, to come to the
place of the Bush, and thus across all the valley
itself, which is lengthways, and to return with the

* Where the present monastery stands.

ST. SYLVIA OF AQUITAINE ur

holy men who showed us the different places that
are written about in that selfsame valley, and this
we did. Therefore as we were coming from that
place, where on the way from Faran * we offered a
prayer, the path was such that we crossed over
that very valley, and thus arrived at the Mount of
God. As you go round about the mountain it
appears to be one, though when you get within it
there are many ; but the whole is called the Mount
of God, especially the one on whose summitf is the
place where the Glory of God descended, as it is
written ; and it is in the middle of them all ; and
while all these (mountains) that are in the group
are more glorious than I had ever expected to see,
yet the one in the middle, on which the Glory of
God descended, is so much higher than all the
others, that when we approached it, straightway
all these mountains, which had appeared to us
glorious, seemed but as little hills. It is very
wonderful, and without the grace of God I do
not think it could have been, that whilst the
middle one is higher than all, and is specially
called Sinai, that is, where the Glory of God
descended, nevertheless it cannot be seen unless

* Feiran, the ancient Rephidim. + Jebel Katerina ?

U2 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

you come to its very root before you ascend it;
and after you have accomplished your wish you
will descend thence and look at it from the
opposite side, which before you ascended you
could not have done. But before we arrived at
the Mount of God we knew this from the replies
of the brethren, and when I arrived at the place
I understood it clearly to be so.

" We made our entry into the mountain on a
Sabbath evening, and we arrived at a certain
monastery, where the monks who dwelt there
received us very kindly, showing us every
attention. For there is a church here with a
presbytery, therefore we remained the night,
that very early on the Lord's day we might begin
to climb the different mountains with the presbyter
and the monks who dwelt there, mountains which
are ascended with infinite labour, because you do
not go up them slowly and slowly like a snail, but
straight up you go, as if it were a wall, and you
are obliged to descend each of these mountains till
you get down to the very root of that middle
mountain, which is specially Sinai. And there
with the help of Christ our Lord, aided by the
prayers of the saints who accompanied us, I
accomplished the ascent, and with great labour,

ST. SYLVIA OF AQUITAINE 113

for I was obliged to ascend on foot, as I could
not go up in the saddle ; nevertheless this labour
was not felt, because the desires I had I saw
fulfilled with the help of God. About the fourth
hour we arrived at the summit of Sinai, that holy
Mount of God where the law was given, and there
is the place where the Glory of God descended on
the day when the mountain smoked. And in that
spot there is now a little church, because the said
place, which is the summit of the mountain, is not
very large. But nevertheless the church has of
itself great grace. When, then, with the help of
God we ascended to that summit, and arrived at
the door of that church, behold, the presbyter met
us, coming from his monastery, which is considered
to belong to the church, a healthy old man — a
monk of what is called the ascetic life here, one
moreover who is worthy to be in this place. Other
presbyters also came to meet us, but not all the
monks who dwell here close to the mountain, that
is, those who are not prevented by weakness or
age. But no one dwells at the summit of the
middle mountain, for there is nothing else there
save only the church and the cave where St. Moses
was. Having read in the very place all from the
Book of Moses, and having made an offering in

ii 4 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

due order, and we having partaken of the com-
munion, just as we were going out of the church
the presbyters of the same place gave us thank-
offerings,* that is, gifts of apples (oranges ?) which
grow in the mountain itself. For, although the
hoary mountain of Sinai is all stony, and has no
corn, nevertheless below, near the root of these
mountains, that is, both about the one in the
middle, and about those that surround it, there
are little rills, and the holy monks plant young
trees diligently about them, and establish little
apple-gardens, or houses of prayer, and near to
them monasteries, so that they gather a little
fruit from the earth of the mountain itself, and
these they cultivate with their own hands.

" Then, after we had communicated, and these
holy men had given us evXoylas, and we had gone
out of the door of the church, then I began to
request them to show us the different places ; and
forthwith these holy men deigned to do so, for
they pointed out to us the very cave where St.
Moses was when he ascended the second time into
the Mount of God, that he might receive again the

* Evhoyias, just as the monks of the present day gave us
occasionally gifts of dates, pomegranates, delicious quince-
jelly, almonds, and date-brandy.

ST. SYLVIA OF AQUITAINE 115

tablets after he had broken them on account of the
people's sin, and other places, whatever we desired,
or those that they knew better about they deigned
to show us. Egypt also, and Palestine, and the
Red Sea, and the Mare Parthenicum, which reaches
to Alexandria, and also the far-away borders of the
Saracens, we saw below us, as I think was hardly
possible. But all these different things the holy
men declared to us.

" Having then fulfilled every desire which had
impelled us to ascend, we began to descend from
the summit of the Mount of God, and went up to
another mountain,* which is joined to it, and is the
place called Horeb. Here also there is a church,
for this place is Horeb, where St. Elijah the pro-
phet was, to which he fled from the face of Kino-
Ahab, where God spake to him, saying : ' What
doest thou here, Elijah ? ' as it is written in the
Book of the Kings, for here the cave where St.
Elijah was hid is seen to-day before the door of the
church which is there. A stone altar also is seen,
which St. Elijah himself placed there to sacrifice to
God, as these holy men deigned to show us. We
made an oblation and a long prayer, and read a

* Jebel Mousa.

n6 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

portion of the Book of Kings. This we desired
very much to do always, and wherever we went we
always read a portion of the Book about it.

" Having made an offering there, we went im-
mediately to another place not far from it, the
presbyters and monks showing us, that is, to the
place* where St. Aaron stood with the seventy
elders while St. Moses received from God the law
for the children of Israel. For in that place, although
it has no roof, nevertheless there is a huge rock,
having a flat surface on the top, on which these
holy men are said to have stood, and in the midst
of it they had made an altar of stones. So we read
here the very place in the Book of Moses, and
repeated a psalm suitable to the spot, and having
offered a prayer, we descended thence. It now
began to be about the eighth hour, and we had
still three miles to go before we could leave the
mountain-region that we had entered the night
before, but we had not to go out at the same place
by which we had made our way, but as I said
above, necessity was laid upon us to visit all the
holy places and to see all the monasteries that
were there, and thus to go out at the head of the

* The hill now called by the Arabs Harun.

ST. SYLVIA OF AQUITAINE 117

valley which I described above, that is, which lies
below the Mount of God. Therefore it was neces-
sary for us to go out at the head of that valley,
because there were in it many monasteries of holy
men, and a church in the place where the bush is,
the bush that is green to this day, and sends out
shoots.

''We thus went down from the Mount of God,
and arrived at the bush about the tenth hour. In
front of the church there is a beautiful garden,*
having abundance of fine water, and in this garden
is the bush itself. Near to it also the place is
shown where St. Moses stood when God said to
him, ' Loose the latchet of thy shoe,' etc., and when
we arrived at this place it was already the tenth
hour, and because it was so late we could not make
an offering. But prayer was made in the church,
and also near the bush in the garden, and we read
the very place in the Book of Moses, according to
our custom. And because it was late, we supped
in the garden before the bush with the holy men
themselves, and we encamped there. And waking
next morning very early, we begged the presbyters
that an offering should be made, and this was done.

* The very garden in which our tents were pitched.

n8 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

The holy men began to show us the various places
as we went away from the bush. They pointed
out to us the place where the tents of the children
of Israel were in those days, when Moses was in
the mountain. They showed us also the place
where the calf was made, for a great stone is fixed
in that place unto this day. We also as we went
saw before us the summit of the mountain that
looks down over all the valley, from which place
St. Moses saw the children of Israel dancing in
those days when they made the calf. They showed
us also a great stone in the place where St. Moses
descended with Joshua, the son of Nun. Close to
this stone he waxed wroth, and broke the tablets
which he was carrying. They showed us also in
what manner each of them had his dwelling in this
valley. The foundations of these dwellings appear
to this day as if they were surrounded by stone ;
they showed us also the place where St. Moses
ordered the children of Israel to run from gate to
gate, he returning to the mountain.* Then they
showed us the place where the calf was burnt which
Aaron had made for them, by order of Moses.
Likewise they showed us the stream from which

* Exodus xxxii. 27.

ST. SYLVIA OF AQUITAINE 119

St. Moses gave to drink to the children of Israel,
as it is written in Exodus. They showed us also
the place where the seventy men received some of
the spirit of Moses. They showed us also the place
where the children of Israel lusted for food. They
also pointed out to us the place which is called the
Conflagration, because part of the tents were burnt
there;* then the fire ceased when Moses prayed.
They showed us also the place where manna and
quails rained on them.

" And thus the various things (which are) written
in the Books of St. Moses as having been done in
this place, namely, this valley, which, as I said,
lies under the Mount of God, the holy Sinai, were
shown to us, which it would be enough if I wrote
them all singly, because no one could retain so
much, but when you read the holy Books of Moses
with devotion, all things are more closely seen
which were done here. For this is the valley
where the Passover was celebrated when a year
had passed from the departure of the children of
Israel out of the land of Egypt, because in that
valley the children of Israel remained some time,
that is, while St. Moses ascended into the Mount of

* Numbers xi. 3.

120 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

God, and descended the first and second times ; and
again, they remained there for some time while the
Tabernacle was being made, and the various things
which were shown in the Mount of God. The same
day we met with some very holy monks, who on
account of their age or imbecility cannot go to the
Mount of God to make offerings, but who never-
theless deigned to take us into their monasteries.

" Thus having seen all the holy places which we
desired, and all the places where the children of
Israel passed going and coming to the Mount of
God, having seen also the holy men who dwelt
there, we returned to Faran in the name of God.
And we ought to give thanks to God in everything,
I will not say in so many and such things as He
has deigned to confer upon me, an unworthy woman
of no merit, that I should walk about all the places
of which I was not worthy ; nor can I sufficiently
thank all those holy men who deigned to take my
little self with a willing mind into their monasteries,
and lead me about through all those places which
I asked about according to the Scriptures. Many
also of these holy men themselves, who dwelt in
the mountain of God or round about it, deigned to
accompany us to Faran, those at least who were
stronger in body."

ST. SYLVIA OF AQUITAINE 121

We refer those of our readers who wish to
know more of St. Sylvia's diary to the story
itself, in the original Latin, by J. F. Gamur-
rini (Rome, ex typis Vaticanis, 1888). There
they will learn how she went to Jerusalem,
and witnessed all the ceremonies of Passion
Week, — how she heard short sermons from
the bishop and from all the presbyters in
turn, proving to us that such exhortations
were more common in the Greek Church of
the fourth century than they are now, — how
she went to the burial-place of Job, and also
to Haran, to the very spot where Eleazer
met with Rebecca.

The whole diary throws a flood of light on
the state of Eastern Christendom before the
fall of the Roman Empire, and proves that
the love of adventure is by no means a new
phenomenon in our sex. This fourth-century
narrative of a woman's experience, before a
stone of the present venerable monastery was

122 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

laid, is singularly like our own. Sylvia dis-
covered no manuscripts, for the oldest of
those now existing had then hardly begun to
be written. She must have carried with her
manuscripts of the Pentateuch and of the
Books of Kings ; and she succeeded in seeing
a supposed letter of our Lord to Abgah, King
of Edessa.

A more modern coincidence deserves to
be noted. For the first two years of our
residence in Cambridge we occupied a semi-
detached house, and were during that time
under the same roof as one of Canon Cureton's
married daughters. As my sister could not
obtain even a second-hand copy of the Cure-
ton Gospels for love or money, this lady
very kindly lent her her father's own copy,
to take with us on our second visit to Sinai.

The following lines were written by my
sister for her Christmas-card in the winter
of 1892 :

ST. SYLVIA OF AQUITAINE 123

XdpLS iirl Xdpiros

One more year since Christ was like us

In a tent of clay ;
One year less till He shall take us

Home for aye.
Oh how bright the path before us !
Oh how great the glory o'er us !
Oh how strong the Hand that tore us

From sin's sway !

One year less of toil and trouble,

Till we see His face ;
Each new step will gain us double

In our race.
Less and less of tears and sinning,
More and more of work and winning,
Joy that ends in fresh beginning,

Grace for grace.

SECOND VISIT TO SINAI

{From Mrs. Lewis's Journal)

The story of our first visit to Sinai in the
pages of the Churchman for August had
scarcely been finished when an event occurred
which made us resolve to return thither within
six months. Our readers may remember that
we described a Syriac palimpsest, of which
the later writing is a martyrology and the
earlier one the four Gospels. As my eyes
are not keen enough to decipher more than a
few separated words of the latter, I took
several opportunities of showing the photo-
graphs to Syriac scholars, with the result
that no one thought they could be read, until
I placed a few of the clearest ones in the

SECOND VISIT TO SINAI 125

hands of Mr. F. C. Burkitt. They were
shown by him to Professor Bensly, and the
two identified the version as of the same
type as that discovered by Cureton in 1842,
though with considerable variation in the
readings. It thus appeared that my efforts
had been the means of bringing to light an
early text of the Gospels which would supple-
ment the Curetonian one, and be not without
value for the light it might throw on
disputed passages. A portion of it could
be deciphered from my photographs, but the
rest was only to be seen from the pages of
the manuscript itself. The three gentlemen
who undertook to transcribe it, and amongst
whom I divided some 360 photographs,
Professor Bensly, Mr. Rendel Harris, and
Mr. Burkitt, volunteered to go with my
sister and me on a joint expedition to Sinai,
Mrs. Bensly and Mrs. Burkitt accompany-

ing us.

126 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

We spent a few weeks at Cairo, and made
three calls on the Archbishop. The first
time we went by ourselves, and my sister
asked him to allow her to catalogue the
Arabic MSS. in the convent. She renewed
her request when we again called to introduce
Professor and Mrs. Bensly, and again when
we went with Mr. and Mrs. Burkitt, adding
on the third occasion that we should also
like to do the Syriac ones. The result was
that he wrote a letter to the monks, telling
them that the work of cataloguing was to be
in our hands only, and that every facility for
examining the books was to be given to the
party, on condition that we left for the use of
the convent copies of the said catalogues in
Greek.

Mr. Rendel Harris met us at Suez, and
we went into the desert on the 30th January.
Dr. Watson had recommended to us a
dragoman who was much superior to the

SECOND VISIT TO SINAI 127

one we had last year. Though a Moham-
medan, he has always been a protege of
the late Dr. Lansing. We were fanned by
a cooling breeze, and the road seemed less
monotonous than formerly, for it was
enlivened by philological discussions, by
scraps of song, of wit, and of story. We
reached the convent about mid-day on
February 8th, were received at the gate by
the Bursar, Nicodemus, and conducted to
the parlour of Galakteon the librarian, who
now fills the office of He^oumenos or Abbot.
He received us with a cordiality that was
almost overpowering, and was directed
chiefly to myself. He hardly knew, in fact,
how to express his delight. He kept me
behind after the others had left, and told
me that he looked on me in the light of his.
mother, that he would be guided by my
advice in everything, and that as four of the
party were as yet strangers to him, he would

128 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

prefer that all requests for books, etc., should
come to him at first through me.

I, of course, assented to this arrangement,
and asked if it would be convenient for us to
visit the library in the afternoon.

So we returned at the appointed hour,
only too anxious to set our eyes again on the
dear old palimpsest. No sooner were we
seated than the Abbot entered holding up a
blood-stained pocket-handkerchief, and dis-
playing behind it a face and head streaming
from recent wounds. His tall cap had fallen
off, and his long hair hung down in a helpless
fashion. He sank groaning into a chair, and
exclaimed, " I have fallen, oh, I am suffering."
It was evident that he had been roused to
receive us, and when only half awake had
gone tilt against the door of the tiny dark
closet which does duty for his bedroom. Of
course we recommended him to retire to rest,
and said we would not trouble him about the

SECOND VISIT TO SINAI 129

library till to-morrow, but he was determined
to show it to us, so we were obliged to
accompany him thither, he resisting all
attempts on the part of the monks and
ourselves to put a little plaster on his wounds,
which, though many, were only skin deep.
But we knew that he had had a serious illness
since we were last at Sinai, and notwith-
standing his pleasant jest about passing
himself off as my son should he ever visit
England, he appears to be well over sixty.
So we were all not a little anxious lest he
should have a feverish night, and delay our
friends' chance of be^innin^ work on the
palimpsest.

Next morning (Friday) he tottered to
what is called the Archbishop's room, where
the Syriac books are kept, and asked me
what we wished to see first. I replied, " All
the books which we photographed last year,"
and as I had anticipated, the palimpsest and

130 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

the Jerusalem Lectionary were both produced
along with some other Syriac books from a
cupboard. I at once asked Galakteon if he
would let me have the Lectionary in my tent,
as I wished to work at it myself, and if he
would let me have the palimpsest to give
employment to my friends. "Just as you
wish," was the reply. Whilst I was
examining these treasures Mr. Rendel
Harris held out another " Jerusalem Lec-
tionary," dated four years later than the one
I had discovered, i.e. in a.d. 1120, and which
is thus the third one of its kind extant. I
carried both, with the palimpsest, to our tents,
and it may be imagined that the latter at once
underwent a critical examination.

Mr. Harris pronounced it to be by no
means a difficult palimpsest, but the pages
varied greatly in distinctness, and though
even I could trace the words (being of their
natural size) as I could not do in my photo-

SECOND VISIT TO SINAI 131

graphs, there were many from which the
actual ink of the under-writing had faded,
leaving only faint indications on the vellum
from which words could be traced. Add to
this that many of these words were covered
by the dark upper writing which was happily
of a different colour, and that most of it had
to be read between the lines, and my readers
may appreciate the difficulty of the task
which was to be undertaken. However,
after much discussion, the three scholars
agreed to the following division of labour.
Mr. Rendel Harris to read the first hundred
and four pages, Mr. Burkitt the second
hundred or more (these included thirty which
he had already copied from my photographs)
and Professor Bensly the remainder, together
with revising as much of the others' work as
possible. The Gospels were already known
to stop after page 320, as the rest of the
palimpsest writing treats of other subjects,

V

132 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

partly Syriac and partly Greek. The day
was to be divided into three watches, so that
some one might be always at work from
eight o'clock till eleven, from eleven till two,
and from two till five. But as there was a
deficiency of bright sunlight after half-past
three, and this made a considerable difference
to such work, each separate watch was taken
in turns on successive days. The manuscript
lay in my tent at night, Mrs. Bensly having
made a pretty silk cover for it, and was
fetched out soon after daybreak in order that
Professor Bensly might secure an hour's work
before the first watch began. Nor did the
coming of darkness bring rest to its pages,
for I often sat up till half-past ten to copy
some story in the upper writing after Professor
Bensly had finished with it.

We began our work on the catalogues at
once. The monks read their Archbishop's
letter, and then said that they would never

SECOND VISIT TO SINAI 133

have placed all their treasures in the hands
of anyone whom they did not thoroughly
know and trust, but that they would most
willingly comply with my wish that Mr.
Rendel Harris should help me with the
Syriac manuscripts, and that one of them-
selves should relieve my sister from the
laborious task of counting the pages of the
Arabic ones.

So ten or fifteen volumes were carried up
at a time from the various little closets, which
are called libraries only by courtesy, and from
old chests stored away in the queerest of
corners. They lay on the table so that
Professor Bensly and Mr. Burkitt might
have the opportunity of examining them as
soon as we did, and we spent several hours
and days in the often very monotonous task
of the necessary counting and describing. I
left the copying of titles to Mr. Harris, unless
a volume looked as if it might prove very

134 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

interesting, when we searched its pages
together.

Mrs. Bensly kindly undertook to count
pages for my sister, but the Arabic books so
greatly outnumbered the Syriac that the
monks also came to her aid, and the little
draughty room, with its glassless windows,
was sometimes filled with some half-dozen of
the holy fathers, counting assiduously under
their abbot's directions. They were always
greatly pleased when the contents of a book
were explained to them. Mr. Harris's
thorough knowledge of Church history and
of patristic literature proved invaluable in
helping us to identify the often strangely
sounding and strangely spelt titles of Arabic
books.

I had still another project in regard to the
palimpsest, which my friends were one and all
reluctant to let me disclose, as they did not
know how the monks w T ould take it. I had

SECOND VISIT TO SINAI 135

made enquiries in the manuscript room of
the British Museum as to the best means of
reviving ancient writing, when faded, without
risk of injury either to the script or to
the vellum. I had come provided with four
bottles of a very ill-scented composition, from
the fumes of which I hoped to be protected
by a respirator specially designed for the
purpose.

For ten days I had to restrain my
impatience about using this, but on the
eleventh I happened to open a large volume
of Mar Isaac's discourses which I had known
on our former visit, and which contained
many pages so faded as to be quite illegible.
I asked Galakteon to let me restore one of
these, with the result, that it came up in a
brilliant hue of dark green, and he was so
astonished that he asked me to paint up the
whole volume, then to try my " scent bottle,"
as it was called, on other hoary documents.

136 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

How triumphant I felt when he gave me
permission to touch up the palimpsest, though
only in places where it could not be read
otherwise. Professor Bensly at first dis-
approved of the proceeding, but as both his
fellow-workers gave my brush the warmest
of welcomes, he was induced after a few days
to ask for it himself, and many a blank
margin thus became covered with very
distinct writing. How many lines were thus
restored to the text we cannot well estimate,
but in Mr. Harris's portion it might perhaps
be a sixth of the whole. Moreover, in
difficult passages I was often able to verify
the words which one of my friends had
deciphered. It was thus that the final
colophon came to light, telling that these
were the " separated Gospels." The next
column probably contains a date, but it
baffled all my efforts to bring up more than
a few words, and is evidently written with

SECOND VISIT TO SINAI 137

ink which ought to be treated by another
chemical.

Mrs. Bensly, besides giving some help to
her husband and to my sister, found a sphere
of usefulness in trying to teach some Bedawee
women to knit. There were two poor crea-
tures who had never known the use of soap
and water, who spent most of their time
sitting with a couple of children outside the
convent gate, and whose home was under a
great rock. Their condition was apparently
not much above that of the lower animals,
and they had had no opportunity of learning
anything from one of their own sex. The
stupid creatures refused to learn, but some
men and boys took up the work so eagerly
that their kind teacher could not supply them
all with materials.

The three of us who could speak Greek
occasionally got into a religious discussion
with the monks, especially Nicodemus, who

138 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

was very anxious to convince us of the good
which ascetics had done in the world. "These
manuscripts would not be here for you to
copy," he would exclaim, " if pious men had
not retired into the desert to write them."
We thought it wiser not to make the obvious
retort, viz. that the monks of the last few
centuries had quite failed to comprehend the
value of what their predecessors had done.
We Presbyterians had rather the advantage
over our companions of the Society of Friends
and of the Church of England, when we were
asked if we accepted the authority of Synods ;
but we startled Nicodemus by persistently
refusing to acknowledge any mediator except
the Lord Jesus Christ in our approach to the
Father. In discussions with Greek monks,
when one gets to a thorny subject, such as
the priesthood, a safe plan is to say something
about the Pope ; this causes a diversion of
their energies to an antagonist worth hitting.

SECOND VISIT TO SINAI 139

The day before our departure a question
of mine induced Galakteon to, take us to the
coal-cellar, and show us a dark prison-hole, or
oubliette, to be entered only by a steep ladder.
I had no wish to blacken myself, but Mr.
Harris went down amidst a shower of fare-
wells in several languages. He found a
succession of secret chambers communicating
with each other, and Galakteon confessed to
having been once confined there for twenty-
four hours, without food, when he had com-
mitted a breach of monastic order.

Our journey homewards was a remarkably
pleasant one. Heavy showers fell at night,
and cooling winds made our rides over the
waste enjoyable. The only exception to
this was a gust of sand-laden wind which
struck suddenly down on us in the Wady
esh-Scheikh, and a storm of sand into which
we rode between Wady Ghurundel and
Sadur.

140 HOW THE CODEX WAS FOUND

On the last night of our desert journey
three of us hurried on to A'yun Mousa after
dinner, that we might be in time to catch the
Marseille boat. Never shall we forget the
silent glory of the moon-lit sands, and the
ghost-like shadows of the palm trees which
told of our approach to civilisation and rest.
We could only regret that we had hitherto
made no use of these evening hours for
travelling, but it is of course impossible to
move a camp after it has once settled to
the serious business of dining.

It is too soon to tell what the influence
of the newly-found Codex will be upon the
Canon of Scripture. The last twelve verses
of St. Mark's Gospel are conspicuous by their
absence, St. Luke besrinninor on the same

o o

page as St. Mark ends. The greeting of the
angels to the shepherds in Luke ii. 14 is
" Good will towards men." Lastly, our manu-

SECOND VISIT TO SINAI 141

script is linked to the Curetonian by its colo-
phon, which came up under the reviver, and
which tells us that these are " the separated
Gospels." The Gospels end on page 320 of
the manuscript ; the remainder is apocryphal
writings, in Syriac and in Greek, which are
as yet only partly transcribed.

We can only hope that this discovery of
an early text of God's great message to the
world may lead to an increased interest in
Syriac studies, and to a renewed search in
Eastern monasteries for further documents,
which will, like the " Apology of Aristides,"
give us a more intelligent insight into the
lives of the first martyrs and confessors.

THE END

J. PALMER, PRINTER, ALEXANDRA STREET, CAMBRIDGE

Crown 8yo. With Portrait. 6s. 6d.

LIFE

OF THE

REV. SAMUEL SAVAGE LEWIS

Felltnv and Librarian of Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge.

A THENsE UM. — " Mr. Lewis was a very generous and a somewhat curiously-
learned man — a great traveller in regions not visited by the many — one of the
most accomplished experts in antique gems whom Cambridge has ever produced,
and a personage in the archaeological and academic world. At his death he be-
queathed to Corpus Christi College his valuable collection of engraved gems, and
during his life he was conspicuous for his large-handed liberality."

LITERARY CHURCHMAN.— "To those who had the blessing of his
acquaintance, the present work will be an acceptable memorial of a precious friend ;
and strangers will read with pleasure this record of a studious, yet active life,
victorious over many difficulties, and useful in its generation."

SATURDAY REVIEW.— "'Letters and descriptive articles make up the
staple of the Life of the Rev. Samuel Savage Lewis, by Agnes Smith Lewis
(Cambridge : Macmillan and Bowes), yet, although not a biography in the strict
interpretation of the term, the book is satisfactory as a memorial of the late
Librarian of Corpus Christi. Of Mr. Lewis's life in Cambridge Mrs. Lewis has
not much to tell ; but the correspondence, and her own records, which are pleasant
reading by the way, of travels in Greece, Syria, Algeria, Sicily, and other lands,
show somewhat of the energy and zeal with which Mr. Lewis pursued his anti-
quarian studies in the field."

GUARDIAN.— "The impression produced by the account which Mrs. Lewis
has given of The Life of the Rev. Samuel Savage Lewis, M.A., F.S.A. (Cam-
bridge : Macmillan and Bowes), is that he was an unusually busy man, full of
thoughtfulness for others. This impression seems to coincide with that derived
from personal contact with Mr. Lewis, for his wife names his inexhaustible fund
of kindness, and the high value which he set upon time, as the two chief and most
precious characteristics of his life. In Cambridge Mr. Lewis will long be remem-
bered as the courteous and indefatigable librarian of Corpus Christi College, and
the honorary Secretary of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, the members of
which he raised from eighteen to 320. There is a pathos and a varied interest
attached to his life which will appeal to a large circle of outside readers."

MACMILLAN AND BOWES, CAMBRIDGE.

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How the Codex was found : a narrative of

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