W. J. Bankes and the Identification of the Nabataean Script - Khalili ...

44 N.N. LEWIS and M.C.A. MACDONALD
Syria 80 (2003)
only Sinaitic inscriptions recorded by the expedition were twenty texts copied by its astronomer and surveyor,
Carsten Niebuhr. 12 It was to be almost eighty years before the Sinaitic inscriptions were deciphered, on the basis
of bad hand-copies, 13 and ninety years before the next expedition aimed at a systematic record of the texts. 14
In his Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien, Niebuhr was one of the first to cast doubt on the antiquity and
significance of the inscriptions. He suggested that when they were eventually deciphered they would be found
to be simply the signatures of travellers, as were the Greek texts he had seen in other parts of the Peninsula. 15
The first person to make real progress in the study of these texts was Edward Wortley Montagu, husband of
the more famous Lady Mary, and former British ambassador to Constantinople. He travelled in Sinai in 1766
and copied twenty-five inscriptions which he published in a letter to the Royal Society, of which he was a
Fellow. 16 He argued that since the inscriptions were interspersed « with figures of men and beasts ... they were
not written by the Israelites; for if they had been after the publication of the law, Moses would not have permitted
them to engrave images, so immediately after he had received the second commandment >. He continued,
it will be difficult to guess what these inscriptions are ; and, I fear, if ever it is discovered, they will be found scarce
worth the pains. If conjecture be permitted, I will give my very weak thoughts. They cannot have been written by
Israelites, or Mahometans, for the above reason ; and if by Mahometans, they would have some resemblance to some
sorts ofCuphic characters, which were the characters used in the Arabicanguage, before the introduction ofthe present
Arabic letters. ... I think it then not unprobable , that they were written in the first ages of Christianity, and perhaps
the very first; when, I suppose, pilgrimages from Jerusalem to Mount Sinai were fashionable, consequently frequent
and numerous, by the new Christian Jews, who believed in Christ ; therefore, I should believe them Hebrew characters,
used vulgarly by the Jews about the time of Christ. I shewed them when at Jerusalem to the Rabins ; they were of the
same opinion, and thought 19, which is frequent, was a20.7
This was a considerable advance. The of Jerusalem had deciphered the most common word in the
Sinaitic inscriptions (slm), and Wortley Montagu had worked out the approximate date of the texts (first to fourth
centuries AD), if not the script and authorship.
From now on the idea that the texts were simply the > of pilgrims or travellers became widely
accepted, 18 though there was still wide disagreement about their date and script. A decade later, Court de Gebelin
republished Wortley Montagu's copies describing them as Phoenician 19 and interpreting as ank (the Phoenician
personal pronoun, ) the word which had already been correctly identified as slm. 20 However, Volney, who
travelled in Sinai in the 1780s returned to the theory that to these pilgrims we must attribute the inscriptions and
clumsy figures of asses, camels, &c. engraven on these rocks, which have from thence acquired the name of
Djebel Mokattab, or the written mountain. Montague [sic], who travelled a great deal in these countries, and
carefully examined these inscriptions, is of this opinion; and Gebelin has lost his labour, in endeavouring to
discover some mysterious meaning.21
12. For an account of this part of the expedition see HANSEN 1964: 122-126, 137-138, 152-189. On 21st September, 1762, Niebuhr
recorded hieroglyphic inscriptions at Serabit al-Khadem, which he thought was Jabal al-Mukattab, (1774-1837, I: 249, but see RUPELL
1829: 267). The next day, he copied Nabataean inscriptions in the vicinity of a narrow pass which he calls Umm al-Riglayn (1774-1837,
I: 250). On the copying of the inscriptions and Niebuhr's discussion of their origins see NIEBUHR 1174-1837, I: 237, 249-250 and pi.
XLIX-L, and 1792, 1: 197, 200-202.
13. See BEER 1840.
14. See LOTTIN DE LAVAL 1855-1859. Unfortunately, Lottin de Laval's copies were extremely inaccurate and in many cases are
unintelligible.
15. NIEBUHR 1774-1837, I: 237, 250.
16. WORTLEY MONTAGU 1766.
17. WORTLEY MONTAGU 1766: 50-51.
18. See the quotations below from Volney, Busching, Seetzen and Burckhardt, to which add E. Riippell, who was in Sinai in 1817,
(1822: 531).
19. COURT DE GEBELIN 1775: 479-480, pls XII and XIX. In this he was returning, though without acknowledgement, to the theory
first put forward by T.S. Bayer in 1727 (see below).
20. COURT DE GEBELIN 1775: 480, 496.
21. VOLNEY 1801, II: 230, n. [= VOLNEY 1787, II: 324, n.1]. Italics as in the original.