serabit
21485-21569 Minnesota 4
About
The temple of Hathor at Serabit el-Khadim stands on a massive rocky outcrop at an altitude of 850m above sea level in the highlands of Sinai, roughly 50km from the coastal town of Abu Zenima. It is not the easiest place for tourists to reach and perhaps should be considered more of a trekking expedition than just a monument visit, but the experience is worth the muscle-ache endured afterwards. The recent increase of tourists to the site has prompted the Egyptian Antiquities Organisation to begin to restore the area and they have constructed a tourist centre and a less strenuous route with a path and steps up the western side of the mountain. On the occasion of my visit in 2006 we were unaware of the 'easy route' and having enjoyed the hospitality of the Bedouin at Sheikh Barakat village overnight, we set off at dawn to climb straight up the eastern side of the mountain with a guide from the village, a steep route which takes about an hour. Although the Bedouin tribes had long known of its existence, the temple at Serabit el-Khadim was first reported by Carsten Niebuhr's campaign in 1762, and several stelae contain 19th century graffiti left by early visitors to the site. The remains of the monument gained recognition when Sir WM Flinders Petrie published his excavations there in 'Researches in Sinai' in 1906. The site was later surveyed by R Starr from Harvard University in 1935 and excavations were again undertaken by an Israeli team from 1968-78, though still unpublished. A more recent survey and reinterpretation was published by Dominique Valbelle and Charles Bonnet and the SCA in 1996. The temple of Hathor lies in a vast area of turquoise mines dating mostly from the Middle Kingdom and was built by Semite labourers during Dynasty XII on the site where it is said that a local deity, Soped, 'Lord of the Eastern Desert' or 'Lord of the Foreign Lands' was worshipped. Inscriptions in the temple date from Senwosret I of Dynasty XII, who established the first construction here, through to the reign of Rameses VI of Dynasty XX, after which time the temple was abandoned. From the beginning the temple had a dual purpose, both to honour the goddess Hathor who acted as guide to the 'Chancellors of the God' during their expeditions undertaken in order to exploit the turquoise mines and also to praise the rulers who instigated the expeditions. The chapels built by successive rulers were equally divided to celebrate the rites of both divine and royal cults.
