We drive via the large city of Tabuk to the northern foothills of the Hejaz Mountains. The highest and most striking peak is Jabal Al-Lawz, where a new ski resort is currently being built. As the Al Lawz mountain is already influenced by the Mediterranean climate and is 2600 m high, there is actually snow there in winter.
This mountain is said to be the “MOUNTAIN SINAI in Arabia” and we would like to see it.

Four years ago, the area south of Jabal Al-Lawz was only accessible via a sandy track, but today there is already a perfect road to access the region. Because this mountain range is part of the gigantic NEOM city project.
NEOM is said to be bigger than New York and Egypt, Jordan and Israel are all said to be involved.
And in the middle of it all is Mount Sinai in Arabia.

Mountain SINAI

Historical outline

The Old Testament tells us about the emergence of the people of Israel. Forced by a famine, Jacob and his twelve sons moved with their families and their belongings from Canaan to Egypt because there was “bread” to eat there.
About 70 people in total. Jacob was the grandson of the progenitor Abraham.
In Egypt, Jacob’s clan multiplied and gradually became a nation during the approximately 215 years he spent there.
The Egyptians became afraid of this growth.
The Israelites outnumbered the Egyptians, which is why the Egyptians enslaved the Israelites and forced them to work as slaves.
God then instructed Moses to lead the people out of Egypt. The exodus from Egypt took place around 1400 / 1500 BC.
It is not known exactly how many people left Egypt.
The Bible speaks of 600,000 men.
Together with their wives and children, there may well have been between 1 million and 2 million people.
In any case, they were as numerous as the Egyptians themselves. The destination of the exodus was the mountain of God, Mount SINAI. In order to reach this goal, the entire people had to pass through the Red Sea.
The parting of the sea was one of the greatest miracles on this wilderness journey. At Mount Sinai, the Israelites became a nation, as it was here that God gave them law and order and their first leadership structure.
They also built their first sanctuary, the portable tabernacle. This makes the people of Israel, at around 3,500 years old, a very old people.

You can read about it in the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament.

Where is this Mount Sinai?

Where is this Mount Sinai located and what was the route?
Well, there are different versions.
The traditional version is Mount Sinai on the Sinai Peninsula, near the famous Monastery of St. Catherine.
There are other ways of locating Mount Sinai. We favor the somewhat newer research that locates Mount Sinai in the land of Midian, i.e. in the catchment area of the Gulf of Aqaba on the Saudi Arabian side. In any case, this location is exciting and appealing.
The following map is interactive.
It shows many possible camps of the Israelites and also the locations we visited:

• Mount Sinai
• Moses’ altar at the foot of the mountain
• the altar of the golden calf
• the cemetery of the Israelites
• The split rock that Moses struck and then water flowed out of it
• The dwellings of Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law
• The place where Israel could have crossed the Red Sea

Moses sacrificial altar

We are now in a high valley at an altitude of around 1500m.
At the foot of Mount Sinai, which is now called“Mount Maqla” and is over 2300m high, we find a quiet, secluded place to spend the night.
Mount Maqla can be recognized by the fact that its summit (or double summit) is black.
Some believe that this is due to the fire in which God himself descended the mountain. The next day we hike to the altar of Moses and have to cross the “Bach Sinai”, a wadi with large boulders.
The altar really is at the foot of the mountain and he shows us the altar complex with the kraal in which the cattle to be sacrificed were lined up and also 12 marble pillar fragments, which are said to come from the 12 stones that Moses set up for the 12 tribes.
The landscape is wild and as it is the rainy season, we enjoy the lush green of some of the bushes.

Altar of the Golden Calf

Not far away, we find a dome of rock on which the golden calf is said to have once stood.
As Moses remained in the cloud on Mount Sinai for 40 days and nights and the Israelites thought he had perished, they made their own god and cast a golden calf, which they worshipped.
The rock dome is carved with petroglyphs in many places, so it can be assumed that it is indeed an ancient place of worship.

High valley

The high valley is long and wide, so it is easy to imagine a large camp of the Israelites here.
It is also relatively green, so there must have been water, which is what made life on Mount Sinai possible in the first place.
Today, only very few Bedouins live in this valley.

Cemetery

Several kilometers from Mount Sinai is the burial ground – possibly of the Israelites who perished after the infidelity with the Golden Calf and had to be buried outside the camp.
The archaeological authority’s plaque simply reads “Pre-Islamic burial ground”.

Video Mount Sinai

In this video, I flew 500m high with our drone for the first time.
That is the maximum.
You can no longer see the drone by eye, only the image on the monitor can provide information.
Yes, but we were able to land it safely again.

Conclusion

A user of the iOverlander app, which we also consult from time to time, writes at the Altar of Moses:“Holy historic site with the Altar of Moses“.
From our point of view, nothing is “holy” here.
God is holy, but not the “mountain” or the “altar”. For us, the visit to “Mount Sinai” only has the meaning of“impressive visual instruction“, nothing more.
Moreover, it is not clear whether this is actually the mountain mentioned in the Old Testament.
There are just as many arguments against it as for it.
We were impressed by this “visual lesson”.
But this also has to do with other factors, such as the peace and quiet, the greenery, the wind, the impressive mountain landscape and other things.