During the last century many explorers rediscovered a group of ancient inscriptions in the Wadi Mukatteb ("The Valley of Writing") on the Sinai Peninsula. It is commonly agreed that these inscriptions were made by the escaped Hebrew slaves of Egypt as they passed throught the area under the leadership of Moses. While these inscriptions received much attention at first, the concept that these inscriptions were made by the Hebrews of the Exodus was summarily rejected by most scholars merely because they are most commonly known from the Bible. Thier evidence was...well, no evidence at all, as they generally refused to even examine the inscriptions, the written record or the testimony of any of these explorers. They had made reference to an event related in the Bible and that was enough to refute that the inscriptions held anything of substance.
Nonetheless, the few scholars who examined the inscriptions affirmed that these inscriptions were indeed written by the Hebrews who actually witnessed the miraculous events described:
Cosmas Indicopleustes, Byzantine Christian author, wrote that the inscriptions appeared "at all halting places, all the stone in that region which were broken off from the mountains, written with carved Hebrew characters" usually proclaiming, "The departure of such and such a man of such a tribe, in such a year, in such a month." (from Arthur Penrlyn Stanley, Sinai and Palestine [London: John Murray, 1905], p. 57)
Examiners concluded that, as the inscriptions had survived in such good shape for as long as the locals could recall in the dry, hot climate they could easily have survived since the time that the Exodus in thought to have occurred.
Bishop Robert Clayton of Ireland also confirmed that the inscriptions were definitely of ancient Hebrew origin, consisting mostly of name, tribe and date or similar inscriptions by persons obviously passing through or, perhaps, camping nearby for a short period of time. He published these findings in the Journal of Franciscans of Cairo (1753)
A more detailed examination by Rev. Charles Forster, described in his book Sinai Photographed [London: Richard Bentley, 1852] asserted that the Hebrew characters throughout the inscriptions in the area had been obviously influenced in form by Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Historian Diodorus Siculus, about 10 B.C. described the Sinai Peninsula in his Library of History wrote, "Moreover, an altar is there built of hard stone and very old in years, bearing an inscription in ancient letters of an unknown tongue. the oversight of the sacred precinct is in the care of a man and woman who hold the position for life." (Bk. 3, sect. 42, Loeb Classical Library, C.H. Oldfather, trans. [Cambridge Harvard University Press, 1993], p.211)
Some critics, Professor Arthur Penrhyn Stanley among others, suggested that these inscriptions were unreliable as they had suffered heavy traffic from ancient christian pilgrims and may have been written by them. Stanley and a few other explorers routinely stated that graffiti and "numerous" crosses inscribed near, in or around these sites had been left by christian indicating a record of their pilgrimage as they were known to have done in other areas in the Middle East. However:
-A detailed examination of seven hundred of the actual Sinai inscription sites reveal only ten symbols that could reasonably be mistaken for the crosses that Prof. Stanley and other critical scholars refer to. And each of these can be easily explained as an example of the Egyptian cross-form (or their form of the letter "T" which appears in most written languags). The Egyptian cross-form is shaped more like an actual cross than most other T-shaped letters of other languages and could easily be mistaken for a "cross". Prof. Stanley made no attempt the hide the fact that he had little familiarity with the written languages of either Hebrew or Egyptian present in the inscriptions.
-While it is undeniable that many of the medieval christian pilgrims left similar inscriptions along their journeys historians, scholars and translators have rarely had any difficulty distinguishing them from ancient Hebrew inscriptions. The context and writing styles of both cultures tended to be dramatically different and few christian pilgrims would have likely made inscriptions in Hebrew anyway, much less a Hebrew writing as heavily influenced by Egyptian as these inscriptions were. Furthermore, even to the casual eye of laymen present during the various examinations of these sites, both the christian and Hebrew inscriptions were easily distinguishable.
-Most scholars who have actually deigned to examine the hebraic inscriptions have been forced to agree that they were written by the Exodus Hebrews. Further, all of the inscriptions sites which are obviously far too ancient to be the product of christian pilgrims, occur on the western side of the Sinai (the side closest to Egypt) suggesting that the writers came from that direction. None of these sites contain either Christian or Jewish names (such as those common to citizens of Israel decades later) and no Christians lived in the western part of the Sinai during the times that these ancient inscriptions were written.
-Those inscription describing Exodus events, especially miraculous events, are written in the context of having actually witnessed the events. That is, as an original account rather than an attempt to copy passages of the Torah/Old Testament or to paraphrase these texts.
-The writers of those inscriptions which vividly describe the major events of the Exodus do not use any of the words or language that Moses uses to describe the same. In other words, they are obviously not inspired by Moses' writings. They are plainly written in the context of independent witnesses to these events.
-No examples of Egyptian gods or similar symbols are found among these inscriptions as we have come to expect from Egyptian writers, even those few that contained specific illustrations. Nor is there any historical evidence of any group of Egyptians living in the Sinai in or around the time the inscriptions were made. This despite the fact that the writing style was heavily influenced by the Egyptian written language (as one would expect from the escaped Hebrew slaves of the Exodus).
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