Sinai

The tortured and desiccated land of the Sinai is where two continents collide. Enormous tectonic forces pile up rubble to form the steep peaks soaring above the Gulf of Aqaba coast; these drop sharply into the Red Sea’s great rift. A sandy shelf where mountains meet sea is broad enough to accommodate a highway and a handful of small towns. The rest of the peninsula is largely lifeless, populated only by the Bedouin, who over the centuries learned the secret of desert survival, sustained by a few springs in the wilderness. The greatest profusion of life occurs in the warm upper waters of the Gulf of Aqaba-just offshore is an explosion of corals ant fishes.

The Sinai is a world of natural wonders, yet its position between the civilizations , of the Nile Valley and those of Mesopotamia brought uninterested armies of visitors. 1 The broad plains of the northern Sinai were higliways for the Pharaoh’s troops on 1 the march to Syria and Canaan; in turn, they bore Egypt-bound marauding Hyksos, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Arabs, and Turks.