The location of Mount Sinai
The Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses III (1186 to 1155 BCE) made an expedition from Egypt
to Arabia about 300 years after the Biblical Exodus. On that expedition he claimed the
watering places for himself by inscribing his royal signature (cartouche) at each site.
The discovery of a fourth Ramses III cartouche in 2025 in Wadi Rum in the country of
Jordan, better defined that ancient trade route.Working under the theory that Moses
would have previously used this same ancient route with his army of Israelites, we un-
dertook the documentation of that route by video recording to present the evidence for
the Exodus for the benefit of our students
Introduction:
The location and history of the Exodus as written in the Bible has been the subject of
considerable debate for many years with more than a dozen proposed locations in
Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia for Mount Sinai.
Israel Finkelstein a well known Israeli archaeologist argues against its occurrence. This
was primarily based on a lack of archaeological evidence for the Exodus.
The Ramses III cartouche discovered in 2025 in the wadi Rum of Jordan (3) has added
significant support for the Exodus as well as for Colin Humphreys’ identification of
both Hala al-Badr (Mount Tadhra) as the biblical Mount Sinai and the Red Sea crossing
at Eilat (1).
That discovery also provided evidence for the disputed locations of Etham, Paran, and
Midian.
We had fully intended to follow the Ramses III cartouches from Egypt to Midian to pro-
vide a documentary of the events surrounding the Exodus in 2026. The Department of
State however, recommended against travel to the involved countries based on the
conflict in the Middle East.
We did however have the aid of a Jordanian archaeologist well as his
Saudi Arabian associates, who photographed the locations for us in Jordan and Saudi
Arabia in May of 2026. The locations in Egypt remained out of reach due to the unsta-
ble state of the Sinai Peninsula.
Prior art:
Charles Beke in 1883 made an expedition to Ayla in search of Mount Sinai under the
theory that it was a volcanic mountain by biblical description. He sought Mount Sinai
working with the description of Josephus, who indicated it was located on the shore of
the Red Sea and that it was the highest peak, neither of which is Biblical. He incorrect-
ly identified Jabal en-Nur as mount Sinai in what is now the Country of Jordan due to
his reliance on Josephus.(2)
In the early 1900’s the Czech explorer, priest, and archaeologist, Alois Musil working for
the Ottoman Empire explored the Northern Hegaz and implied he had found Mount
Sinai at Mount Tadhra. (15)
Sir Colin Humphreys in 2003 published Miracles of the Exodus identifying the location
of the Red Sea Crossing at Eilat in Israel and Mount Sinai as Hala al-Badr in Saudi Ara-
bia.(1)
The discovery of the Ramses III Cartouche in Tayma, Saudi Arabia in 2013 prompted
archaeologists Claire Somaglino and Pierre Tallet to propose an ancient trade route
from Egypt to Arabia. They identified 5 points in their article; Raamses, Tell Rataba, the
Higiya spring, Ein Netafim, and Wadi Zaydaniyah.(4)
Jacob Dunn is currently exploring the epigraphy of Mount Tadhra in its cultic sites.
(13,14)
Thesis: Moses’ original flight from Egypt and the Exodus 40 years later, most probably
followed the same ancient trade route, which Ramses III later followed from Egypt to
Arabia. Considerable insight into the circumstances of the Exodus are revealed by fol-
lowing these Ramses III cartouches.
Overview:
With the discovery of the Ramses III cartouche in 2025 in Jordan,(3) we present our
research regarding the location and history of Moses’ flight from Egypt as written in the
Bible, as well as archaeological, cartographic, geographical, and geological evidence
for the Exodus. We explain the smaller details of the Exodus written in the Scriptures
in a logical and geographically sequential format.
We will show that the Biblical account of the Exodus journey, including the Crossing of
the Red Sea, is recorded in petroglyph evidence in such verifiable detail that only an
eyewitness to the events of the Exodus could have written the account. While they
were clearly natural events, it is evident they occurred with Divine intervention.
The Ramses III cartouche in Jordan made it possible to Identify the biblical locations of
Etham, the location of Paran, the location of Midian, and confirm Sir Colin Humphrey’s
location of Mount Sinai at Hala al-Badr as well as the site of the crossing of the Red
Sea at Aqaba. That route is the shortest and most logical from a logistical point of view
and it ends at the petroglyph marked location of Midian.(5)
Moses encountered the burning bush, while he was tending his father-in-law’s sheep in
the west side of the wilderness near Midian. That wilderness is Identifiable as the
Hegaz wilderness. There Moses received his mandate to liberate the descendants of
Israel, from Egyptian bondage. Exodus (3:1-10)
Leaving Egypt:
There is little discussion concerning the location of the Israelites in the Eastern Nile
Delta, where they lived in biblical Goshen. (Genesis 46:28) The Bible states the Is-
raelites built the store cities of Raamses and Pithom for Pharaoh. (Exodus 1:11) James
Hoffmeier locates these two locations at the current locations of Qantir and Tell Rataba.
(6) This is substantiated in the stone relief taken from the Temple of Atum hence
Pithom (house of Atum) depicting a pharaoh slaying a man who appears to be an
Asian. The relief was found at Tell Rataba and then gifted to the Museum of Archaeol-
ogy and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1906. The location of Pithom
is also reliably documented in the map of Jean Baptiste D’anville showing that Pithom
was located at Tell Rataba.(7)
Tell Rataba and the associated Tell Muskhata, which lies a few miles to the east were
shown to be later defensive structures for the Nile delta located on the Wadi Tumilat,
also known as the Canal of the Pharaohs. (8) These were shown by James K. Hoffmeier
to be Sukkot, (6) where the first camp of the Exodus was located. (Exodus 13:20)
Muskhata is Arabic for “booths” which is also the meaning of Sukkot in Hebrew. Both
Moses and much later Pharaoh Ramses III left Egypt from this location.
From Sukkot the route follows the canal of the Pharaohs and the eastern shore of the
gulf of Suez southward to the Wadi Abu Gada discharge into the Gulf. It then proceeds
up the wadi to the first Cartouche of Ramses III, which is located at the Higiyah
Spring at the western border of the Tih plateau.(7)
The Tih plateau wilderness is the Red Sea Wilderness, since it is the wilderness which
lies on the Sinai peninsula between the two gulfs of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez and
the Gulf of Aqaba. (Exodus 13:18) The Exodus took the way of the wilderness of the
Red Sea before reaching the second camp at Etham. (Exodus 13:20) The camp of
Etham is positively identifiable at the eastern limit of the Tih plateau by its location at
the “utmost coasts of the wilderness”, by its location near the division in the Ramses III
route, and by its name, which is preserved in the Well of El Thamad (9) in the Markaz
(county) of al-temd after which it is named. (Exodus 13:20 14:2 Douay Rheims Bible)
Just to the east of Etham, the road divides between the route to Kadesh Barnea and
the route to the Red Sea at Aqaba.(9) We prefer the Kadesh Barnea of Robinson and
Smith and that of Eusebius both of whom indicated it was near to Petra. The Israelites
left Egypt armed, with the intention of promptly conquering Canaan. (Exodus 3:17) The
Lord however, at Etham told Moses to turn back from an immediate conquest of
Canaan through Kadesh Barnea from which they would twice unsuccessfully attempt
to conquer Canaan. He instructed Israelites to camp by the Red Sea at Pi Hahiroth
some 40 miles to the east of Etham. (Exodus 14:2) This makes sense because the Lord
did not want the Israelites to face war immediately out of concern they would return to
Egypt. (Exodus 13:17) The Israelite elders who were told they would go to Cannan (Ex-
odus 3:17) would have been reluctant to go initially to Mount Sinai in Midian to worship
God as Moses had been instructed, instead of to Canaan, without some miracle, which
gave them confidence in the Lord’s provision and Moses leadership (Exodus 14:31).
Crossing the Red Sea:
From Etham the route goes to the Ein Netafim spring, which is marked by the second
Ramses III cartouche and located about 5 miles from the Red Sea at Eilat.(10) The
Ramses III route from Ein Netafim follows the Nahal Netafim to the Nahal Roded and
then to the Wadi Arabah.(11) The Wadi Arabah at the time of Moses extended another
10 or more miles northward as we will show.
The mouth of the Nahal Roded is directly across the Wadi Arabah from the mouth of
the Yutum Wadi at the current Yitzhak Rabin border crossing. The Yutum Wadi is the
route of Ramses III to its next marker at Wadi Rum. Pi Hahiroth means the mouth of the
channels before which Israel camped before crossing the Red Sea. These two chan-
nels the Roded and Yutum, filled the deeper wadi Arabah extension of the Red Sea
with their alluvium leaving it shallow enough to wade across the Red Sea at low tide
during the time of Moses as described by Sir Colin Humphreys.(1)
This is demonstrated in the Map of Jean Baptiste D’anville, which shows the Red Sea
extending up the Arabah beyond Berenice nearly ten miles at the time of Saint Paul.(7)
At the time of Saint Paul the town of Ayla was renamed Berenice after the Jewish
Princess Berenice, sister of King Agrippa II, who heard Paul’s defense before Festus in
Maritime Caesarea. Acts 25:13 It is also demonstrated by the residual Doum Palms at
the Dekel Dom Reserve, which the geologist Edmond Hull remarked in 1884 were lining
the gulf of Aqaba.(12) Hull also noted the tides to be approximately 6 ft and believed
the Red Sea extended further north in the past. Additionally the Tel Kheliefah ruins
which previously marked the shoreline are now 400 meters inland. This is not surprising
since the harbor at Ephesus at the time of Paul is now 7 miles further seaward due to
silting and seismic activity. The Arabah is also a seismically active fault.
The Israelites left Egypt on the full moon of passover and reached Pi Hahiroth two
weeks later on the new moon. Spring tides on the New moon are the lowest tides fol-
lowed by the highest tide and darkest of nights. The Israelites crossed that dark night
aided by the pillar of fire, on ground dried by the east wind set down at low tide. The
Egyptians following after them in the morning were swept off the alluvium into the
deeper wadi Arabah by the high tide coupled with the returning water set down where
they perished. (Exodus 14:16-21)
The Gulf of Aqaba:
The Gulf of Aqaba is named after the Pass of Ayla which is the Wadi Yutum. Aqaba
comes from the Arabic word Nakb meaning “a pass”. It is the most southernly pass
from the Sinai Peninsula to the Arabian Peninsula and has been so for Millenia. The
Gulf of Aqaba is 800 meters deep at Nuweiba, 200 meters deep at the Straits of
Tiran, and deeper elsewhere so a crossing site anywhere further south is untenable. The pass of Aqaba rises
to an elevation of 1000 meters from the gulf and is an imposing barrier to travel. It is
identifiable as the “wall” (or “Shur” in Hebrew) east of Egypt since the Ishmaelites lived
from Havilah to Shur (Exodus 25:18) and the Israelites entered the wilderness of Shur
after crossing the Red Sea. (Exodus 15:22)Mount Sinai Written in Stone
Wadi Rum:
The next Ramses III Cartouche is found at wadi Rum near the Saudi border.(3) It is
Identifiable as Mount Paran where Ishmael lived (Genesis 21:21) since it is three days
travel eastward from Ayla according to Eusebius who identifies this location in his dic-
tionary, the Onomasticon. (11) It is also on the same route of which Moses wrote “the
Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir to them; he shone forth from Mount
Paran, and he came with holy tens of thousands; from his right hand went a fiery law
for them.” (Deuteronomy 33:2)
Here the archaeologist filmed the cartouche and directed his colleagues 180 miles
south to the next cartouche near Tayma, a town named after Ishmael’s 9th son. (Gene-
sis 25:15-16)
Wadi al-Zaydaniyah:
50 miles NW of Tayma in the wadi al-Zaydaniyah is found the last cartouche of Ramses
III marking an as yet unidentified source of water. It is also the location of the only pet-
roglyph in Arabia which identifies Midian. That petroglyph is written in Taymanitic a lat-
er but local semitic script which names the Wise man of Midian. (5)
Mount Sinai:
Moses married Zipporah who was the daughter of Jethro, also known as Reuel Priest
of Midian, whom Moses met at a well in Midian on the Route from Egypt to Midian.
(Exodus 2:15,16) Forty years later, Moses, while pasturing his father-in-law’s sheep on
west side of the wilderness, came to the burning bush of Mount Sinai. (Exodus 3:1,2
ESV) Mount Tadhra or Hala al-Badr is located in the western Hegaz Wilderness 56
miles southwest of the Midian inscription and Ramses III water source. It was an active
volcano in the Holocene.(13) It rises some 60 meters on the eastern end of a very large
reservoir, which itself is a plateau 260 meters above the desert floor. It held enough
water for the year in which the Israelites lived here, after Moses, instructed by God,
struck the rock of Horeb (Exodus 13:6) and supplied water for the Israelites. (Exodus
17:6) Its surface is a flat sand filled plain. The heat of the sun could produce a mirage
on that plain, which would explain the elders description of the paved work of a sap-
phire stone, like the very heaven for clearness when they ascended the Mount to see
God. (Exodus 24:10)
Elois Musil:
Elois Musil was Christian explorer working for the Ottoman empire, who explored the
Northern Hegaz in the early 1920’s. His guide stated that the servants of Moses stayed
in caves southeast of Tadhra, while their master was with Allah.(15) Our guides took
only one photograph of the inscriptions at that location so no conclusion could be
made regarding the entry in Elois Musil’s journal by using petroglyphs. However in-
scriptions in this area are currently being studied by Jacob Dunn.(13,14)
Mount Tadhra, which means the “mount of invocation”* was selected as mount Sinai
by Sir Colin Humphreys in his book entitled “the Miracles of Exodus” and implied by
Jacob Dunn.(1)(13) Mount Tadhra meets the biblical description of location of Mount
Sinai at the west side of the wilderness near Midian. (Exodus 3:1) Being an active vol-
cano at the time of Moses explains the description of the fire of a furnace, the dense
smoke, the loud sounds, the trembling and melting of the mount, and the lightning ob-
served by the Israelites at Mount Sinai. (Exodus 19:16-18 Judges 5:5) It has the re-
quired reservoir of water and at least a later local history of Moses.(14) No other pro-
posed location meets these criterion. It was a dramatic setting for God to provide to
Israel his law and covenant, while demonstrating his eternal power and divine charac-
ter. It is the correct distance of 11 days from the Kadesh Barnea of Robinson and
Smith for a caravan. (Deuteronomy 1:2)
When Moses returned to Egypt to liberate the Israelites he did not follow the Ramses III
route after returning Jethro’s sheep and placing Zipporah in the care of her father. In-
stead he returned to Mount Sinai where he met his brother Aaron. (Exodus 4:27). The
route to the Red Sea crossing at Aqaba from Sinai is shorter by the coastal route to the
head of the pass of Aqaba. Nor did he take the Ramses III route to Wadi Rum from the
pass of Aqaba on his return in the Exodus but rather turned south at the head of the
pass taking that same coastal route to Sinai through Marah and then to the seventy
palms of Elim and then to the Red Sea. From the Red Sea they went to the wilderness
of Sin, Dophkah, Alush, Rephidim and finally the wilderness of Sinai. Numbers 33:8-15.
Sir Colin Humphreys attributed the pillars of cloud and fire to the volcano of Tadhra.
(Numbers 10:29-31) While this is clearly the case in the wilderness between Elim and
Sinai on the fifteenth day of the second month of the Exodus (Exodus 16:1,10) We dif-
fer from Sir Humphreys in that we consider the plausibility that Hobab the Brother-in-
law of Moses and guide in the Exodus was the Messenger providing the pillars of fire
and cloud for the Israelites to signal the route of the Exodus to the Israelites across
the Sinai Peninsula, as well as the messenger, who set the brush fire between the two
camps at the crossing site. Angel and Messenger are the same word in Hebrew. Tlhis is
born out by Exodus 23:20-23 where Moses cautions the Israelites against interfering
with the work of the Messenger guide because his name was in him. Hobab means beloved.
Conclusion: The route of the Exodus followed the ancient trade route from Tell Rataba
directly across the Sinai peninsula and crossed the Red Sea at the now silted in site of
the Yitzak Rabin border terminal. From the crossing Moses went to modern Wadi Rum,
which is biblical Paran and then south to Wadi al-Zadaniyah, which is identifiable as
ancient Midian.(5) From Midian Moses went to the summer pastures of the Northern
Hegaz to the Hala al-Badr volcano. Due to its history of volcanic activity and large
reservoir, Hala al-Badr is the only location, which meets the biblical description of the
location of Mount Sinai. We feel there is more than enough evidence and detail of de-
scription of the Exodus in the Bible, which is substantiated by the petroglyphs, ancient
maps, geography, and geology to show that only a person who had actually experi-
enced the Exodus could have written the Book of Exodus in the Bible.
1)Humphreys, Colin J. The Miracles of Exodus HarperOne Publication March 25, 2003
2) CHARLES BEKE’S DISCOVERIES OF SINAI IN ARABIA AND or MIDIAN
3) https://egypt-museum.com/ramesses-iii-cartouche-discovered-in-jordan/
4) Tallet, Pierre and Somaglino, Claire. “A Road to the Arabian Peninsula in the Reign of
Ramesses III” in: Förster, F, Riemer, H. (eds.), Desert Road Archaeology, Africa Praehistorica
27 (2013). Bulletin de l’In- stitut français d’archéologie orientale 111 (2011), pp. 361–369 with
the title “Une mystérieuse route sud-orientale sous le règne de Ramsès III”
5)The Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia (OCIANA) Edited by
Michael C. A.Macdonald and María del Carmen Hidalgo Chacón Diez corpus of Tay-
manitic inscriptions Page 172
6) Hoffmeier, James “Pithom and Ramses Exodus 1:11 Archaeological and linguistic
issues” part 1Mount Sinai Written in Stone
7)Jean Baptiste D’anville AEGYPTUS ANTIQUS 1754
8) Polish-Slovak Archaeological Mission in Tell el-RetabaSławomir Rzepka, Institute of Archae
ology, University of Warsaw Jozef Hudec, Aigyptos Foundation Egypt Wadi Tumilat
9) Map of the peninsula of Mount Sinai and Arabia Petraea : from the itineraries of E. Robinson
and E. Smith Pennsylvania State University. Special Collections Library
10) Avner, U. (1972) Nahal Roded. Israel Exploration Journal 22:
11) israelhiking.osm.org.il https://israelhiking.osm.org.il › poi › OSM › node_11283873569
12) Hull, Edward, 1829-1917; Kitchener, Horatio Herbert Kitchener, Earl, 1850-1916 Mount
Seir, Sinai and western Palestine. Being a narrative of a scientific expedition Publication date
1885
13)Dunn, Jacob E. “A God of Volcanoes: Did Yahwism Take Root in Volcanic Ashes?” Journal
for the Study of the Old Testament 38.4 (2014).
14)Dunn, Jacob E. “Revisiting Al-Jaww: Exploring the Sacred Landscape of a Volcanic Cult Site in North-
western Saudi Arabia.” Antiguo Oriente 21 (2024): 41–77.
15) Musil Alois; Wright J. K The Northern Hegaz pages 214-216 Publication date 1926