RED SEA
90 2
KED SEA
The Ked .Sea anil Jcbel Atakah, near Suez. (1
)h by the Editor.)
fore him Scaliger, in his notes to Festus, s. v. "^Egyptinos" (ed. 1574); and still earlier Genebrard (Comment.ad Ps. 106). Bochart (PhaJeg,iv, c.3i) adopted this theory (sec Reland, Diss. Xfwceft fed. 1706] i, 85). The Greeks and Romans tell us that the sea received its name from a great king, Krythras, who reigned in the adjacent country (Strabo, xvi, 1, § 20; Pliny. //. X. vi, c. 23, § 28; Agatharch. i, § 5; Philostr. iii, 15; and others). The stories that have comedown to us appear to be dis- tortions of the tradition that Himyer was the name of apparently the chief family of Arabia Felix, the great South Arabian kingdom, whence the Himyerites and Homeritse. Himyer appears to he derived from the Arabic "ahmar," red (Himyer was so called because of the red color of his clothing \_En-NUweyri in Caussin, i, 54]) ; '•aafar" also signifies "red," and is the root of the names of several places in the peninsula so called on account of their redness (sec Mardsid, p. 263, etc.) ; this may point to Ophir: tpoivit, is red, and the Phoenicians came from the Erythraean Sea (Herod. vii, 89).
II. Physical Description. — In extreme length, the
Red Sea stretches fr the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb
(or rather Has Bab el-Mandeb), in lat. 12 40' X., to the modern head of the Gulf of Suez, lat. 30 X. Its great- est width may lie stated roughly at about 200 geograph- ical miles; this is about lat. 16° 30', but the navigable channel is here really narrower than in some other por- tions, groups of islands and rocks stretching out into the sea between thirty and forty miles from the Arabian coast and fifty miles from the African coast. from Bhore i" -hole, iis narrowest pan is at Ras Benas, lat. 24 . on the African coast, to Ras Berid) opposite, a little north of Yembo', the port of El-Medlneh; and thence northwards to Ras .Mohammad (i.e. exclusive of the gulfs of Suez and the Akabah) the sea maintains about the same average width of 100 geographical miles. Southwards from Ras Benas it opens out in a broad reach: contracts again to nearly the above narrowness
at Jiddah | xectly Juddah), lat, 21 30', the port of
Mekkeh, and opens to its extreme width south of the last-named port.
\i Ras Mohammad the Red Sea is split by the gra- nitic peninsula of Sinai into two gulfs the westernmost, or Gulf of Suez, is now about 130 geographical miles in length, with an average width of about eighteen, though il c acts to less than ten miles; the easternmost, or
Gulf Of el -'Akabah, is only about ninety miles long from the Strait ofTiran to 'Akabah, and of proportion- al' narrowness^ The navigation of the Red Sea and Gulfoi .-sue/ near the shores Is very difficult from the
abundance of shoals, coral-reefs, rocks, and small islands,
which render the channel intricate, and cause strong currents often of unknown force and direction; but in mid-channel, exclusive of the Gulf of Sue/, there is
generallya width of l dies clear, except the Daedalus
reel | Wellsted, ii, 300). The bottom in deep soundings
is in most places sand and stones from Suez as far as Jiddah, and thence to the strait it is commonly mud. The deepest sounding in the excellent Admiralty chart, is 1054 fathoms, in lat. 22° 30'.
Journeying southwards from Suez, on our left is the peninsula of Sinai; on the right is the desert coast of Egypt, oi limestone formation, like the greater part of the Xile valley in Egypt, the cliffs on the sea-margin stretching landwards in a great rocky plateau, while more inland a chain of volcanic mountains (beginning about lat. 28 4' and running south i rear their lofty peaks at intervals above the limestone, generally about fifteen miles distant, of the most importance is Jebel Gharib, 6000 feet high; and as the Strait of Jubal is passed, the peaks of the primitive range attain a height of about 4500 to 6900 feet, until the " Elba" group rises in a huge mass about lat. 22°. Farther inland is the Jebel ed- Dukhkhan, the "porphyry mountain" of Ptolemy (iv, 5, § 27; M.Claudianus, see M tiller. Geogr. Min. Atlas vii), 6000 feet high, about twenty-seven miles from the coast, where the porphyry quarries formerly supplied Rome, and where are some remains of the time of Trajan (Wil- kinson, Modern I';i;ii>i and Thebes, ii, 383); and besides
I these, along this desert southwards are "quarries of vari- ous granites, serpentines, breccia verde. slates, and mica-
; ceous, talcose, and other schists" (ibid. p. 382). Jebel ez-Zeit, " the mountain of oil," close to the sea. abounds in petroleum [ibid, p. 385). This coast is especially in- teresting in a Biblical point of view, for here were some of the earliest monasteries of the Eastern Church, and
in those secluded and barren t mtains lived very early
Christian hermits. The convent of St. Anthony (of the Thebais), "Deir Mar Antuniyns," and that ol St, Paul, " Deir Mar Bolus," are of great renown, and were once important They are now, like all Eastern monasteries, decayed; but that of St. Anthony gives, from its monks, the patriarch of the Coptic Church, formerly chosen from the Nitrian monasteries (ibid. p. 381 I. South of the - Elba" chain, the country gradually sinks to a plain, until ii rises to the highland of Jidan, lat, 15 . and thence to the strait extends a chain of low mountains. The greater part of the African coast of the Red Sea is sterile, sandy, and thinly peopled first beyond Sue/ by Bedou- in chiefly of the Ma'a/i tribe; south of the Kuseir road are the Abab'deh ; and beyond, the Bisharis, the south- ern branch of whom arc called by Arab writers Iiejii, whose customs, language, and ethnology demand a care- ful iu\ estigati which would undoubtedly be repaid by