Sinai

There are moments in Sinai when one feels as if the history of all the world can be read in its stones. Indeed, the land here is a monument to the antiquity of life on Earth, from the fossilized reef animals of Ras Mohammed to the mines of El Maghara, whose copper fueled the Bronze Age. In many places visitors from thousands of years ago literally recorded their passage in stone, as at the Rock of Inscriptions near Dahab. And at Serabit El-Khadem, near ancient mining sites, archaeologists have discovered carvings that record the very earliest emergence of our alphabet.

All three of the West's great religious traditions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--know Sinai as a holy land, a vast expanse traversed time and again by prophets, saints, pilgrims, and warriors. Sinai is most familiar to many as the "great and terrible wilderness" through which the Israelites wandered for forty years. However, it was also the path by which Amr swept down into Egypt in 640 AD, bringing Islam in his wake. Even after the muslim conquest, the monks of St. Catherine Monastery(founded in 547 AD) continued to greet pilgrims to the site of the Burning Bush.

Many of the most memorable conquerors have passed through Sinai as well. Alexander the Great crossed at the head of a great army, as did Ramses II, Napoleon Bonaparte, and (in the opposite direction) Salah el-Din.

In recent years, and for the first time, the history of Sinai seems to be emerging as a story about the land itself--its artifacts, its people, and its extraordinary natural beauty--rather than the story of those who pass through that land. Today, it is the Sinai's brilliant coral reefs, its striking mountains and deserts, and its enormous cultural heritage that hold the future--once again, though in a very different way, the history of Sinai seems to be written in the land itself.

The South Sinai is one of the most spectacularly beautiful landscapes on the planet, some of which has in recent years been set aside as national parkland. The most famous of these parks (and in fact Egypt's first national park) is found at the far southern tip of the Sinai, where the desert peninsula of Ras Mohammed edges out into the Red Sea, its craggy plateau disintegrating into broad sand beaches or dropping off into brilliantly rich coral reefs. Heading northeast up the Aqaba coast, you pass through Sharm el Sheikh and Naama Bay, dive meccas that have in recent years become centers for a host of adventure and eco-tourism activities. The coastline here is steep and dramatic, as the rocky table of the Sinai plateau crumbles into the sea.

Beyond the wide, full basin of Naama Bay the road turns inland, entering the broad sandflow of the Wadi Kid, an extinct riverbed that wends its way down from the central mountains to the shoreline at the Nabq Managed Resource Protected Area. Further north still lies Dahab and then Abu Galum, the northernmost of the park system's protected areas. There the sharp granite peaks of the interior extend right to the edge of the Gulf of Aqaba, offering visitors a stunning glimpse of terrain more hospitable to Nubian Ibex than to casual human visitors.

These parks are comparatively young--Ras Mohammed having been established only in 1983--and they have been joined even more recently by the region surrounding St. Catherine Monastery. Encompassing Mount Sinai as well as a number of other attractions of the area, the park at St. Catherine's is perhaps the best example of the purpose and the need for the Sinai's protected areas. As tourism has grown in the region, so too has tourist waste and damage, and a few years ago such sublime sites as the top of Mount Sinai itself appeared to be sinking under the burden of careless visitors. Although the designation of these areas as national parks has afforded them some degree of protection, it is ultimately the care and consideration of each visitor that most contributes to the work of preserving the beauty and the wonder of the Sinai.