Egeria Arrives at Mount Sinai

(an excerpt from Egeria’s Travels to the Holy Land, pages 91–95)

We were walking along between the mountains, and came to a spot where they opened out to form an endless valley—a huge plain, and very beautiful—across which we could see Sinai, the holy Mount of God. Next to the spot where the mountains open out is the place of the “Graves of Craving.”^c When we arrived there our guides, the holy men who were with us, said, “It is usual for the people who come here to say a prayer when first they catch sight of the Mount of God,” and we did as they suggested. The Mount of God is perhaps four miles^d away from where we were, right across the huge valley I have mentioned.