Note 90 — LETTER XXXIII.

With reference to this, compare particularly the admirable pamphlet by Tuch: Ein und Zwanzig Sinaitische Inschriften. Leipzig, 1849. This scholar endeavours to prove from the names of the pilgrims that have been deciphered, that the authors of the inscriptions were native heathen Arabs, who wandered to Serbâl to some religious festivals. And he is of opinion that pilgrimages ceased in the course of the third century at latest. We may also mention that the name itself of Serbâl, which Rödiger (in Wellsted’s Travels in Arabia, vol. ii., last page) derives, no doubt correctly from the Arabic ‎‏سرب‏‎ serb, palmarum copia, and Baal, “the Palm-grove (Φοινικών) of Baal,” refers to its heathen worship.