Note 95 — LETTER XXXIII.

Among the older authors, Cosmas Indicopleustes must be especially named here (about A.D. 535). (Topogr. Christ., lib. v., in the Coll. nov. patr. ed. Montfaucon, tom. ii., fol. 195.) Εἶτα πάλιν παρενέβαλον εἰς Ῥαφιδὶν εἰς τὴν νῦν λεγομένην Φαράν. Antoninus Placentinus, who is placed about the year 600 (while the learned Papebroch, who published his Itinerarium in the Acta SS., month of May, vol. ii., p. x.-xviii., does not place him earlier than the eleventh or twelfth century), came, as he says, in civitatem (which can only be Pharan) in qua pugnavit Moyses cum Amalech: ubi est altare positum super lapides illos quos posuerunt Moyse orante. That the town was enclosed by a brick wall and valde sterilis, instead of which Tuch (Sinait. Inschr., p. 38) proposes to read fertilis. If Pharan is called an Amalekitish town by Macrizi (Gesch. der Kopten, uebers. v. Wüstenfeld, p. 116), then this can only indicate the same view that Moses was attacked near Pharan by the Amalekites, to whom this district belonged. Among more recent scholars we must especially mention Ritter, as is mentioned in Appendix B.