Was the Sinai Peninsula a Rocky Desert or Lush Wilderness Plains during the Exodus?

The Evidence of Water Erosion on the Sphinx and the Giza Pyramids caused by an Early Era of Floods and Water Currents

According the Hebrew-Israelite traditions about two million people started a massive ‘exodus’ out of Egypt into the wilderness on a day called “Passover”. Yet, our modern conception is that this “wilderness” was a deserted rocky desert rather than a pristine wilderness region. Let us reconsider these facts again.

The land of Egypt was an ancient land but it did not have any other historical catastrophic era that had given the “Land of the Nile River” a perspective of what an apocalyptic era was like, except for the Noachian Flood. Yet there is significant evidence that the Sphinx and the Giza Pyramids were at one time exposed to an era of floods that left scouring torrential water marks on the base and paws of the Sphinx at Giza.

The Western Face of the Sphinx Enclosure Cutting that depicts the ‘Coved’ Heavy Rounded Vertical Degradation

The most prominent of the ancient flood theorists were the geologist Robert Schoch and John Anthony West who were disciples of the Belgium philosopher Schwaller de Lubitcz. It was de Lubitcz who commented in a casual remark in passing of the body of the Sphinx that it appeared to have suffered damage from being flooded.

And true to their investigations, the exposed limestone surrounding the Sphinx was truly different that the majority of the limestone exposures in Giza that were attributed to the 4^th Dynastic Age of Egypt. If so, then the Sphinx was of greater antiquity and of an earlier origin.

According to the 14^th century Arab chroniclers, the Great Pyramid at Giza was a magnificent monument of great beauty. The polished limestone surface of the pyramid would glisten as it reflected the sunlight. The brilliance of the reflected pyramid could be visualized as a beacon of light over the flat Nile desert valley for twenty to thirty miles like a large beacon of light.

They described that the Great Pyramid had a water deposition line of sediment that was over 200 feet above the base of the Great Pyramid as though it had been submerged under a sea for a long time. There was also discovered a sea salt deposition in the Queen’s Chamber and the Grand Gallery in whose salinity matched the salinity of sea water. It was also recorded that a fourteen foot layer of fossilized sediment was discovered above the foundation of the Great Pyramid that included the fossilized skeleton of an ancient sea cow.

According to these same Arab chroniclers, the exterior casing of the Great Pyramid was constructed of hardened polished limestone. The Arab scholars who saw the original pyramids with the outer casing of limestone, before the Arabs began to tear down the limestone and used it for the construction of Cairo, stated that there were inscribed inscriptions of unknown antiquity in a language in which no scholar of that era was able to interpret over the entire limestone wall of the Great Pyramid. According to their testimony, it would have taken over 6,000 pages in which to copy all the inscriptions.

If these accounts are historically true, and there is no reason to disbelieve them, then the Great Pyramid at Giza and others were no doubt built before the Great Noachian Flood. Some scholars postulate that the builders of the Great Pyramid could have been Enoch, Methuselah and even Noah, and no doubt then his then his three son; Shem, Japheth and Ham.

The Family of Noah after the Great Flood

The Animals boarding the Ark of Noah

What is even more important to consider is the fact, that when Noah and Shem left the Ark of Noah, most of the world was still inundated with water. It would take centuries for the flood waters to regress and make the earth habitable to the ever growing descendants of Noah.

Over the centuries, the waters receded but with them were left vast regions of wilderness areas of grassy plains not inhabited for most of the citizens of this planet were congregating around the great river valleys such as the Nile in Africa, the Tigris and the Euphrates in Mesopotamia and the Indus River Valley on the Continent of India.

Noah's Thanks Offering (c.1803) by Joseph Anton Koch. Noah builds an altar to the Lord after being delivered from the Flood; God sends the rainbow as a sign of his covenant (Genesis8-9).

We would expect to find this same lush beauty in the days of Abraham, when he was living in the biblical heartland of Israel in Shomron and later in the southern regions of Canaan in the southwest where he was pasturing his vast flocks of sheep and cattle. Nearby, his nephew Lot chose to go east to a beautiful and lush garden region called the Vale of Siddim where the two cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were located.

We do know that Abram and Isaac had to dig wells to water their vast flocks, but there is no indication that they had to irrigate fields in which to grow grains or grass for their flocks to eat. In those days, Abram, who once was the son of an oracular high priest of Sumer, was now a Potentate from the region of Sumer, now living in the land of Canaan. He was well known and highly respected.

Consider the fact that Abraham (2056-1881 BCE) was only ten generations from the Great Flood of Noah that destroyed the whole earth about 2350 BCE. If the biblical Exodus did occur somewhere between 1450-1550 BCE about 450 years after the birth of Isaac, and 210 years after Jacob descended into the land of Egypt, according to a strict chronology of the patriarchal ages, it would suggest that the historical era from Abraham’s ancestral Patriarch Noah to the day of the Exodus was only 800-900 years after the world catastrophe called the Noachian Flood.

Less than one millennium after the Flood, the Nile apocalypse of 10 plagues would cascade down upon the land of Egypt. Six months later, two million Hebrew-Israelites were fleeing towards the biblical lands of the Patriarchal forefathers; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in which would be still be remembered six millenniums later as “The Exodus”.

Yet the fullest extent of this catastrophic era was not over when the Hebrew-Israelites fled Egypt. Neither did the two million Bnei Yisrael leave an ancient land of antiquity behind, but rather a destroyed imperial state; except there were more catastrophes still to come.

The great devastation in Egypt was only a part of a larger Middle Eastern catastrophe that had not ended. All across the Middle East, volcanoes were erupting, the seas were boiling If it appeared that they were leaving a land of destruction, what was not anticipated was that in seven days, they would be experiencing the most dramatic of all catastrophes that have occurred in the world to date; the parting of the Red Sea. Yet during these few days, the Hebrew-Israelites were racing for their lives across virgin meadows and wilderness plains that would allow them to reach the place of their ultimate destination.