Hashem El Tarif is a mountain on the Sinai Peninsula, now in northeastern Egypt. It is one of several candidates for the biblical Mount Sinai, where the Abrahamic prophet Moses received the Ten Commandments. It stands 881 meters tall.

Mount Sinai claims

Hashem El Tarif is one of several proposed locations of the biblical Mount Sinai.

The Exodus Decoded

The James Cameron-produced History Channel special, The Exodus Decoded, suggests that this location, now in an Egyptian military zone, is the best candidate for the biblical Mount Sinai. The program claims that it not only features "biblical geographical" clues, but that it also possesses three important traits described in the Book of Exodus: Another argument used in the documentary to strengthen the claim that Hashem El Tarif is the biblical Mount Sinai is that in the Bible Mount Sinai is described as a "holy mountain", and Hashem El Tarif contains several ancient stone shrines all around it, as well as graves of apparently prominent persons near its summit. The final argument in favor of Hashem El Tarif is the fact that the traditional Mount Sinai (Jebel Musa) is devoid of any of the above and surrounded by a granite plateau unsuitable for herding sheep. According to the documentary, though, despite all this evidence, permission for archeological excavation was not granted to them by the Egyptian military, which the documentary claims closely guards and restricts access to the mountain.

The Naked Archaeologist

Simcha Jacobovici in an episode of The Naked Archaeologist explored several mountains as possible candidates for the biblical Mount Sinai. Potential candidates had to meet the following criteria: In addition to these criteria, Jacobovici claimed that, according to biblical text, the mountain must also: Using these points of reference to triangulate possible locations, Jacobovici claims that Hashem El Tarif is the most likely candidate for the biblical Mount Sinai.

Criticisms

The hypothesis that this mountain is the original Mount Sinai has faced criticism. Some of the arguments against the proposal that Hashem El Tarif is Mount Sinai are as follows: