Serabit el-Khadim

Serabit el-Khadim (Arabic: سرابيط الخادم‎‎ Arabic pronunciation: [saraːˈbiːtˤ alˈχaːdɪm] (also transliterated Serabit al-Khadim, Serabit el-Khadem) is a locality in the southwest Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, where turquoise was mined extensively in antiquity, mainly by the ancient Egyptians. Archaeological excavation, initially by Sir Flinders Petrie, revealed ancient mining camps and a long-lived Temple of Hathor, the Egyptian goddess who was favoured as a protector in desert regions.

Thirty incised graffiti in a "Proto-Sinaitic script" shed light on the history of the alphabet. The mines were worked by prisoners of war from southwest Asia who presumably spoke a Northwest Semitic language, such as the Canaanite that was ancestral to Phoenician and Hebrew. After a century of study and the initial publication by Sir Flinders Petrie, researchers agree on the decipherment of a single phrase, cracked in 1916 by Alan Gardiner: לבעלת l bʿlt (to the Lady) [baʿlat (Lady) being a title of Hathor and the feminine of the title Baʿal (Lord) given to the Semitic god], although the word m’hb (loved) is frequently cited as a second word.

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