History
Fifty million years ago the Arabian Plate began shearing away from the African landmass, tearing the Sinai peninsula from the mainland while the Red Sea inundated the gap. Hot springs on the sea bed indicate that the tectonic forces which created Sinai are still active - the Gulf of Suez is widening by three inches each year. In prehistoric times the climate was less arid and Sinai supported herds of gazelles which Stone Age people trapped and slaughtered in stone enclosures. Bronze Age Semites from Mesopotamia were the first to exploit Sinai's lodes of copper ore and turquoise, foreshadowing the peninsula's colonization by the III Dynasty pharaohs, who enslaved its Semitic population to work the mines, and build roads and fortresses. According to Egyptian mythology, it was in Sinai that Isis sought the dismembered body of Osiris; and Hathor, also associated with the region, was called "Our Lady of Sinai". Pharaonic rule continued until the invasion of the Hyksos "Shepherd Kings", whose occupation of northern Egypt lasted well over a century, till Ahmosis I drove them out and finally destroyed their last bastion in Gaza. This was subsequently the route by which Tuthmosis III and Ramses II invaded Palestine and Syria.
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