Elim, is a little more than a mile to the right of Jabal Qurayn (red dot on map, a small hill of 27 meters). Be sure to press the "Satellite" button to bring out the land color. In the lower right hand corner are the "+" for zoom in and "-" for zoom out. To move the map east or west, move the pointer onto the map and left click, then drag the map left or right.
|
The Bible said Elim had twelve wells, the Bedouins said there were, “12, plus one or minus one”. The site is over a mile square with many of the wells being what they called “wet sand”, like Josephus who called them “moist places,…” (Josephus. Antiquities III, 1, 3, & Legends of the Jews, The Awful Desert). If you use the zoom in feature you can count over 70 trees at this site, and at least 12 groups of palm trees, where conceivably the water comes up through the ground. Sir Wilkinson said that though one can find small trees out on the desert with no apparent source of water, it was not so when speaking about the palm tree. “I never saw or heard of any palms but near water; though in many vallies of the primitive mountains there are innumerable seyale, tamarisk, and other trees, the palm we never found but at the watering-places themselves.” (Sir Wilkinson. Royal Geographical Society, 1832, p.31)