The Shortest Day of The Year And The Strange Phenomenon at Mount Karkom

21st December 2023 The Shortest Day of The Year And The Strange Phenomenon at Mount Karkom   Far from civilization, close to the Israel-Egypt border in southwestern Negev and a challenging four-hour jeep drive from Sde Boker, lies the 850-meter-high Mount Karkom. This natural site has become a pilgrimage of sorts for adventurers, intent on witnessing a natural phenomenon that reaches its climax on the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, December 21. This natural phenomenon can now be explained, but at the time it would have been perceived as mysterious and magical, bestowing a unique, cult-like sanctity on the mountain. A glowing aura of light, which looks like fire, appears to emanate from an opening in a rock, illuminating the edges of the cave with a yellow “halo”. Many recall the story of the “burning bush” described in Exodus 3:1-2 when witnessing this spectacle. “Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So, he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed”. To view the phenomenon, one must stand at just the right angle on the mountain, viewing the entrance to the cave from approximately 200 meters - and at just the right time. The climax of this glowing phenomenon takes place precisely on December 21, the shortest day of the year, at noon – although it can be seen within twenty days on either side of December 21. We now understand that this bright light is the result of sunlight illuminating a limestone cave through a hidden aperture in its roof, but in ancient times this was not understood. The significance of this light ‘miracle’ in the depth of winter to ancient peoples was the promise of spring, renewal, and growth. They would ascend the mountain in great numbers to see the light appear on the rock.  There is much physical evidence of the cult-like attraction of the mountain, including dozens of ancient parallel tracks on the desert floor leading to the site. Around the mountain are 1,350 small archaeological sites from the Paleolithic period to the later Arab period, with most of the findings attributed to the Middle Bronze Age. On the mountain itself, there are some 42,000 ancient rock carvings, a rare concentration in quantity for such a small area. This rock art includes a painting reminiscent of the tablets of stone, a painting reminiscent of the seven-branched candelabra known as the menorah, and a painting of a snake with a wooden club. While there are those, like Italian Israeli archaeologist Professor Emmanuel Anati, who spent decades exploring the site and developed a theory (which many of his colleagues refute) that this mountain could be the Biblical Mount Sinai, there is no doubt that the mountain has been a cult and pilgrimage site for millennia and has been frequented by members of many civilizations.

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