Lear left Cairo on 12 January 1849 with John Cross to visit Mount Sinai. Early in February he wrote: 'The 25th [January] we crossed on high pass -El Hawy - & came to El Raha, the great plain which universal tradition has offered as the site of the Israelite Camp, below the immense mountain - called Horet or Sinai. The extensive & wonderful grandeur is not to be described ...' (ed. V.Noakes, Edward Lear, Selected Letters, Oxford 1988, pp. 104-5). The party stayed at Mount Sinai for a few days before returning to Suez on 4 February, Lear later painted a number of finished watercolours and two oil paintings, of 1853 and 1858, of Mount Sinai