Hand Colored Engraving by J.m.w. Turner: Moses' Rock in the Sinai Desert

Proudly, a huge sloping boulder arches over a small group of travelers in a barren pass

This hand colored engraving is from London, England, United Kingdom, and dates to the 19th century. It is ink on paper. Thomas Allom, an architect and founding member of what became the Royal Institute of British Architects, illustrated books on China in the 1840s without ever making the trip there himself. Within its margins, a hand-colored mountain scene with bare, folded slopes in brown and olive, a large rock with a stair-like edge in the middle, and a few figures and animals resting at its foot. It is 9.3 inches wide and 6.3 high.

The rock is much older than the traveler, and acts like it.