Sinai is a large piece of land in northeast Egypt, east of the Gulf of Suez and the Suez Canal. The Mediterranean sits to the north, and the Red Sea wraps around much of the rest, which is why maps call it the Sinai Peninsula. Israel and Gaza lie toward its north-east. News stories say “the Sinai” for this whole desert land — travel, the army, towns, the border. Though actually, many students first meet the name as Mount Sinai, the mountain in the Bible story where Moses is said to have received the Ten Commandments. That mountain is in this same region; the name on a map, though, usually means the whole land, not only the peak. It is a place name, so it takes a capital S.