Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mt. Sinai, Egypt
Saint Catherine's Monastery (Greek: Μονὴ τῆς Ἁγίας Αἰκατερίνης, Monē tēs Hagias Aikaterinēs, Arabic: دير القدّيسة كاترين), officially "Sacred Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai" (Modern Greek: Ιερά Μονή του Θεοβαδίστου Όρους Σινά, Ierá Moní tou Theovadístou Órous Siná), lies on the Sinai Peninsula, at the mouth of a gorge at the foot of Mount Sinai, in the city of Saint Catherine, Egypt in the South Sinai Governorate. The monastery is controlled by the autocephalous Church of Sinai, part of the wider Eastern Orthodox Church, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Built between 548 and 565, the monastery is one of the oldest working Christian monasteries in the world.[1][2] The site contains the world's oldest continually operating library, possessing many unique books including the Syriac Sinaiticus and, until 1859, the Codex Sinaiticus.[3][4] A small town with hotels and swimming pools, called Saint Katherine City, has grown around the monastery The oldest record of monastic life at Sinai comes from the travel journal written in Latin by a woman named Egeria about 381-384. She visited many places around the Holy Land and Mount Sinai, where, according to the Hebrew Bible, Moses received the Ten Commandments from God.[5] The monastery was built by order of Emperor Justinian I (reigned 527-565), enclosing the Chapel of the Burning Bush (also known as "Saint Helen's Chapel") ordered to be built by Empress Consort Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, at the site where Moses is supposed to have seen the burning bush. The living bush on the grounds is purportedly the one seen by Moses. Structurally the monastery's king post truss is the oldest known surviving roof truss in the world.[6] The site is sacred to Christianity, Islam and Judaism.[7] A mosque was created by converting an existing chapel during the Fatimid Caliphate (909-1171), which was in regular use until the era of the Mamluk Sultanate in the 13th century and is still in use today on special oc
Size: 6000px × 4000px
Location: Mt. Sinai, Egypt
Photo credit: © St. Catherines / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: aerial, africa, african, angle, architecture, catherine, catherines, color, colour, craggy, culture, day, daytime, desert, distance, distant, egypt, egyptian, heritage, high, historical, history, horizontal, image, landmark, landscape, monastery, mount, mt., saint, sinai, view
