Holy Moses

May 6th, 2015

We arrived on the Sinai Peninsula at Sharm El Sheikh, a popular sea-side resort town in Egypt.

This place has some of the best SCUBA diving in the world.




Greeting us were a few locals.......bearing gifts.

We all got on the tour bus and headed for Mt. Sinai.

St. Catherine's Monastery

The Orthodox Monastery of St Catherine stands at the foot of Mount Horeb where, the Old Testament records, Moses received the Tablets of the Law. 

The entire area is sacred to three world religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. The Monastery, founded in the 6th century, is the oldest Christian monastery still in use for its initial function.

The walls and buildings are of great significance to studies of Byzantine architecture and the Monastery houses outstanding collections of early Christian manuscripts and icons.

The rugged mountainous landscape, containing numerous archaeological and religious sites and monuments, forms a perfect backdrop to the Monastery.


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 Helena, the mother of Constantine I, 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. Here's Bill in front of that same burning bush. It's actually the bush on the right.

The monastery library preserves the second largest collection of early codices and manuscripts in the world, outnumbered only by the Vatican Library. It contains Greek, Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Hebrew, Georgian, and Aramaic texts.

In May 1844, Konstantin von Tischendorf visited the monastery for research and discovered the Codex Sinaiticus, dating from the 4th Century, at the time the oldest almost completely preserved manuscript of the Bible.

It left the monastery in the 19th century for Russia, in circumstances that are now disputed. It was later bought by the British Government from Russia and is now in the British Library, London, where it is normally on public display. Prior to September 1, 2009, a previously unseen fragment of Codex Sinaiticus was discovered in the monastery's library.The complex houses irreplaceable works of art: mosaics, the best collection of early icons in the world, many in en-caustic, as well as liturgical objects, chalices and reliquaries, and church buildings. The large icon collection begins with a few dating to the 5th (possibly) and 6th centuries, which are unique survivals, the monastery having been untouched by Byzantine iconoclasm, and never sacked. The oldest icon on an Old Testament theme is also preserved there. A project to catalog the collections has been ongoing since the 1960's. The monastery was an important center for the development of the hybrid style of Crusader art, and still retains over 120 icons created in the style, by far the largest collection in existence. Many were evidently created by Latins, probably monks, based in or around the monastery in the 13th century.

Here's Lynne and "the" burning bush.
Again, its the bush on the right.

The walk from parking lot to the Monastery is about a mile, up-hill. Some folks walk, others opt for a taxi, a few use a camel.

You can see Mt Sinai in the distance.

Next stop, Aqaba, Jordan for Petra and Wadi Rum.   Stay tuned as I try to catch up.