Saint Catherine's Monastery

Saint Catherine's Monastery (Arabic: دير القدّيسة كاترين Dayr al-Qiddīsa Katrīn; Greek: Μονὴ τῆς Ἁγίας Αἰκατερίνης), officially the Sacred Autonomous Royal Monastery of Saint Catherine of the Holy and God-Trodden Mount Sinai, is a Christian monastery located in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. Located at the foot of Mount Sinai, it was built between 548 and 565, and is the world's oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery.^[1][2][3]

Saint Catherine's Monastery

General view of Saint Catherine's Monastery, looking down from Mount Sinai
Location within the Sinai Peninsula Show map of Sinai Location within Egypt Show map of Egypt
Monastery information
Full name	Sacred Autonomous Royal Monastery of Saint Catherine of the Holy and God-Trodden Mount Sinai Greek: Ιερά Αυτόνομος Βασιλική Μονή Αγίας Αικατερίνης του Αγίου και Θεοβαδίστου Όρους Σινά
Other names	Monastery of Saint Katherine Moni tis Agias Aikaterinis
Order	Church of Sinai
Denomination	Greek Orthodox Church
Established	AD 565
People
Founder(s)	Justinian I
Site
Location	Saint Catherine, South Sinai Governorate, Egypt
Country	Egypt
Coordinates	28°33′20″N 33°58′34″E
Visible remains	Catherine of Alexandria
Website	www.sinaimonastery.com
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Official name	Saint Catherine Area
Type	Cultural
Criteria	i, iii, iv, vi
Designated	2002 (26th session)
Reference no.	954
Region	Arab States

The monastery was built by the orders of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, enclosing what is claimed to be the burning bush seen by Moses.^[4][5] Centuries later, the purported body of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, said to have been found in the area, was taken to the monastery; Saint Catherine's relics turned it into an important pilgrimage site, and the monastery was eventually renamed after the saint.

Controlled by the autonomous Church of Sinai, which is part of the wider Greek Orthodox Church, the monastery became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002 for its unique importance to the three major Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.^[6][7]

The monastery library holds unique and rare works, such as the Codex Sinaiticus and the Syriac Sinaiticus,^[8][9] as well as a collection of early Christian icons, including the earliest known depiction of Jesus as Christ Pantocrator.

Saint Catherine's has as its backdrop the three mountains it lies near: Ras Sufsafeh (possibly the Biblical Mount Horeb, peak c.1 km (0.62 mi) west); Jebel Arrenziyeb, peak c. 1km south; and Mount Sinai (locally, Jabal Musa, by tradition identified with the biblical Mount Sinai; peak c. 2 km (1.2 mi) south).^[10]

Christian traditions

The monastery was built around the location of what is traditionally considered to be the place of the burning bush seen by the Hebrew prophet Moses.^[11] Saint Catherine's monastery also encloses the "Well of Moses", where Moses is said to have met his future wife, Zipporah. The well is still today one of the monastery's main sources of water. The site is considered sacred by the three major Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.^[6][12]

Centuries after its foundation, the body of Saint Catherine of Alexandria was said to be found in a cave in the area. Catherine was a popular saint in Europe during the Middle Ages; her story says that, for defending Christianity,^[13] she was sentenced to death on a spiked breaking wheel, but, at her touch, the wheel shattered.^[14] It was then ordered that she be beheaded.^[15]

The relics of Saint Catherine, kept to this day inside the monastery, have made it a favourite site of pilgrimage.^[11] The patronal feast of the monastery is the Feast of the Transfiguration.

• 
  Saint Catherine's Monastery with Willow Peak (traditionally considered Mount Horeb) in the background
• 
  The monastery's centuries-old bramble is considered to be the biblical burning bush.
• 
  "Well of Moses", where Moses is said to have met his future wife, Zipporah
• 
  Skeleton of the monk Stephanos, in his robe, in front of the ossuary

History

The oldest record of monastic life at Mount Sinai comes from the travel journal written in Latin by a pilgrim woman named Egeria (Etheria; Saint Sylvia of Aquitaine) about 381/2–386.^[16][17]

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.^[4] The living bush on the grounds is purportedly the one seen by Moses.^[5] Structurally the monastery's king post truss is the oldest known surviving roof truss in the world.^[18]

1899 map of the monastery surroundings

2011 photo from the north of the monastery, facing southwards

Saint Catherine's Monastery is located in the shadow of a group of three mountains: Ras Sufsafeh/"Mount Horeb" (peak c. 1 km west), Jebel Arrenziyeb (peak c. 1 km south) and Jebel Musa/"Biblical Mount Sinai" (peak c. 2 km south)

From the time of the First Crusade, the presence of Crusaders in the Sinai until 1270 spurred the interest of European Christians and increased the number of intrepid pilgrims who visited the monastery. The monastery was supported by its dependencies in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Crete, Cyprus and Constantinople. Throughout the Middle Ages, the monastery had a multiethnic profile, with monks of Arab, Greek, Syrian, Slavonic and Georgian origin. However, in the Ottoman period the monastic community became almost exclusively Greek, possibly due to the decline and depopulation of Transjordanian Christian towns. From the 1480s onwards, the Wallachian princes started sending out alms to the monastery.^[19]

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 occasions. During the Ottoman Empire, the mosque was in desolate condition; it was restored in the early 20th century.^[20]

During the seventh century, the isolated Christian anchorites of the Sinai were eliminated: only the fortified monastery remained. The monastery is surrounded by the massive fortifications that have preserved it. Until the twentieth century, access was through a door high in the outer walls.

The monastery, along with several dependencies in the area, constitute the entire Church of Sinai, which is headed by an archbishop, who is also the abbot of the monastery. The exact administrative status of the church within the Eastern Orthodox Church is ambiguous: by some, including the church itself,^[21] it is considered autocephalous,^[22][23] by others an autonomous church under the jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem.^[24] The archbishop is traditionally consecrated by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem; in recent centuries he has usually resided in Cairo. During the period of the Crusades which was marked by bitterness between the Orthodox and Catholic churches, the monastery was patronized by both the Byzantine emperors and the rulers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and their respective courts.

Dominican theologian Felix Fabri visited the monastery in the 15th century and provided a detailed account of it. He also described the monastery's gardens, noting the presence of "tall fruit trees, salad herbs, grass, and grain," and mentioning "more than three thousand olive trees, many fig-trees and pomegranates, and a store of almonds and other fruits." The olives were used to produce oil for lighting lamps and as a relish in the kitchen.^[25]

Saint Catherine's Monastery by Leavitt Hunt, 1852

Saint Catherine's Monastery, 1968

For most of the time of the Mamluk Sultanate the monastery was able to prosper, but as the sultanate started to decline, it went through a crisis. While there had been several hundred monks in the mid-14th century, a hundred years later there were only several dozens. Local Bedouin tribes started harassing the community, robbing their property of the Christian coastal village of Al-Tur and in 1505, the monastery was captured and sacked. Though the sultan demanded that the property be returned to the monks, the Mamluk government was unable to subdue the Bedouin nomads and preserve order. The German explorer Martin Baumgarten visited the monastery in 1507 and noticed its decline.^[19]

On April 18, 2017, an attack by the Islamic State group at a checkpoint near the Monastery killed one policeman and injured three police officers.^[26]

Manuscripts and icons

The monastery's library, founded sometime between 527 and 565, is recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest continuously operating library.^[27] It preserves the world's second-largest collection of early codices and manuscripts, outnumbered only by the Vatican Library.^[28] It contains Greek, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Syriac, Georgian, Arabic, Ethiopic/Ge‘ez, Latin, Armenian, and Church Slavonic^[29] manuscripts and books, along with very rare Hebrew^[30] and Coptic books.^[9]

Ashtiname of Muhammad, granting protection and other privileges to the followers of Jesus

In May 1844 and February 1859, Constantin 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. The finding from 1859 left the monastery for Russia, in circumstances that had been long disputed. But in 2003 Russian scholars discovered the donation act for the manuscript signed by the Council of Cairo Metochion and Archbishop Callistratus on 13 November 1869. The monastery received 9000 rubles as a gift from Tsar Alexander II of Russia.^[31] The Codex was sold by Stalin in 1933 to the British Museum and is now in the British Library, London, where it is on public display. Prior to September 1, 2009, a previously unseen fragment of Codex Sinaiticus was discovered in the monastery's library,^[32][33] as well as among the New Finds of 1975.^[34][9] On other visits (1855, 1857) Constantin von Tischendorf also amassed their more valuable manuscripts (Greek, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Georgian, Syriac) and took them with him to St. Petersburg and Leipzig, where they are stored today.^{[35][36][37][38][39][40][41]}

In February 1892, Agnes S. Lewis discovered an early palimpsest manuscript of the Gospel in St Catherine Monastery's library that became known as the Syriac Sinaiticus and it remains in the monastery's possession.^[42] Agnes and her sister Margaret D. Gibson returned in 1893 with the Cambridge team of the two scholars that included their wives, and also J. Rendel Harris to photograph and transcribe the manuscript in its entirety, as well as to prepare the first catalogues of the Syriac and Arabic manuscripts.^[43][44][45] Only among the New Finds two additional palimpsest manuscripts came to light containing additional passages of the Old Syriac Gospels.^[46]

External videos
The Icons of Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, Egypt (Archived), J. Paul Getty Museum

The Monastery also has a copy of the Ashtiname of Muhammad, in which the Islamic prophet Muhammad is claimed to have bestowed his protection upon the monastery.^[47]

Additionally, the monastery houses a copy of Mok'c'evay K'art'lisay, a collection of supplementary books of the Kartlis Cxovreba, dating from the 9th century.^[48]

The most important manuscripts have since been filmed or digitized, and so are accessible to scholars. With planning assistance from Ligatus, a research center of the University of the Arts London, the library was extensively renovated, reopening at the end of 2017.^[49][50][9]

Sinai Palimpsests Project

Since 2011, a team of imaging scientists^[51][9] and experienced scholars in the decipherment of palimpsest manuscripts^[52][9] from the U.S. and Europe have photographed, digitized, and studied the library's collection of palimpsests during the international Sinai palimpsests project.^{[53][9][4][54]}

Palimpsests are notable for having been reused one or more times over the centuries. Since parchment was expensive and time-consuming to produce, monks would erase certain texts with orange juice or scrape them off and write over them.^[55][9] Though the original texts were once assumed to be lost,^[56] imaging scientists used narrowband multispectral imaging techniques and technologies to reveal features that were difficult to see with the human eye, including ink residues and small grooves in the parchment.^[4][28] These images have subsequently been digitized and are now freely available for research at the UCLA Library for scholarly use.^[9]

As of June 2018, at least more than 160 palimpsests were identified, with over 6,800 pages of texts recovered.^[9] The newer finds were discovered in a secluded storage area of the St George Tower in 1975.^{[57][58][59][60][61][62]} Highlights include "108 pages of previously unknown Greek poems and the oldest-known recipe attributed to the Greek physician Hippocrates;" additional folios for the transmission of the Old Syriac Gospels;^[46] two unattested witnesses of an early Christian apocryphal text the Dormition of Mary (Transitus Mariae) of which most of the Greek text is lost;^[63] a previously unknown martyrdom of Patriklos of Caesarea Maritima (Israel), one of the eleven followers of Pamphilus of Caesarea; some of the earliest known Georgian manuscripts;^[64] as well as insight into dead languages such as the previously hardly attested Caucasian Albanian^[65][66] and Christian Palestinian Aramaic, the local dialect of the early Byzantine period, with many unparalleled text witnesses.^[9]

Works of art

The complex houses irreplaceable works of art: mosaics, the best collection of early icons in the world, many in encaustic, 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 catalogue the collections has been ongoing since the 1960s. The monastery was an important centre for the development of the hybrid style of Crusader art, and 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.^[67]

Icons

• 
  Saint Peter depicted in 6th-century hot wax icon
• 
  Icon of the enthroned Virgin and Child with saints and angels, 6th century
• 
  The oldest known icon of Christ Pantocrator, encaustic on panel
• 
  The Last Judgement, 11th-12th century, by John Tokhabi
• 
  Crucifixion, 13th century
• 
  Holy doors
• 
  Madonna and Child, 13th century
• 
  13th century Byzantine icon of Saint Michael the Archangel
• 
  Transfiguration, 12th century
• 
  Ladder of Divine Ascent
• 
  Emperor John VIII Palaiologos
• 
  Icon of Saint Catherine of Alexandria
• 
  The monastery, 18th century
• 
  Christ as the Ancient of Days, 7th century
• 
  12th century icon of Saint George and David IV of Georgia

Historical images

• 
  Carsten Niebuhr (1762)
• 
  Description de l'Égypte (1809)
• 
  David Roberts (1839), published in The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia
• 
  Ernst Keil (1861)
• 
  Adolf Meckel von Hemsbach (1892)

Panoramic view

A panorama of St Catherine's Monastery

See also

• Archbishop of Mount Sinai and Raithu
• Ashtiname of Muhammad
• Caucasian Albanian script
• Charnel House
• Codex Climaci Rescriptus
• Codex Sinaiticus
• Codex Sinaiticus Rescriptus
• Cyril of Jerusalem
• Desert fathers
• Gregory of Sinai
• John Climacus
• Ladder of Divine Ascent
• Oldest churches in the world
• Martyrs of Palestine
• Poustinia
• Sinaites in Serbia
• Syriac Sinaiticus
• Transitus Mariae

References

1. Din, Mursi Saad El et al.. Sinai: The Site & The History: Essays. New York: New York University Press, 1998. p. 80. ISBN 0814722032
2. Jules Leroy; Peter Collin (2004). Monks and Monasteries of the Near East. Gorgias Press. pp. 93–94. ISBN 978-1-59333-276-1.
3. "St Catherine Monastery – The Oldest in the World". KEEP CALM and WANDER. 2016-05-24. Retrieved 2022-04-21.
4. Schrope, Mark (September 6, 2012). "In the Sinai, a global team is revolutionizing the preservation of ancient manuscripts". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
5. "Is the Burning Bush Still Burning?". Friends of Mount Sinai Monastery. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
6. Georgiou, Aristos (December 20, 2017). "These spectacular ancient texts were lost for centuries, and now they can be viewed online". International Business Times. Archived from the original on July 2, 2018.
7. "Saint Catherine Area". UNESCO World Heritage Centre. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. Retrieved 7 September 2021.
8. Sebastian P. Brock, Two Hitherto Unattested Passages of the Old Syriac Gospels in Palimpsests from St Catherie's Monastery, Sinai, Δελτίο Βιβλικῶν Μελετῶν 31A, 2016, pp. 7–18.
9. "Sinai Palimpsests project". sinai.library.ucla.edu.
10. "Visit Saint Catherine Monastery, Egypt". visitafrica.site. Retrieved 2020-09-25.
11. "Saint Catherine's Monastery". Encyclopedia Britannica. July 1998. Retrieved 23 January 2021.
12. "The Monastery". St-Katherine-net. Retrieved 23 October 2014.
13. "Saint Catherine of Alexandria". Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica. March 2017 [First published July 1998].
14. Clugnet, Léon (1908). "St. Catherine of Alexandria" . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
15. Morton, James (1841). The legend of St. Katherine of Alexandria. Abbotsford club. Publications,no. 20. London: Abbotsford club. p. 133 – via Cornell University Library.
16. John Wilkinson (2015), Egeria's travels (Oxford: Oxbow Books). ISBN 978-0-85668-710-5
17. "The Pilgrimage of Egeria". www.ccel.org. Retrieved 2023-07-22.
18. Feilden, Bernard M.. Conservation of historic buildings. 3rd ed. Oxford: Architectural Press, 2003. p. 51. ISBN 0750658630
19. Panchenko, Constantine A. (24 August 2021). "The "Dark Age" of Middle Eastern Monasticism". Arabic Christianity between the Ottoman Levant and Eastern Europe. BRILL. pp. 33–36. ISBN 978-90-04-46583-1. Retrieved 18 January 2024.
20. "Saint Catherine Area".
21. The official Website describes the Church as "διοικητικά "αδούλωτος, ασύδοτος, ακαταπάτητος, πάντη και παντός ελευθέρα, αυτοκέφαλος" or "administratively 'free, loose, untresspassable, free from anyone at any time, autocephalous'" (see link below)
22. Weitzmann, Kurt, in: Galey, John; Sinai and the Monastery of St. Catherine, p. 14, Doubleday, New York (1980) ISBN 0-385-17110-2
23. Ware, Kallistos (Timothy) (1964). "Part I: History". The Orthodox Church. Penguin Books. Retrieved 2007-07-14. Under Introduction Bishop Kallistos says that Sinai is "autocephalous"; under The twentieth century, Greeks and Arabs he states that "There is some disagreement about whether the monastery should be termed an 'autocephalous' or merely an 'autonomous' Church."
24. The Orthodox Church of Mount Sinai CNEWA Canada, "A papal agency for humanitarian and pastoral support" Archived May 30, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
25. Felix Fabri, Vol II. Pt. II. Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society. p. 582
26. "Deadly attack near Egypt's old monastery". BBC News. April 19, 2017. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
27. "Oldest continuously operating library". Guinness World Records. Retrieved November 2, 2024.
28. Macdonald, Fleur (June 13, 2018). "Hidden writing in ancient manuscripts". BBC News. Archived from the original on July 2, 2018.
29. Jost Gippert, The Creation of the Caucasian Alphabets as Phenomenon of Cultural History, in Referate des Internationalen Symposiums (Wien, 1.-4. Dezember 2005), ed. by Werner Seibt, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, pp. 39–50, Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 2011.
30. Bo Isaksson, "The Monastery of St. Catherine and the New Finds", in Built on Solid Rock: Studies in Honour of Professor Ebbe Egede Knudsen on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday April 11th 1997, edited by Elie Wardini, pp. 128–140, Oslo: Novus forlag, 1997.
31. The History of the acquisition of the Sinai Bible by the Russian Government in the context of recent findings in Russian archives (english Internetedition) Archived 2019-12-21 at the Wayback Machine. The article from A.V. Zakharova was first published in Montfaucon. Études de paléographie, de codicologie et de diplomatique, Moscow–St.Petersburg, 2007, pp. 209–266) see also Alexander Schick, Tischendorf und die älteste Bibel der Welt. Die Entdeckung des Codex Sinaiticus im Katharinenkloster (Tischendorf and the oldest Bible in the world – The discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus in St. Catherine's Monastery), Muldenhammer 2015, pp. 123–128, 145–155.
32. "Fragment from world's oldest Bible found hidden in Egyptian monastery". The Independent. 2009-09-01. Retrieved 2023-07-22.
33. "Oldest known Bible to go online". 2005-08-03. Retrieved 2023-07-22.
34. David C. Parker (2010), CODEX SINAITICUS: The Story of the World's Oldest Bible. London. British Library, p. 18. ISBN 9780712358033
35. M. F. Brosset (1858), Note sur un manuscrit géorgien de la Bibliothèque Impériale publique et provenant de M. Tischendorf, Mélanges Asiatiques 3, pp. 264–280.
36. N. Pigoulewsky (1934), Fragments syro-palestiniens des Psaumes CXXIII-IV, Revue Biblique 43, pp. 519–527.
37. N. Pigoulewski (1937), Manuscrits syriaques bibliques de Léningrad, Revue Biblique 46, pp. 83–92; N. Pigoulewski, Manuscrits syriaques bibliques de Léningrad (suite), Revue Biblique 46, 1937, pp. 225–230; 556–562.
38. Julius Assfalg (1963), Georgische Handschriften (= Verzeichnis der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland, III) (Wiesbaden); Julius Assfalg (1965), Syrische Handschriften (= Verzeichnis der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland, V) (Wiesbaden).
39. Sebastian P. Brock (2012), Sinai: a Meeting Point of Georgian with Syriac and Christian Palestinian Aramaic, in The Caucasus between East & West (Tbilisi), pp. 482–494.
40. Grigory Kessel (2016), Membra Disjecta Sinaitica I: A Reconstitution of the Syriac Galen Palimpsest, in André Binggili, et al. (eds.), Manuscripta Graeca et Orientalia: Mélanges monastiques et patristiques en l'honneur de Paul Géhin (Louvain: Peeters), pp. 469–498.
41. Paul Géhin (2017), Les manuscrits syriaques de parchemin du Sinaï et leur membra disjecta, CSCO 665 / Subsidia 136 (Louvain: Peeters).
42. The text was deciphered by Francis C Burkitt and Robert L. Bensly, see Gibson, Margaret Dunlop (1893). How the Codex was Found. Cambridge: Macmillan & Bowes. pp. 36–38.
43. Gibson, Margaret Dunlop (1893). How the Codex was Found. Cambridge: Macmillan & Bowes. pp. 60–67.
44. Agnes Smith Lewis (1894), Catalogue of the Syriac MSS. in the Convent of S. Catharine on Mount Sinai, Studia Sinaitica, I (London: C. J. Clay and Sons).
45. Margaret Dunlop Gibson (1894), Catalogue of the Arabic mss. in the Convent of Saint Catharine on Mount Sinai. Studia Sinaitica, III (London: C. J. Clay and Sons).
46. Sebastian P. Brock, Two Hitherto Unattested Passages of the Old Syriac Gospels in Palimpsests from St Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, Δελτίο βιβλικῶν Μελετῶν 31, 2016, pp. 7–18.
47. Brandie Ratliff, "The monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai and the Christian communities of the Caliphate." Sinaiticus. The bulletin of the Saint Catherine Foundation (2008) Archived 2015-02-13 at the Wayback Machine.
48. Kavtaradze, Giorgi (2001). "The Georgian Chronicles and the Raison D'ètre of the Iberian Kingdom". Journal of Historical Geography of the Ancient World.
49. "Building renovation | The St. Catherine's Project". www.ligatus.org.uk. Retrieved 2023-07-22.
50. "Egypt Reopens Ancient Library at St. Catherine Monastery". Voice of America. Retrieved 2019-11-23.
51. Keith Knox (Chief Science Advisor, EMEL, USA); Roger Easton (Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, Rochester, New York, USA); William Christens-Barry (Chief Scientist, Equipoise Imaging, LCC, Maryland, USA); David Kelbe (Centre for Space Science Technology, Alexandra, New Zealand)
52. Zaza Aleksidze (Tbilisi, Georgia); André Binggeli (Paris, France); Sebastian Brock (Oxford, UK); Michelle Brown (London, UK); Guglielmo Cavallo (Rome, Italy); Steve Delamarter (Portland, Oregon, USA); Alain J. Desreumaux (Paris, France); David Ganz (Cambridge, UK); Paul Géhin (Paris, France); Jost Gippert (Frankfurt, Germany); Sidney Griffeth (Washington DC, USA); Getachew Haile (Minnesota; New York, USA); Dieter Harlfinger (Hamburg, Germany); Hikmat Kashouh (Metn, Lebanon); Vasilios Katsaros (Thessaloniki, Greece); Grigory Kessel (Vienna, Austria); Daniela Mairhofer (Princeton, New Jersey, USA); Heinz Miklas (Vienna, Austria); Christa Müller-Kessler (University of Jena, Germany); Panayotis Nicolopoulos (Athens, Greece); Pasquale Orsini (Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, Central Institute for Archives, Italy); Bernard Outtier (Paris, France); Claudia Rapp (Vienna, Austria); Giulia Rossetto (Vienna, Austria); Alexander Treiger (Nova Scotia, Canada); Agammenon Tselikas (Athens, Greece); Nigel Wilson (Oxford, UK).
53. The project's original heads were the professor of Byzantine studies Claudia Rapp of the University of Vienna and Michael Phelps of the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library (EMEL), Los Angeles, California.
54. Hsing, Crystal (April 15, 2011). "Scholars use tech tools to reveal texts". Daily Bruin. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
55. Reviel Netz and William Noel (2008), The Archimedes Codex: Revealing the Secrets of the World's Greatest Palimpsest (London, UK: Phoenix), pp. 120–124.
56. Marchant, Jo (December 11, 2017). "Archaeologists Are Only Just Beginning to Reveal the Secrets Hidden in These Ancient Manuscripts". Smithsonian. Retrieved July 2, 2018.
57. Ioannis E. Meïmaris (1985), Κατάλογος τῶν νέων ἀραβικῶν χειρογράφων τῆς ἱερᾶς Μονῆς Ἁγίας Αἰκατερίνης τοῦ Ὄρους Σινᾶ, Ἱερὰ Μονὴ Ἁγίας Αἰκατερίνης (Athens).
58. Ioannis C. Tarnanidis (1988), The Slavonic Manuscripts Discovered in 1975 at St Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai (Thessaloniki).
59. Sebastian P. Brock (1995), Catalogue of the Syriac Fragments (New Finds) in the Library of the Monastery of Saint Catherine, Mount Sinai (Athens).
60. Panayotis G. Nicolopoulos (1999), The New Finds of Sinai. Holy Monastery and Archdiocese of Sinai (Athens).
61. Zaza Alekzidse, M. Shanidze, L. Khevsuriani, M. Kavtaria (2005), The New Finds of Sinai. Catalogue of Georgian Manuscripts Discovered in 1975 at Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai (Athens).
62. Philothee du Sinaï (2008), Nouveaux manuscrits syriaques du Sinaï (Athens).
63. Christa Müller-Kessler, Three Early Witnesses of the «Dormition of Mary» in Christian Palestinian Aramaic. Palimpsests from the Cairo Genizah (Taylor-Schechter Collection) and the New Finds in St Catherine's Monastery, Apocrypha 29, 2018, pp. 69–95.
64. Aleksidze, Nikoloz (2018). Georgia: A Cultural Journey through the Wardrop Collection. Oxford: Bodleian Library. pp. 40–41. ISBN 9781851244959.
65. Zaza Alekzidse and Jean-Pierre Mahé, "Découverte d'un texte albanien: une langue ancienne du Caucase retrouvée", Comptes rendus des séances l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 141:2 (1997), pp. 512–532.
66. Zaza Aleksidze and Jean-Pierre Mahé, "Le déchiffrement de l'écriture des Albaniens du Caucase", Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 145:3 (2001), pp. 1239–1257.
67. Kurt Weitzmann in The Icon, Evans Brothers Ltd., London (1982), pp. 201–207 (trans. of Le Icone, Montadori 1981), ISBN 0-237-45645-1

Further reading

• Oriana Baddeley, Earleen Brunner (1996). The Monastery of St Catherine. Saint Catherine Foundation. pp. 120 pages with 79 colour illustrations. ISBN 978-0-9528063-0-1.
• Böttrich, Christfried (2011). Der Jahrhundertfund. Entdeckung und Geschichte des Codex Sinaiticus (The Discovery of the Century. Discovery and history of Codex Sinaiticus). Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt. ISBN 978-3-374-02586-2.
• James Hamilton Charlesworth, The New Discoveries in St. Catherine's Monastery (= American Schools of Oriental Research Monograph 3) Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1981. ISBN 0-89757-403-6
• Alessandro Falcetta (2018). A Biography of James Rendel Harris 1852–1941: The Daily Discoveries of a Bible Scholar and Manuscript Hunter. London, UK: T&T Clark. ISBN 9780567684776
• Forsyth, G. H.; Weitzmann, K. (1973). The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai – The Church and Fortress of Justinian: Plates. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-472-33000-4.
• Paul Géhin (2017). Les manuscrits syriaques de parchemin du Sinaï et leur membra disjecta. CSCO 665 / Subsidia 136. Louvain: Peeters. ISBN 978-90-429-3501-3
• Margaret Dunlop Gibson (1893). How the Codex was Found. A Narrative of Two Visits to Sinai from Mrs. Lewis's Journals. 1892–1893. Cambridge: Macmillan & Bowes.
• Dieter Harlfinger, Diether R. Reinsch, and Joseph A. M. Sonderkamp in Zusammenarbeit mit Giancarlo Prato: Specimina Sinaitica: Die datierten griechischen Handschriften des Katharinen-Klosters auf dem Berge Sinai 9. bis 12. Jahrhundert, Berlin: Reimer 1983. ISBN 3496007435
• Agnes Smith Lewis (1898). In the Shadow of Sinai. A Story travel and Research from 1895 to 1897. Cambridge: Macmillan & Bowes.
• Panayotis G. Nicolopoulos (1999), The New Finds. Holy Monastery and Archdiocese of Sinai (Athens). ISBN 9608598427
• David C. Parker (2010). CODEX SINAITICUS: The Story of the World's Oldest Bible. London. British Library. ISBN 9780712358033
• Porter, Stanley E. (2015). Constantine Tischendorf. The Life and Work of a 19th Century Bible Hunter. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. ISBN 978-0-5676-5803-6.
• Schick, Alexander (2015). Tischendorf und die älteste Bibel der Welt – Die Entdeckung des CODEX SINAITICUS im Katharinenkloster [Tischendorf and the oldest Bible in the world. The discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus in St. Catherine's Monastery]. Muldenhammer: Jota. ISBN 978-3-935707-83-1. Biography cause of the anniversary of the 200th birthday of Tischendorf with many unpublished documents from his estate. These provide insight into previously unknown details of the discoveries and the reasons behind the donation of the manuscript. Recent research on Tischendorf and the Codex Sinaiticus and its significance for New Testament Textual Research.
• Soskice, Janet (1991). Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels. London: Vintage. ISBN 978-1-4000-3474-1.
• Sotiriou, G. and M. (1956–1958). Icones du Mont Sinaï. 2 vols (plates and texts). Collection de L'Institut francais d'Athènes 100 and 102. Athens.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Elena Ene D-Vasilescu, "The Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai and the Romanians", Revue des Études Sud-Est Européennes [Journal of South-East European studies], XLVII, 1–4, 2009, pp. 75–87
• Weitzmann, K. (1976). The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai: The Icons, Volume I: From the Sixth to the Tenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Weitzmann, K.; Galavaris, G. (1991). The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai. The Illuminated Greek Manuscripts, Volume I. From the Ninth to the Twelfth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-03602-0.

External links

• Official Website of the Holy Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai
• Saint Catherine Area/ World Heritage Listing on UNESCO's Website
• Saint Catherine Foundation
• St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, Egypt Archived 2009-02-09 at the Wayback Machine
• St Catherine Project (digitisation) video
• Digitized palimpsests in St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai
• Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai Getty exhibit
• Early Icons from Sinai, Belmont U
• The text of the Charter from Muhammad can be read here or here.
• "At a Mountain Monastery, Old Texts Gain Digital Life" article from The New York Times
• Information about the town of St. Catherine
• Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Monastery of St. Catherine" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Prophet Muhammad's Letter to Monks of St. Catharine Monastery
• More on Saint Catherine's Monastery and Mount Sinai
• Caucasian Albanian Alphabet: Ancient Script Discovered in the Ashes [St. Catherine's], Azerbaijan International, Vol. 11:3 (Autumn 2003), pp. 38–41.
• Article on the Orthodox Church of Mount Sinai by Ronald Roberson on the CNEWA web site
• The Albanian Script: The Process – How Its Secrets Were Revealed [St. Catherine's], Azerbaijan International, Vol. 11:3 (Autumn 2003), pp. 44–51.
• Map showing the Monastery, 18th century. Eran Laor Cartographic Collection. The National Library of Israel
• Pope Gregory X's Privilege for the Holy Monastery of St Catherine of Sinai (24 September 1274): Engineering Historical Memory. Interactive scholarly edition, Diplomatics and Historical Commentary, Deep zoom, English translation, multimodal resources mashup (publications, images, videos).