The following is information from other writers which shines light on some cultural and religious aspects of life in Egypt.
1999_St Katherine’s Monastery, Sinai
The Monastery of St Katherine
The Monastery of St Katherine is an Orthodox monastical center with a continuous life since the 6th century.
It has stood for 1400 year sin the heart of the Sinai Desert, and preserved its special character since its erection in the era of Justinian (527-565 AD). Mohammed the founder of Islam, Arab caliphs, Turkish sultans, and Napoleon all took the Monastery under their protection, thereby preserving it from pillage: it has never in its long history been conquered, damaged or destroyed, and has through the ages kept its image as a sacred Biblical site, where the symbolic meaning of the events of the Old Testament is illuminated and interpreted in the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary.
Moses and the Burning Bush
At the age of forty, Moses escaped from Egypt to Mount Horeb, and here he found Jethro's seven daughters watering their flocks a the well. which is still to be seen today on the north side of the Monastery's Church. After marrying one of Jethro's daughters, Moses lived for forty years with his father-in-law, tending his flocks and cleansing his soul in the silence and solitude of the Sinai Desert. Here God revealed Himself to Moses in the miracle of the Burning Bush and ordered him to return to Egypt, and bring the Children of Israel to Mount Horeb in order to serve Him.
The Fortress
To protect the numerous Monks who had settled around the Burning Bush, and to withstand the attacks of marauding Bedouin, Justinian's builders constructed a fortress of such monumentalily that its walls stand little changed after 14 centuries. the outer wall is built of dressed local granite to a thickness of 6 to 9 feet. Its height, differing according to the ground contours and external topography, is never less than 30 feet, and in places even reaches 60 feet.
The Chapel of the Burning Bush
The holy altar of the chapel stands not upon the sacred remains of martyrs, which is the rule, but above the roots of the Burning Bush. The Bush flourishes several yards farther from the chapel where it was transplanted in order to build the holy Alter upon its roots. It is the only bush of its kind growing in the entire Sinai Peninsula, and every attempt to transplant a branch of it to another place has been unsuccessful.
The Library
The Library of the Monastery is second in importance only to that of the Vatican, in both number and value of the manuscripts it contains. Most of the manuscripts deal with Christian subjects, though the collection also contains historical documents bearing the gold or lead seals of emperors, patriarchs, bishops and Turkish sultans. Volumes date back to the 5th century. Apart from its valuable manuscripts, the Library also contains some 5,000 books, some of them produced in the first decades after the invention of printing.
The Garden and Charnel House
The Monastery garden, extending as a long triangle into the desert, is a veritable oasis amid granite mountains and barren wilderness. It is the work of the minks who tirelessly brought the soil from far off, and made tanks to provide irrigation water by trapping rainfall and the melting snow that flows down from the mountains. Manual labour has always been an essential part of the Orthodox monks’ life. There are olive trees and delicious apricots, plums and cherries; vegetables, too, are grown in the garden.
NB: Father Paul advised us that good solid rain for one day will provide sufficient water for the Monastery for 5 years.
Within the garden is the Monastery cemetery, adjoining a charnel house – a repository of the bones of the monks who died at St Catherine over the centuries. The dead are first buried in the small cemetery, then disinterred and their bones deposited in the skull house. The reamins of archbishops are kept in special niches. The origin for this strange custom of preserving skeletal remains, in this and other desert monasteries, is probably both in the difficulty of digging graves in stony ground, but also in the spiritual goal of reminding monks constantly about their coming death.
Mount Moses
Mount Moses, or as the monks call it, "The Holy Peak", stands 7,500 feet above sea level, and two hours walk south of the Monastery. According to Christian tradition, this is the Biblical Mount Horeb where Moses received the Tablets of the law with the Ten Commandments.
There are two ways up the mountain. The one entails climbing 3750 steps, built with rocks by pious monks; this is a short but difficult ascent. The other, easier way, carved by the Egyptian authorities in the 19th century, is an indirect route which can be traversed on foot or on animal back. If a camel is taken, then you must climb on foot the last 750 steps.
On the top of Mount Moses is a chapel dedicated to the Holy Trinity. To the north of the chapel is a cave where tradiion holds that God put Moses: "… while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by" (Exodus 33:22).
The view from the peak is truly breathtaking and well worth the effort of ascent.
Bibliography
The Monastery of St Katherine
Edited by St Katherine's Monastery
Dr Evangelos Papaioannou
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