St. Catherine Monastery

Trekearth's page on St. Catherine's Monastery on the Sinai Peninsula, a UNESCO World Heritage site and the repository of many ancient manuscripts.

The oldest record of monastic life at Sinai comes from the travel journal written in Latin by a woman named Egeria. She visited many places around the Holy Land and Mount Sinai, where, according to the Hebrew Bible, Moses received the Ten Commandments from God.

The monastery was built by order of Emperor Justinian I between 527 and 565, enclosing the Chapel of the Burning Bush ordered 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 original. The site is sacred to the three major Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Photo by Konstantin Novakovic