At the Mouth of an Inaccessible Gorge
While I was wikiwalking last week, I found a place I’d really like to visit:
Saint Catherine’s Monastery (Greek: Μονὴ τῆς Ἁγίας Αἰκατερίνης) lies on the Sinai Peninsula, at the mouth of an inaccessible gorge at the foot of Mount Sinai in Saint Katherine city in Egypt. The monastery is Greek Orthodox and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. According to the UNESCO report (60100 ha /Ref: 954) and website hereunder, this monastery has been called the oldest working Christian monastery in the world — although the Monastery of Saint Anthony, situated across the Red Sea in the desert south of Cairo, also holds claim to that title.
[…]
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.
[…]
The monastery library preserves the second largest collection of early codices and manuscripts in the world, outnumbered only by the Vatican Library. Its strength lies in Greek, Coptic, Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, Georgian, and Syriac texts. The Codex Sinaiticus, now in the British Library, left the monastery in the 19th century for Russia, in circumstances that are now disputed.
Dust and sand, time and history: these things have been all been on my mind quite a lot of late.