St. Catherine’s Monastery
Saint Catherine’s Monastery is located in the south of the Sinai desert in Egypt. It is considered one of the oldest and most famous monasteries in the world. It is one of the Egyptian sites registered on the World Heritage List “UNESCO” since 2002 AD. It is located below Mount Catherine, the highest mountain in Egypt, at 2642 m, and Mount Moses at 2285 m, containing a historical church. Many gifts of kings and princes, in addition to an ancient well, believed to be Moses’ well, located near a tree. It is said that the tree caught fire, so Moses guided it to speak to his Lord, as the story says. 194 AD during the reign of the Roman Emperor Maximilianus “305-311 AD”, and it converted to Christianity in the time of paganism. The results were counterproductive, and rather surprisingly, these pagan sages believed in Christianity. Many followed their example, among whom were those closest to the emperor among the court men, a minister Stephanus sent his wife, and she believed in her, and she said to the minister: I did to you as you did to me, and they both cut their throats. On December 7, 307 AD, a monk of Sinai saw a vision that the angels carried the remains of her body and placed them on the top of a mountain near the monastery, so the monks went up to the mountain and found the remains and buried them at the top of that mountain. The monastery was St. Catherine’s Monastery and was called the monastery of Tur Sinai since its establishment. Emperor Justinian, 505 AD to 537 AD, reconstructed the Church of the Burning Bush, built by Empress Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, in the fourth century AD. The Prophet of God, Moses, survived his Lord and received the tablets of the law in it, and he called it the Church of the Resurrection. Its design was designed by the engineer Stephen of Ella, and after the relics of St. Catherine were found in the ninth century AD, this church was called the Church of the Transfiguration, and the monastery was the monastery of St. Catherine. The monastery contains a historical church with ancient gifts from kings and princes, including silver chandeliers and a well that they say is the well of Moses. It grows nowhere else outside the monastery. The only entrance to the monastery was a small door ten meters high. It was designed to protect the monastery from strangers and intruders as people lifted and lowered a box driven by a system of winches and pulleys. Now, there is a small door below the monastery wall, as Napoleon Bonaparte, during the French campaign, raised the monastery wall to thirteen meters when the monks complained of the attacks of the Bedouins. The monastery contains various facilities, including the main church, the “Church of Transfiguration,” which includes the Burning Bush Church and nine small side churches. In addition, the monastery includes ten subsidiary churches, cells for the residence of monks, a refectory, an olive press, an exhibition of skulls, the Fatimid Mosque and a library. The church was built with huge stones of carved granite and contains the Holy Al-Alaika Church and a group of subsidiary churches inside it. It is estimated at forty-six square meters, and in which the best technical and creative skills were used, and it was decorated with small pieces coated with precious materials such as gold, silver and hybrid glass leaves. The image of Christ occupies the centre of the arch, and on his right and left, the Prophet Elijah and the Prophet Moses, and at the bottom the apostles John and Jacob prostrating to the right and the Apostle Peter kneeling at my feet Jesus Christ. The mosaic is surrounded by thirty-one medallions containing images of the apostles and prophets. Above this scene is a drawing of two angels heading to the Lamb, and above them is a scene of the Prophet Moses taking off his sandals in front of the burning bush to the right of the Prophet Moses as he received the Ten Commandments. It has signs of damage, which resulted in the preparation of a project to restore the aesthetic and lustre of the mosaic, as it was covered with a black layer. It is difficult to see the area of ​​the cubes, so the completed operations were documented, and the mosaic pieces that made up the manifestation were documented. Under the mosaic of the Transfiguration, there is a golden casket given as a gift by a German businessman, in which the monks keep the relics of the monastery. The second coffin contains the remains of Saint Catherine. It came to the monastery from the Russian Empress Anna Ivanova, who loved Saint Caterina and wanted to be buried next to her, but she was buried in Saint Petersburg, and only her coffin came. To the monastery, the floor of the Church of the Burning Bush is 70 cm lower than the floor of the Church of the Transfiguration, and it contains a small circular altar erected on marble columns above a marble slab that determines the true location of the bush. Its branches are outside it, and no one enters this church without taking off his shoes outside its door in homage to the Prophet of God Moses, peace be upon him when he approaches the bush.