Mount Sinai: Monasticism, Collections, and Archives

Mount Sinai is home to the oldest active Eastern Christian monastic community in the world and holds a prominent place in Orthodox spirituality. The Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (r. 527-565) built the monastery, which is dedicated to Saint Catherine, following the death of his wife Theodora (d. 548). Largely retaining its 6th-century appearance, the fortified monastery encloses the main church, the monastic buildings and cells of the monks, a bakery and guesthouse, as well as a stable and garden. It was so designed to protect monastic life, ensure the continuation of Christian values, and safeguard the vast collections of icons, manuscripts, liturgical objects, and archives it had accumulated over centuries.  

Today, however, the monastery is the center of dispute as the Egyptian government seeks control of the site and aims to transform it into a tourist destination. These controversies threaten monastic life at Mount Sinai, the sacred history of the monastery, as well as the importance of its archives and holdings.  

Saint Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai carries immense spiritual importance for different communities. For Jews and Christians, Mount Sinai is where God made himself known to the Hebrew prophet Moses in the narrative of the Burning Bush (Exodus 3), and it is also where Moses received from God the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2-17). Moreover, the monastery encloses the so-called Well of Moses where the prophet met his wife. For Muslims, Mount Sinai is where the prophet Muhammad was received with hospitality and subsequently granted the Christian community there protection and other privileges through a special charter. 

Today, the monastery is well known for the rich history it preserves and its impressive collections, which scholars of medieval and Byzantine history, art, and culture have long valued. The remote location of the monastery, however, has made the site and its collections difficult to access.  

Georgian icon of Saint Sergios from Saint Catherine Monastery, Mount Sinai, 13th-14th century. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The library of the monastery — the world’s oldest continuously operating library — was established in the sixth century and has grown into the second largest collection of manuscripts and codices (the largest library is at the Vatican). It consists of some 3,300 volumes with the oldest dating to the fourth century. The so-called Codex Sinaiticus (early 4th century) is the earliest complete New Testament — the oldest Bible. Today, the manuscript is split between Saint Catherine’s Monastery, the British Library, the Leipzig University Library, and the National Library of Russia. Many scholars and research groups are actively researching the Sinai holdings. Noteworthy in this regard is the Sinai Palimpsests Project, an international effort that uses multi-spectral imaging to recover the erased layers of writing in seventy-four palimpsest manuscripts from Sinai. The monastery also preserves the largest collection of palimpsests. 

Several of the Sinai manuscripts, in addition to the impressive holdings of icons and liturgical objects at the monastery, are now also widely available through the Sinai Digital Archive project, accessible at www.sinaiarchive.org. On this website, thousands of images of objects from the Sinai collections are available to all for study, teaching, research, and discovery! In 2023, the project received the Digital Humanities and Multimedia Studies Prize from the Medieval Academy of America for its inter-institutional sharing of research material, preservation of previous collections, archives, and scholarship, and how it conforms to many emerging best practices within the Digital Humanities: “The use of the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) standard for images, standard platforms (Omeka), shareable locators for individual images, an easily understood interface, and a robust sustainability plan.” 

Dormition of the Theotokos, 13th century. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The large photographic evidence that sits at the foundation of the Sinai Digital Archive was gathered during the so-called Michigan-Princeton-Alexandria Expeditions to Sinai in 1950s and 1960s. In 1956, George H. Forsyth, then professor of art history at the University of Michigan, embarked on his first trip to the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai. Upon his return from this initial exploratory adventure, Professor Forsyth invited his colleague, Professor Kurt Weitzmann from Princeton University, to join him on future expeditions to the remote monastery. 

Between 1958 and 1965, Forsyth, Weitzmann, and their team of experts carried out four research expeditions to Mount Sinai. These trips enabled the researchers to study the church and its monastic complex firsthand, as well as document the vast collections of icons, manuscripts, sculptures, and textiles. Photography of the expedition fell under the direction of Fred Anderegg, then head of photographic services at the University of Michigan. The letters exchanged between Forsyth and Weitzman refer to the project as “a recording mission” aimed at capturing and preserving for future study a vast body of material difficult to access, yet so important to researchers around the world.

The field notes and photographic material gathered during these expeditions are preserved in “Sinai Archives” in the Visual Resources Collections at the University of Michigan and Princeton University. Princeton’s archive centers on a smaller portion of the collection, primarily the colored icon photographs, manuscript pages, and the mosaics, which were of most interest to Prof. Weitzmann during his scholarly career. Michigan’s collection, in turn, consists of correspondences, drawings, research notes, as well as images created in black and white, 35 mm color, and Ektachrome film of the site and its large multi-media holdings.

The work on the current Sinai website began in 2018 with a preliminary effort to bring together the icons held in the Princeton and Michigan collections. The gathered and combined metadata and archive images from both institutions sit at the foundation of this new website. To date, the website features the religious icons held in the Princeton and Michigan collections, as well as the icons only present in the Michigan archive — a total of 1903 works! Manuscript folia have also been added to the site, as have the liturgical objects and the mosaics. Future development will include the addition of architecture and the entire archive of the expeditions. In time, the individual entries will also feature additional content related to the condition of the object, dimensions, and bibliography. The data is continually enhanced, and the team welcomes feedback from users. 

In addition to the archival material, the website features ‘Archive Stories’ with new discoveries from the Sinai archives, a preliminary bibliography related to the monastic site and its holdings, and new ‘Teaching Modules’ that demonstrate how the Sinai collections could be used in the classroom. 

The project underscores the importance of Mount Sinai and its treasures for past, present, and future generations. But it should also encourage further exploration and discovery, as well as conservation and protection. Some of the treasures of Saint Catherine’s Monastery were created there, others were accumulated over the centuries through gifts and donations. Despite the tumult of empires rising and falling around Mount Sinai, the monastery has maintained its activities and protected its treasures for centuries. Preserving these archives online is important, but protecting the cradle that nurtured them is just as crucial in underscoring the value of preserving all such archeological sites and understanding the contexts that created these works in the first place. 

Further Reading:

Evans, Helen C., and Bruce White. Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, Egypt: A Photographic Essay. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004.

Forsyth, George H., and Kurt Weitzmann. The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai: The Church and Fortress of Justinian. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973.

Forsyth, Ilene, and Elizabeth Sears. “George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 70 (2016): 117–150.

Gerstel, Sharon E. J. and Robert S. Nelson, eds. Approaching the Holy Mountain: Art and Liturgy at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010.

Nelson, Robert S., and Kristen M. Collins, eds. Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2006. 

Sullivan, Alice Isabella, Ryan Abramowitz, and Elizabeth Elliott. “St. Catherine Monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt.” In  Gods’ Collections, edited by Crispin Paine and Jessica Hughes (October 2023). 

Alice Isabella Sullivan

Alice Isabella Sullivan, Assistant Professor of Medieval Art and Architecture at Tufts University, is an award-winning author and co-founder of North of Byzantium.