The Lord Reigneth: Mount Sinai , Egypt

The Sinai peninsula is a triangular wedge of some twenty-four thousand square miles, forming a bridge between Asia and Africa. It is bounded by the Mediterranean to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and the Gulf of Aqaba to the east. Throughout history, the Sinai peninsula has been one of the most important crossroads because of its strategic position linking east with west, and north with south.

At the heart of the South Sinai is the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine, guardian of a spiritual and cultural presence extending back over seventeen centuries. As of old, the monastery attracts pilgrims and visitors from all over the world, and strives to continue its age-old ministry under these recent very changed circumstances.

The Security Cover

The broader area of the Holy Monastery of Sinai is characterized by the three peaks of Mount Horeb, Mount Saint Catherine, and the Mount of Saints Galakteon and Episteme, which are represented on older depictions of the monastery

Mount Sinai (Arabic: طُور سِينَاء, translit.: Ṭūr Sīnāʼ ; Egyptian Arabic: جَبَل مُوسَى, translit.: Jabal Mūsā or Gabal Mūsā; literally "Moses' Mountain" or "Mount Moses"; Hebrew: הר סיני‎ translit. Har Sinai), also known as Mount Horeb, is a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt that is a possible location of the biblical Mount Sinai. The latter is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus and other books of the Bible,According to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic tradition, the biblical Mount Sinai was the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments.

The earliest references to Jebel Musa as Mount Sinai or Mount Sinai being located in the present day Sinai Peninsula are inconclusive. There is evidence that prior to 100 CE, well before the Christian monastic period, Jewish sages had already identified Jebel Musa as Mount Sinai. Graham Davies of Cambridge University offers evidence that early Jewish pilgrimages had already identified Jebel Musa as Mount Sinai and this identification was later adopted by the Christian pilgrims R. K. Harrison states that, “Jebel Musa . . . seems to have enjoyed special sanctity long before Christian times, culminating in its identification with Mt. Sinai." In the second and third centuries BCE Nabataeans were making pilgrimages there, which is indicated in part by inscriptions discovered in the area.

Josephus wrote that "Moses went up to a mountain that lay between Egypt and Arabia, which was called Sinai." Josephus says that Sinai is "the highest of all the mountains thereabout," and is "the highest of all the mountains that are in that country, and is not only very difficult to be ascended by men, on account of its vast altitude but because of the sharpness of its precipices".

The traditional Mount Sinai, located in the Sinai Peninsula, is actually the name of a collection of peaks, sometimes referred to as the Holy Mountain peaks which consist of Jebel Musa, Mount Catherine and Ras Sufsafeh.

Etheria (circa 4th century AD) wrote, "The whole mountain group looks as if it were a single peak, but, as you enter the group, there are more than one."[32] The highest mountain peak is Mount Catherine, rising 8,550 ft. above the sea and its sister peak, Jebel Musa (7, 370 ft.), is not much further behind in height, but is more conspicuous because of the open plain called er Rachah ("the wide"). Mount Catherine and Jebel Musa are both much higher than any mountains in the Sinaitic desert, or in all of Midian. The highest tops in the Tih desert to the North are not much over 4,000 ft. Those in Midian, East of Elath, rise only to 4,200 ft. Even Jebel Serbal, 20 miles West of Sinai, is at its highest only 6,730 ft. above the sea.[33]

On the peak of Jebel Musa stands a small chapel dedicated to the Holy Trinity. This chapel, constructed in 1934 on the ruins of a 16th church, is believed to enclose the rock from which God made the Tablets of the Law. In the western wall of this chapel is a cleft in the rock where Moses is said to have hidden himself as God's glory passed by (Exodus 33:22). Seven hundred and fifty steps below the summit and its chapel is the plateau known as Elijah's Basin, where Elijah spent 40 days and nights communing with God in a cave. Nearby is a rock on which Aaron, the brother of Moses, and 70 elders stood while Moses received the law (Exodus 24:14). Northwest of Elijah's plateau hardy pilgrims visit Jebel Safsaafa, where Byzantine hermits such as St. Gregory lived and prayed. Beneath the 2168 meter summit of Ras Safsaafa stands the Plain of ar-Raaha, where the Israelites camped at the time Moses ascended the mountain and where Moses erected the first tabernacle.

The Catherine Monastery