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Today we arrived in Sharm el Sheikh, the “City of Peace”, which is situated on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula at the most of the Gulf of Aqaba in Egypt. While it has had a rather chaotic history over the past 60 years, having been taken over a couple times by Israel, it is now a resort town that also has become a major port and naval base for the Egyptian Navy.
It is also a good jumping off point for a trip to St. Catherine’s Monastery and Mt. Sinai, a famous mountain in the bible, namely, where Moses received the 10 Commandments on stone tablets.
Today Margaret decided to stay on the ship as the trip we had planned is a very long bus ride across the desert to St. Catherine’s Monastery. Even Paul and I questioned whether we should go but, in the end, we jumped on the bus and went out hoping to get a picture of Paul carrying down the 10 Commandment tablets just like a modern day Moses.
Here are the Top Pictures for today:
San Catherine’s Monastery, commonly known as Santa Katarina has the official name of Sacred Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai at the mouth of a gorge at the foot of Mount Sinai. It is Greek Orthodox and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was built between 548 and 565 and one of the oldest working Christian monasteries in the world. It has become a favorite pilgrimage site. According to tradition, Catherine of Alexandria was a Christian martyr sentenced to death on the wheel. When this failed to kill her, she was beheaded. According to tradition, angels took her remains to Mount Sinai. Around the year 800, monks from the Sinai Monastery found her remains.
The monastery was built by order of Justinian I enclosing the Shapel of the Burning Bush which was ordered to be built at this location by Helena, the mother of Constantine I at the site where Moses is supposed to have seen the burning bush and sure enough, the burning bush is still there today! Like other famous places in the middle east, the site is sacred to Christianity, Islam and Judaism. An interesting thing for budding architects is that the king post truss in the main building is the oldest known surviving roof truss in the world. I guess they don’t build them like that any more.
The bus ride was just over 4 hours through parched desert. Margaret definitely wouldn’t be too excited about that, not to mention that it was going to be another 4 hours to get back to the port. Ugh! There was an inspection as we left the port, one when we arrived at St. Catherine’s and same on the return.
When we arrived there were a number of young boys hawking camel rides which were about $5. I decided to walk TO the monastery which was a couple blocks and then ride a camel back. There was a line of tourists outside the monastery and we queued up for about a 15 minute wait to go through the small doorway into the monastery. We went into the church
There is an Orthodox Church that was ornately decorated…lots of hanging gold stuff, stained glass windows but overall very dark. They didn’t let us take pictures inside. There is also a library that preserves the second largest collection of early manuscripts in the world, outnumbered only by the Vatican Library! It contains Greek, Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Hebrew, Gerorian and Aramaic texts as well as ancient artworks including beautiful mosaics. One interesting document was created by Muhammad which bestows his protection on the monastery, one of the reasons that it has survived for such a long time.
After taking a walk around the monastery Paul and I headed up the steep hills across the road to simulate Moses bringing down the 10 Commandment tablets. It also provided a nice overview of the walled compound and let us stretch our legs before the long bus ride “home”. I took a camel ride back to the bus and had a good time with my guide who also took a picture of me.
On the way back, I worked on the blog on my MacBook and Paul fell asleep on the back seat of the bus. In the end, it was questionable whether it was worth it but we did see a part of the world that few get to see.