Egypt 13 – St. Katherine’s Monastery
Friday, May 28th, 2010
St. Katherine’s Monastery
View of the garden and cemetery
Outside the church of St. Katherine
The minaret
First off, let me apologize for being so far behind on blog posts. After crossing into Jordan I found myself so busy with all of the adventures there are to be found near Petra that I didn’t have time to work on the blog. I’m now at my last location before I head home and unfortunately this hotel has a terrible internet connection and its been slow going try to get my photos uploaded. It seems to work better from the lobby so I’m going to try and get caught up in the next couple of days…otherwise the last couple of posts will probably be finished after I’m home on Monday. Ok, back to regular stuff…
Having been born a heathen, I will readily admit that I’m not super familiar with the biblical stories that include Moses and his crew so I apologize in advance for any errors I make in the subsequent descriptions. I’m relying on my guidebook and Wikipedia for my information so who knows how accurate they are? Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way let’s have a look at St. Katherine’s Monastery.
Where it all began was with the Burning Bush through which God is said to have spoken to Moses. Interestingly this bush holds significance for Jews, Christians and Muslims which has allowed the three great monotheistic religions to come together peacefully to maintain such an important religious site. Round about 337 AD it was determined that a sanctuary needed to be built at the site of the Burning Bush which quickly became a refuge for pilgrims, hermits and other characters crossing the desert. Between 537 and 562 Emperor Justinian expanded the site by building fortifications that remain today (more details on the construction below). The number of pilgrims traveling to the site dwindled considerably until the body of St. Katherine was “discovered” on the top of Mt. Katherine where angels were said to have brought it there after she was persecuted for confessing her faith to Jesus. During the Crusades from 1099 to 1270 the site attracted lots of pilgrims and eventually St. Katherine was considered a major saint in Europe and the site was renamed to St. Katherine’s Monastery. The church and the monastery have remained under the power of the Greek Orthodox Church and about 25 monks still live here.
Outside the entrance to the church. We couldn’t take photos past this point
The Burning Bush
The monastery is constructed as a heavy fortress and as it’s built into a hill the height of the walls vary ranging from 30 feet to 60 feet and the thickness of the walls is 6 to 9 feet. The original ancient gate to the fortress has been sealed but the hole above it used to pour boiling oil over invaders’ heads remains and is noted in the picture below. The fortress was so well-built that the walls have remained virtually unchanged for 14 centuries with the exception of the north wall which was damaged badly in a storm. Napoleon rolled in around 1801 and financed the repairs to the north wing which is surprising since we know he had no qualms about defacing the Sphinx.
Much of the monastery is closed to visitors including the library which is said to be second only to the Vatican in terms of important ancient documents. The most impressive site inside the walls is the Church of St. Katherine’s though as expected we were not allowed to take any pictures here. The entry doors are beautiful carved wood and are original to the era of the Crusades. There is also a mosque within the fortress which was created to placate Muslim invaders and to encourage them to tolerate the monastery. Interestingly, the current servants of the monastery are descendants of the original Bedouin servants and are Muslim though they do retain certain Christian beliefs such as celebrating the feast of Moses on the mountain peak and they believe in the Prophet Aaron and the Christian saint of Georgius and Katherine.
Getting back to Moses…his significance here is that he apparently escaped Egypt at the age of forty to the site of the monastery where he encountered Jethro’s seven daughters watering their flocks at the well. After marrying one of Jethro’s daughters, God revealed himself to Moses in the miracle of the Burning Bush and ordered him back to Egypt to lead the children of Israel back to Mt. Horeb to serve Him. The Children of Israel crossed Sinai in the 13th century BC on their way to the Promised Land of Canaan. There is some debate about their route but 50 days after departing the bondage of Egypt they arrived at Mt. Horeb where they received God’s Law from which they were called to build their religious and social organization. It is said that Moses’ well has never run dry and that the Burning Bush is the only of its kind in Egypt. All attempts of transplanting a portion of the Burning Bush have failed miserably.
I’m not sure I was supposed to go in here but the door was open so I did. It was just a tunnel to the inside with a closed door but it was fun to crawl around in the walls of a fortress.
Inside the wall
The outside of the walled grounds include a garden that grows here because monks carried fertile soil into the desert for their fruit trees and vegetables. There is a very small cemetery and because of its small size the monks adopted a rather interesting method of disposing of dead bodies. When someone died he was buried in the dry sand and the oldest body in the cemetery (which had decomposed by this time) was removed from the cemetery and the bones stored in a big pile in the Charnel House. The rather macabre photos of the skulls and other bones are shown here. The remains of the archbishops were contained in their own special niches as noted below.
This is it for Egypt. If my Internet connection remains stable we should be seeing scenes from Petra later this week. Enjoy the photos!
Skulls of dead monks
The archbishops got their own niches
Non-skull bones go in a different pile
View of the fortress walls from outside the complex
The column in the middle of the picture is where they would pour boiling oil over intruders (the original entrance has been sealed and a new entrance is beside it)
Final view of the monastery
staceyd11