Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Egypt

Saint Catherine’s Monastery on the Sinai Peninsula, at the mouth of an inaccessible gorge at the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt is one of the oldest continuously functioning Christian monasteries in the world. The monastery is Greek Orthodox and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The oldest record of monastic life at Sinai comes from the travel journal written in Latin by a woman named Egeria about 381-384. She visited many places around the Holy Land and Mount Sinai, where, according to the Hebrew Bible, Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. The monastery was built by order of Emperor Justinian I between 527 and 565, enclosing the Chapel of the Burning Bush ordered to be built by Helena, the mother of Constantine I, at the site where Moses is supposed to have seen the burning bush; the living bush on the grounds is purportedly the original. The site is sacred to Christianity and Islam. Egypt sightseeing tours.
GPS travel coordinates: 28° 33′ 20″ N, 33° 58′ 34″ E

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