The view from the mountaintop is certainly awe-inspiring. Rising to more than 7,000 feet in elevation, Mount Sinai is not the tallest peak in this part of Egypt, but it is by far the most culturally significant.
Considered sacred within the Jewish, Islamic, and Christian faiths, Mount Sinai is said to have been the site where Moses received the Ten Commandments in a divine revelation. Important religious sites are found on and around Mount Sinai, including the 6th-century Saint Catherine’s Monastery, a Greek Orthodox church built in 1934, and a mosque sitting at the mountain’s summit. Such is the importance of this mountain that some say the Sinai Peninsula was named after it, and not the other way around.
Mount Sinai (Hebrew: הר סיני Har Sinai; Aramaic: ܛܘܪܐ ܕܣܝܢܝ Ṭūrāʾ Dsyny; Ancient Egyptian), traditionally known as Jabal Musa (Arabic: جَبَل مُوسَىٰ, translation: Mount Moses), is a mountain on the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. It is possibly the same location as the biblical Mount Sinai, the place where, according to the Bible and the Quran, Moses received the Ten Commandments.
It is a 2,285-metre (7,497 ft), moderately high mountain near the city of Saint Catherine in the region known today as the Sinai Peninsula. It is surrounded on all sides by higher peaks in the mountain range of which it is a part. For example, it lies next to Mount Catherine which, at 2,629 m or 8,625 ft, is the highest peak in Egypt.
UNESCO has listed the area as a World Heritage site, citing its sacred status in Christianity, Islam and Judaism. It says St. Catherine’s was founded in the 6th century, and is the oldest Christian monastery still in use for its original function.
“Throughout the centuries, monks have lived here in prayer, in dedication to spiritual goals, a witness to God’s revelation to mankind… in that sense especially, the Sinai Monastery is an ark, a spiritual ark in the wilderness,” said Father Justin of Sinai, the monastery’s librarian.