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Show By far the most important project of the year was that undertaken at Mt. Sinai. Through an unprecedented authorization by the Archbishop of Mt. Sinai and Superior of* the Monastery of St. Catherine, His Beatitude, -Prophyrios III, the priceless and heretofore almost totally inaccessible -manuscript collections in what is believed to be the world's oldest Christian monastery were made available on microfilm to scholars. The request of the Library of Congress for permission to photograph the manuscript collections in St. Catherine's Monastery in their entirety was approved by the Archbishop, following prolonged negotiations. In the course of arrangements, such prominent persons as His Majest King Farouk of Egypt, and His Holiness Athenegaras I, Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church, and many scholars, expressed their personal interest in the project. The actual work of photographing was performed for the Library by the American Foundation for the Study of Man, Inc. Wendell Phillips, President of the Foundation, appointed William Terry as Field Director of the expedition. With him was associated Professor W. F, Albright of the Johns Hopkins University, Vice-President of the Foundation. Since the area where the work was undertaken is a military zone, the U. S. Department of State and Egyptian Government cooperated fully in working out the complicated arrangements for the expedition which were necessary. Professor Kenneth W. Clark, of Duke University, a leading specialist on Greek Christian manuscripts, was lent to the expedition by the American Schools of Oriental Research, Dr. Carl E. Kraeling, President, in the interest of making the manuscripts at Mount Sinai available to Biblical students. With him were associated Professor Aziz Atiya, vice-dean of the Faculty of Arts of Farouk University, Alexandria, Egupt, an eminent authority on medieval history. Professor Atiya was in charge of the recording of the remarkable collection of Arabic documents from the Middle Ages which reflect the relationships between the monastery and Muslim potentates. Professor Gerard Geritte, of Louvain, Belgium, an expert on Georgian and Armenian manuscripts, joined the expedition in February to lend assistance in the field of his specialization. Much of the actual photography was performed by a member of the Library's staff, Mr. Wallace Wade. It iK estimated that the manuscripts in St. Catherine's Monastery comprise a total of some 500,000 to 700,000 pages. They are known to include, in addition to many manuscripts of great importance for Biblical textual criticism, a group of some 2,900 documents or firmans emenating from the Muslim Sultans and Kings throughout the Middle Ages down to the end of the Ottoman period. Although the importance of the Mount Sinai collection as prime source materials for historical and Biblical research has long been recognized, the contents of the deposit are largely unknown to Western scholars. It was from St. Catherine's, nearly a century ago, that Tischendorf, the great German Biblical scholar, brought back the Codex Sinaiticus, one of the oldest manuscripts of the Bible, which the Soviet Government sold |