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Show - 2 - in 1933 to the British Museum for a hundred thousand pounds sterling. Those who have visited the Monastery have since reported that it contains man;/ unique works, including manuscripts of the highest antiquity. In 191A, the Prussian Academy of Sciences sponsored an expedition to St. Catherine's, but the results of many months of arduous work on the part of two eminent German scholars, Carl Schmidt and Bemhard Moritz, came to naught when all of the expedition's photographic equipment and most of its records were captured by the British and .subsequently destroyed. Adequate catalogs of the materials in the Monastery have, not been available. One volume of the catalog of the Archimandrite Porphyry Uppenski was published at St. Petersbury in 1911, but the work was halted by the 1917 revolution and the remaining volumes never appeared. Inadequate catalogs of parts of the Greek and Arabic manuscripts have been published, and although the Archimandrite Andronicus since has cataloged the Greek manuscripts, his work remains unpublished, The microfilms acquired as the result of this project are expected to prove invaluable in the work of preparing the new critical apparatus for the Greek New Testament, which is currently being undertaken by an international group of scholars headed hy Ernest Cadman Golwell, President of the University of Chicago. Long before the time of Moses, Mount Sinai, located on the Sinai peninsula, the land bridge beteeen Africa and Asia, was a sacred center to the desert tribes. About 200 years after the death of Christ, some early Christians established themselves on Mount Sinai to escape Roman persecution. Soon a monastic life was organized, and around 300 A.D. the monies of Mount Sinai sent a deputation to Saint Helena, the mother of the Einperior Constantino the Great, begging her for protection against the barbarous tribes of the desert. She willingly agreed and sent skilled workmen who built a small fortress with a church Inside, exactly on the spot, according to tradition, where Moses Saw the burning bush. The tower and churst of Saint Helena were erected between 330 and 335 A.D., making the monastery of Mount final the most ancient Christian monastery knowh. About two centuries later, a Committee of Superiors was sent to the Emperiof Justinian to ask him to erect a larger monastery, made necessary by the Inability of Saint Helena's tower to receive the large number of monies which had gathered at Sinai. Justinian wrote at once to the ruler of Egypt, asking him to give the necessary funds and to send the best workmen possible, and the foundation of the present monastery was laid in 542. The old tower of Saint Helena and the "Church of the Bush" were included in the new monastery, the church being rebuilt exactly as it is today. The monastery became known as the Monastery of St. Catherine at this time, due to the discovery of the relics of the saint on the highest mountain in the Sinai peninsula and their transport to the rebuilt monaster;.?-. The skull and hand of the saint, one of the early martyrs of Christianity, have been preserved, and both are in the monastery today. |