Day 86 ~ Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt

April 5, 2022

90-ish, hot enough to feel like an oven, dry enough to dehydrate us without breaking a sweat

And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. Exodus 3:2

Sharm El-Sheik is a resort town at the tip of the Sinai peninsula. It boasts world class snorkeling and scuba waters and more five star resorts than we could count. But today, we turned our gaze to the jagged peaks of the interior to visit St. Catherine's Monastery in the mountains of Sinai. The tour description intimated we'd visit the site where Moses was confronted by the burning bush, but I take those claims with a grain of salt. 

Like all the sacred places described in the Bible, after 2000-4000 years or so, we can't know exactly where certain things happened. Most of the holy sites were codified by St. Helena, the mother of Constantin, the Byzantine emperor who converted to Christianity. She toured the Holy Land and Sinai, looking for the place where Jesus was born, where his tomb was, or where Moses met God in the form of the burning bush that wasn't consumed. 

Even though I was pretty sure we wouldn't see the actual site of Moses' encounter with God, I knew the rugged wilderness we headed into as the sun was just rising were some of the same desolate places the Israelites wandered for 40 years. If Jordan was arid and forbidding, Sinai may as well be an alien planet. There was no life, no wandering Bedouins with their flocks, hardly a scrap of any green, growing thing.

But there was color!

Our tour guide told us the ancient Egyptians came to Sinai to mine the minerals to use in their paints used to decorate the tombs: copper, rose quartz, iron, sulfur, lapis lazuli and sandstone. I could see how an artist would view this earth as a palette in the raw. 

Once we left behind the jagged teeth of the mountains nearer the coast, we came upon a sandy plateau with some limited vegetation. The tree shaped like an umbrella is called a "filter tree" by the Bedouins. If you are trapped in the desert during a sand storm, the best thing to do is stand so your head is inside the protective tuft of this tree's branches. The leaves are dense enough to keep out most of the sand.

St. Catherine's Monastery, built around 550 AD, home to the oldest continuously used library in the world. 

I realized as reached our destination that we had been traveling more or less upward for the best part of two hours. So I asked our guide about the elevation of the monastery. 

"About 1600," he answered. Okay, I thought. I can easily manage that. Then he added, "Meters."

That's 5249 feet & change. Almost a mile high. The tour description had said the monastery was at the foot of Mt. Sinai, which I guess it was, because the peak above St. Catherine's reaches 7500 ft.  But for some reason, I hadn't thought about how the elevation would affect me. However, the DH carried Herkimer and walked along with me at my pace, so we were able to go everywhere we were allowed on the site. I was puffing like an old horse some of the time, but save for a few staircases, most of the walking was level.

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the small art museum and Eastern Orthodox sanctuary, but this mosaic of Moses removing his shoes because he was on holy ground was outside, so it was fair game.

 

I pulled this photo of one of the early Byzantine icons we saw off the web. Here's the link to the article if you'd like to see more. Any photo, however, could never do the piece justice. 

For one thing, it's much too small and has been cropped too close. The figure of Jesus we saw was life sized and the gold leaf glimmered as if it had a light source behind it. 

The painter had a firm grasp of light and shadow,. The proportions of the face and hand were perfect. But Jesus' eyes are a bit mismatched. One peers straight ahead into eternity. The other, the slightly larger and sadder one, seemed to be looking at me, wanting to make a connection with His creation. 

Perhaps this was the artist's way of expressing Jesus' dual nature--both God and Man. This deeply evocative painting shows a real Jesus. A human Jesus marked by sorrow, yet a holy Savior crowned with light. 

In later icons, it seems that not only has the technical expertise of the artists deteriorated, the humanity of Jesus is lost in a stylized presentation. There is no expression on the faces, no soul behind the eyes.  

In a strange geological quirk, when sections of sandstone are hewn in the area, delicate veins of dark minerals in the shape of bushes occur naturally.

There were no guards inside St. Catherine's, but we were being watched! 

St. Catherine's closes at noon, so we reboarded the bus and started the trip back down through the arid wilderness. 

Last time we did a world cruise in 2018, I acquired a fresh appreciation for dirt. Growing up in Iowa where rich, black topsoil is measured in feet, I had no idea the rest of the world wasn't similarly blessed. 

This time, I've been impressed with how vital water is, and how much of the world is not gifted with enough of it. The people of the Middle East have impressed me with their tenacity and ingenuity. Their ability to find, conserve and manage water is unparalleled. 

I'm embarrassed at the lavishness of our 50+ inches of rain a year, but I am so very thankful to live in a green area of the world.