Egypt's ancient monastery library preserves precious manuscripts

The historic library of the remote Saint Catherine’s Monastery, located in Egypt’s South Sinai governorate, has taken up a formidable conservation project to protect the most precious volumes of its large collection of ancient manuscripts. The initiative, one of the most ambitious of its kind, will place selected codices in specially designed boxes, the first 200 of which arrived at the library in June.

In total, the project involves creating stainless steel boxes for 2,000 manuscripts out of the 3,306 that the library holds. It's being funded by the Saint Catherine Foundation, a charity established in the United Kingdom in 1996 to support the conservation works at the monastery with a special focus on its library, as well as its associated organizations based in New York and Geneva.

Established in 565, Saint Catherine’s Monastery lies in the heart of the Sinai desert, at the foot of sacred Mount Sinai. It is considered one of the oldest working Christian monasteries in the world. The beginning of the modern library dates back to 1734, when all the monastery’s manuscripts were gathered in rooms located in the center of the monastery, where they stayed for over two centuries. In 1951, after two decades of renovation work, the books were finally moved to their current location. Today, the library is considered one of the oldest continually operating in the world. It contains 3,306 manuscripts, 12,000 books (of which 8,000 are in Greek) and a collection of 10,000 precious printed books.

“Our library is relatively small, but it’s very important because it has [items] from all over. Everything has been here for centuries, and this gives an added interest in everything that is here,” Father Justin, one of 25 monks in the monastery and responsible for the library, told Al-Monitor.