A tour by coach from Sharm El Sheikh to Mount Moses in Sinai, where the Prophet Moses is believed to have received the Ten Commandments, and to St Catherine’s Monastery. We pick you up from your Sharm El Sheikh hotel in the evening and drive about 3 hours to St Catherine at the foot of Mount Moses.
At around 1:30 AM you start your climb of Mount Moses, 2,285 meters high. A guide escorts you up the path to the final 700 steps that lead to the summit, where you watch the sunrise and enjoy the beautiful view. Camels are available if you prefer not to walk the path up to the 700 steps.
After sunrise, walk back down to visit St Catherine’s Monastery, one of the oldest working Christian monasteries in the world and the most famous site in Sinai. After the visit, have breakfast at a local restaurant, then drive back to Sharm El Sheikh, arriving between 1:30 and 2:30 PM.
Centrally located Sharm El Sheikh hotels
6:00 pm
| One Person | 2-4 Persons | 5-8 Pesons | 8-15 Persons |
|---|---|---|---|
| 290 | 150 | 110 | 90 |
St Catherine’s Monastery lies in South Sinai, below Mount Catherine, the highest mountain in Egypt, and next to Mount Moses. It is one of the oldest working monasteries in the world and welcomes visitors from every part of the globe. The site has been sacred since the fourth century, when a chapel was built at the place of the Burning Bush, and the fortified monastery was built under Emperor Justinian in the sixth century. It is named after Saint Catherine of Alexandria, a Christian woman famous for her faith and learning, who refused to give up her beliefs and was sentenced to death.
The monastery is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It resembles a medieval European fortress, with granite walls 12 to 15 meters high and more than two meters thick. Inside the walls stand the Basilica of the Transfiguration, the Chapel of the Burning Bush and the Well of Moses, which still supplies the complex with water. Opposite the basilica is a small Fatimid mosque with a white minaret about ten meters tall, whose wooden pulpit is one of only three complete pulpits surviving from the early Fatimid era.
The basilica holds some of the oldest icons in the world, as well as gifts sent by kings and princes over the centuries, including silver chandeliers, mosaics and Russian, Greek and Georgian icons. The monastery library is one of the largest collections of early manuscripts in the world, second in importance only to the Vatican Library. It holds about six thousand manuscripts, and parts of the famous fourth-century Codex Sinaiticus, one of the oldest surviving Greek Bibles, were found here.
