Located at the foot of Gebel Musa, on Egypt's Sinai peninsula, Saint Katherine's is the oldest, continuously inhabited Christian monastery in the world. During the Jewish exodus from Egypt and according to the Old Testament, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments on the peak of Gebel Musa (the mountain is better known as Mt. Sinai in the west).

Monastic history here dates back to the 3rd century. While the region's Christians have suffered persecution throughout the ages, the monastery has never been destroyed, nor abandoned in its 17 centuries of history.

St. Katherine's Monastery is home to thousands of Christian icons, markedly the world's most important collection. The most famous icon here is the 6th century encaustic icon of Christ Pantokrator (a Greek term which means 'Christ, the ruler of all').

There have been comparisons made between the icon of Christ Pantokrator and the face of Jesus Christ as it appears on the Shroud of Turin. The remarkable likeness between the two is sometimes attributed to the notion that the shroud itself may have served the artist as a visual inspiration for painting the icon.

There is a grace about the icon that almost eludes explanation. But some have pointed to the marked difference in the eyes. It has been implied that one eye represents the compassion of Christ's humility and the other, the authority of his divinity.

According to Father Justin, the spokesman at St. Katherine's, one of the keys to understanding the icon, is to consider the artist's ability to convey God's incarnation as a human being. This should be viewed as the foundation for depictions of Christ and for iconography in general. The artist has captured that aspect and conveyed it to a remarkable degree.

The video takes this notion one step further, suggesting that divine consciousness may express via the human medium indefinitely, especially through art. Could a message not be more important then its folklores, traditions, or interpretations?


Filmed & edited by Andreas Wallach (footage from an original Elena Konstantinoff Films assignment for RTVi)

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