Some stories don’t begin in ruins; they begin at negotiation tables, diplomatic phone calls, and a tug-of-war between faith and tourism. That’s what’s occurring at Mount Sinai, Egypt — the mountain said to be where Moses spoke to God in the burning bush and where he received the Ten Commandments.
But here’s the catch: in the middle of this divine history, Egypt has made plans to build a luxury resort in that same sacred realm. Yes, a place of prayer possibly next to infinity pools and private villas.
Before we get offed into who is upset (spoiler alert: a lot of people), let’s jump to the current situation. After months of fraught tension, Egypt and Greece have struck a deal to preserve the St. Catherine’s Monastery, which is the oldest active Christian monastery in the world. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has announced that there will be no form of conversion of the monastery or the land around it. “The character of the monastery is forever guaranteed,” he said in his parliamentary address.
The monastery located at the base of Mount Sinai was founded in the 6th century. It holds an extraordinary library of some of the oldest Christian documents in the world — a living testimony of faith and survival, faith and revival. Even so, not even a place that old can escape modern state bureaucracy.
Earlier this year, an Egyptian court directed the monks to vacate land and chapels they had been using for centuries, asserting they had been built on state land. Subsequently, a court in Sinai reviewed the dispute and made found a way to allow the monastery to maintain its usage of the site — even if the state still wanted to assert technical possession as the land, at least in theory, belonged to the state.
This didn’t, of course, sit well with Greece who has a long historical, religious lineage to the site. It protested loud and long, with parliamentarians in Athens expressing alarm when it was made known that Egypt was considering pushing its tourism interests further toward the site.
The announcement by Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty further raised the political temperature when he spoke publicly and reassured the country of its “strong commitment” to religious heritage, which included St. Catherine’s, and assured the country there was no intention to harm St. Catherine’s or any associated sacred land.
Nonetheless, the broader situation is still cloudy. Is it possible to have luxury tourism and hundreds of years of claimed religious history at the same time? Can once burning and religious mountains tolerate five star hotels?
Reuters has reported that an agreement between Egypt and Greece will soon be signed between the leaders of the monasteries and the Egyptian authorities. The supposed aim will be to try to make both heritage and development can coexist – vexed and aspirational as the idea has become, many are still dubious.
For now, the St. Catherine’s Monastery remains – still, tough-as-nails, and the world outside continues to trade back between religion and development. Echoes of prayers from ancient times remain buried in its now stony structure and whisper that not everything sacred needs to be redesigned for the purpose of tourism!
