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Sinai, St. Catherine's Monastery - stereocsopic card
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Title from negative sleeve.
Taken either by the American Colony Photo Department or its successor, the Matson Photo Service.
Photograph taken from the slopes of Gebel El Dier (Selib-Baraka) and Gebel Meraja, above El Magaf El Watia chapel to the northeast of Saint Catherine Monastery in Wadi El Dier (Biblical Holy Valley), looking northwest and showing palm trees at the orchard of El Magaf El Watia in the foreground, the eastern slopes and the side round-summit of Gebel Rubsha (El Ghabsheh) to the right, the pointed summits of Samar El Tinya and Gebel Umm Maru mountain ranges in centre-right above the palms from a 9.5km distance (blocking the horizon), the orchard and fortress of Saint Catherine Monastery in the valley, the camel station and camping ground to the east of the fortress in lower-left, and the mountain slopes of Gebel Armaziya and Gebel El Sefsafa behind the monastery. (Source: A. Shams, Sinai Peninsula Research, 2018)
Mountain chapels and Byzantine monastic structures are scattered across the valley and on the plateau of Biblical Mount Horeb and Mount Sinai, including ruined buildings (dwellings), hermit cells, prayer niches, rock-paved paths, rock inscriptions and agricultural plots (water dams, reservoirs & cisterns, conduits and retaining walls) (4th-7th centuries CE). Saint Catherine Monastery was constructed in 545 CE by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (527-565 CE). The gravel ground with white tents next to the walls of the monastery had been used as a camel station and camping ground for travellers and tourists to the summit of Mount Sinai, since the construction of Siqqat Abbas Basha in 19th century CE. Abbas Helmi I, the Khedive of Egypt (1849-54), visited Sinai Peninsula in 1853-54 CE and paved several paths in the vicinity of Mount Sinai and along the pilgrimage routes in the peninsula. (Source: A. Shams, Sinai Peninsula Research, 2018)
Guide card: Sinai.
Gift; Episcopal Home; 1978.
The G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection is a source of historical images of the Middle East. The majority of the images depict Palestine (present-day Israel and the West Bank) from 1898 to 1946. Most of the Library of Congress collection consists of over 23,000 glass and film photographic negatives and transparencies created by the American Colony Photo Department and its successor firm, the Matson Photo Service. The American Colony Photo Department in Jerusalem was one of several photo services operating in the Middle East before 1900. Catering primarily to the tourist trade, the American Colony and its competitors photographed holy sites, often including costumed actors recreating Biblical scenes. The firm’s photographers were residents of Palestine with knowledge of the land and people that gave them an advantage and made their coverage intimate and comprehensive. They documented Middle East culture, history, and political events from before World War I through the collapse of Ottoman rule, the British Mandate period, World War II, and the emergence of the State of Israel. The Matson Collection also includes images of people and locations in present-day Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Turkey. Additionally, the firm produced photographs from an East African trip. The collection came to the Library of Congress between 1966 and 1981, through a series of gifts made by Eric Matson and his beneficiary, the Home for the Aged of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Diocese of Los Angeles (now called the Kensington Episcopal Home).
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