Saint Catherine's Monastery, officially Sacred Autonomous Royal Monastery of Saint Katherine of the Holy and God-Trodden Mount Sinai, is an Eastern Orthodox monastery located on the Sinai Peninsula, at the mouth of a gorge at the foot of Mount Sinai, near the town of Saint Catherine, Egypt. The monastery is named after Catherine of Alexandria.
The monastery is controlled by the autonomous Church of Sinai, part of the wider Greek Orthodox Church, and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002 for its unique importance in the traditions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. The Saint Catherine monastery is located in the shadow of a group of three mountains; Ras Sufsafeh, Jebel Arrenziyeb and Jebel Musa, the "Biblical Mount Sinai".
Built between 548 and 565, the monastery is one of the oldest working Christian monasteries in the world. The site contains the world's oldest continually operating library, possessing many unique books such as the Codex Sinaiticus until 1859, of which recently new folios have come to light, including the Syriac Sinaiticus.