Werner Braun

Precariously perched 7,500 feet above sea level, a small chapel marks the summit of Jebel Musa, the mountain traditionally identified as Mt. Sinai. Built in 1934 by the Greek Orthodox monks of St. Catherine’s monastery, who live at the foot of Jebel Musa, the chapel occupies the site of an earlier church, supposedly erected in the sixth century A.D. by the Byzantine emperor Justinian.

In the background, dry streambeds called “wadis” mark out a sinuous route through the mountains—the type of route that the Israelites probably followed.