Scientific Expedition to Mount Sinai
A presentation of the results of the scientific expedition to Mount Sinai was held at the National Center of Manuscripts of the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia. An exhibition of photographs and manuscripts related to Mount Sinai was also organized, which was viewed by Tamar Sanikidze, Minister of Education and Science, alongside invited honorable guests.
Since 2002, due to issues related to adequate funding, the National Center of Manuscripts was unable to carry out expeditions to Mount Sinai and research the collection preserved there. Only in December 2014, with the funding of the Ministry of Education and Science and the assistance of the Embassy of Georgia in Egypt, were the Center's employees given the opportunity to work on the unique collection of Georgian manuscripts preserved at St. Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai.
Georgians appeared on Mount Sinai as early as the 6th century, and in the 9th century they established a Georgian colony and turned it into one of the most important centers of Georgian activity.
Georgian fathers at the Sinai Monastery had their own richest and most diverse library, which was enriched not only by books created and copied on the spot, but was constantly added to with books from Georgian centers in Palestine – the Monastery of the Cross in Jerusalem, Gethsemane, Golgotha, Lavra, Sabas, and other centers. A large part of the Georgian manuscripts of Mount Sinai are still preserved on Sinai today, though a certain part over time, for various reasons, ended up in St. Petersburg, Prague, New York, Paris – in museums and private collections (the 10th-century parchment *Iadgari* of the Sinai collection is currently preserved here with us, at the National Center of Manuscripts).
Not only Georgian fathers skilled in calligraphy or the production of manuscripts worked on Mount Sinai, but also historian-theologians, whose activities have not been properly studied. The same can be said about the Georgian manuscripts of Mount Sinai, despite the fact that they have been researched at various times by both Georgian and foreign scientists.
The first expedition carried out after a long hiatus marked the beginning of a new stage in the research and popularization of the Georgian manuscripts of Mount Sinai, which implies carrying out comprehensive works. With the materials found last year and obtained as a result of future expeditions, unified, modern-standard Georgian and English-language catalogs will be published, a database will be created, various research, publishing, and exhibition projects will be implemented, and the manuscripts will be digitized, restored, and conserved.
Involving the data of the Georgian manuscripts of Mount Sinai in active scientific circulation is urgent and important both for multidisciplinary research and for individual humanitarian fields: philology, art history research, historical and source-study research, and others.
