The Myth of Monasticism and the Mirage of the Sinai Desert

Scholarship on the Sinai Peninsula is abundant. However, a mythology has been built up that reduces the history and landscape of Sinai into a sweeping narrative that fits a particular regime of asceticism (cenobitic). If we look at the primary sources, we can see other kinds of asceticism and descriptions of the desert, yet this variety has been exchanged for a discursively constructed monolith. The variations in this topography – for instance, the diverse descriptions of the desert in texts and images – have been largely overlooked. My paper probes these aspects of the desert at Sinai to examine whether a distinct way of viewing and understanding existed among the ascetics dwelling there from late antiquity to the middle Byzantine period (c. 330-1204 CE). The texts (i.e. the 4th-century Life of Antony by Athanasios of Alexandria and Apophthegmata Patrum) emphasize desolation. Yet the visual evidence – such as the carved beams supporting the roof of the church of St. Catherine’s, an 11th-century icon of Moses receiving the Law, and the renowned 12th-century icon of the Heavenly Ladder – depict the desert as a varied, sometimes even lush, terrain. Furthermore, several images from the manuscript Princeton Univ. Lib. Garrett MS 16 (1081 CE) also subvert our normative conceptions of desert asceticism by portraying hermits, birds, a fox, deer, and all kinds of vegetation and trees. This visual corpus substantially nuances the myth of the desert by depicting a Sinai that is – contrary to expectations – not inhospitable, empty, or friendless.