A CULTURAL CENTER IN THE UAE has arranged to digitize the manuscripts in St. Catherine's Monastery and to archive copies of them:

Centre to help preserve monastery's collection

By Daniel Bardsley , Staff Reporter [Gulf News]


Dubai: A senior church leader in the Middle East has praised a Dubai cultural centre for offering to preserve Christian heritage.

Archbishop Damianos of Sinai, the Abbot of St Catherine's Monastery in Egypt, has thanked the Juma Al Majid Centre for Culture and Heritage for saying it will assist in taking copies of the monastery's well-known collection of manuscripts.

Some of the manuscripts at the Greek Orthodox monastery date back 1,500 years and the Juma Al Majid Centre will provide expertise and equipment so that digital records of the documents can be taken.

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St Catherine's Monastery was built in the sixth century at the foot of Mount Moses. As well as holding an important collection of Arab mosaics, Greek and Russian icons and western oil paintings, the monastery has what has been described as one of the most significant collections of illuminated manuscripts in the world.

There are more than 4,000 volumes in the collection, most of them in Greek, with others in, among other languages, Arabic, Syriac, Slavic, Latin and Georgian.

Archbishop Damianos, who is himself Greek, said in the future it might even be possible to organise an exhibition of some of his monastery's manuscripts in the UAE. "Dubai is not so far from Egypt - it is only three hours," he said.

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I don't know the Juma Al Majid Centre and its website is currently under construction, but this sounds like a positive development.