DU MBA RTON OA K S PA PER S
N U M BER SEV EN T Y
2016
Published by Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection
Trustees for Harvard University
Washington, DC
© 2016 Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection
Washington, DC
Distributed by Harvard University Press
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Michael Maas
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he Dumbarton Oaks Papers were founded in 1941 for the
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Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 42–6499
ISSN 0070–7546
Contents
Dumbarton Oaks Papers
Volume 70, 2016
Roland Betancourt
Why Sight Is Not Touch: Reconsidering the
Tactility of Vision in Byzantium 1
Byron MacDougall
Gregory haumaturgus: A Platonic Lawgiver 25
Scott Fitzgerald Johnson
“he Stone the Builders Rejected”: Liturgical and
Exegetical Irrelevancies in the Piacenza Pilgrim 43
Nicholas Warner
he Architecture of the Red Monastery Church
(Dayr Anbā Bišūy) in Egypt: An Evolving Anatomy 59
Ilene H. Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears
George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai 117
Heta Björklund
Classical Traces of Metamorphosis in the
Byzantine Hystera Formula 151
AnneLaurence Caudano
“hese Are the Only Four Seas”:
he World Map of Bologna, University Library, Codex 3632
Charis Messis
Les voix littéraires des eunuques:
Genre et identité du soi à Byzance 191
167
Przemysław Marciniak
Reinventing Lucian in Byzantium 209
Aglae Pizzone
Audiences and Emotions in Eustathios of
hessalonike’s Commentaries on Homer 225
Niels Gaul
All the Emperor’s Men (and His Nephews):
Paideia and Networking Strategies at the
Court of Andronikos II Palaiologos, 1290–1320 245
Christopher Wright
Constantinople and the Coup d’État in
Palaiologan Byzantium 271
Nadezhda KavrusHoffmann
A Newly Acquired Gospel Manuscript at Dumbarton Oaks (DO MS 5):
Codicological and Paleographic Description and Analysis 293
•
The Holy Apostles
Dumbarton Oaks Symposium, 24–26 April 2015
Abbreviations
325
327
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 61–70 (2007–2016)
Index of Authors and Titles 331
Index of Titles by Subject 336
iv
George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai
Ilene H. Forsyth
with
Elizabeth Sears
G
eorge H. Forsyth irst visited the fortiied monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai in 1956;
analysis of the architecture and siting of the complex,
with its sixth-century foundations, would sustain his
interest for over three decades (ig. 1). As chief organizer
of the Michigan-Princeton-Alexandria Expeditions,
Forsyth, together with teams of specialists, made four
lengthy excursions to the monastery in the late 1950s
and early 1960s in order to study and document the
site in comprehensive fashion. An architectural historian with training as an architect and a good deal of
archaeological ield experience, Forsyth would be the
irst to submit the complex to rigorous study using
modern scholarly methods (ig. 2). His meticulous survey yielded not only an extensive set of ield notes and
an invaluable run of photographs, but also dozens of
measured drawings, precisely crated and highly informative, executed over a period of many years. Examples
are here published for the irst time (igs. 3–9, 14–15).1
1 Forsyth’s correspondence and his papers, not yet catalogued, are
to be deposited at the Bentley Library and the Sinai Archive, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. A typescript catalogue, “Drawings
of the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai by George H.
Forsyth, Jr.,” prepared by Ilene Forsyth and Lois Drewer, describes
the works, which are given numbers from 601 to 654, with some of
the entries subdivided to include multiple related drawings.
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
Drawing always played a key role in Forsyth’s analytic process. To render an architectural complex with
detail and precision, he believed, was to come to know
the site intimately and completely. It meant working to
penetrate the enigmas that issued from study and trying to solve them through close analysis of built form.
Forsyth believed that the inal graphic explanations in
his drawings would invite close consideration of the
original builders’ struggles to respond to the varied
strictures imposed upon them, such as the demands of
patrons, the necessary sequencing of construction, the
peculiar exigencies of the site (in relation to economic,
political, technical, material, environmental, and functional factors), and the perhaps loty expressive aims
underlying the conception of the design as a whole and
expected to inhere within it. Although any one of his
inal drawings might look like a crisp, skeletal diagram,
each was crated to embody, indeed graphically encode,
all of these matters in its forms. An account is here
ofered of Forsyth’s working methods and the insights
he could claim as a result of his eforts. Forsyth’s restating of the problems posed by the sixth-century remains
at Sinai and his attempts at their solution may even
now encourage fresh thinking about the challenges
that were identiied and ingeniously met by the sixthcentury architect and the artisans who worked with
him on the mountain.
117
118
Ilene H. Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears
Fig. 1. Monastery of St. Catherine, Mount Sinai, view from the northeast (photo: John Galey, reproduced
in Sinai and the Monastery of St. Catherine, ig. 51)
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai 119
Fig. 2. Forsyth working with a plane table at Sinai, ca. 1960, Ilene H. Forsyth collection
(photo: University of Michigan)
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
120 Ilene H. Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears
Fig. 3. Drawing by George H. Forsyth, plan situating visible sixth-century structures (black) in the present-day monastic
complex, Monastery of St. Catherine, Mount Sinai (drawing no. 601.1), Ilene H. Forsyth collection (scan: University of
Michigan)
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai 121
Fig. 4. Drawing by George H. Forsyth, plan of the sixth-century complex, Monastery of St. Catherine,
Mount Sinai (drawing no. 601.2), Ilene H. Forsyth collection (scan: University of Michigan)
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
122 Ilene H. Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears
Fig. 5.
Drawing by George H.
Forsyth, plan of the
north corner of the
sixth-century complex
showing walls, with
rainwater channel
and sluicegates, and
souterrains, Monastery
of St. Catherine,
Mount Sinai (drawing
no. 602), Ilene H.
Forsyth collection
(scan: University of
Michigan)
Fig. 6.
Drawing by
George H.
Forsyth, crosssection and
plan of west
end of basilica
of the complex,
Monastery of
St. Catherine,
Mount Sinai
(drawing nos.
614a–b), Ilene H.
Forsyth collection
(scan: University
of Michigan)
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai 123
Fig. 7. Drawing by George H. Forsyth, plan of the basilica, Monastery of St. Catherine,
Mount Sinai (drawing no. 624), Ilene H. Forsyth collection (scan: University of Michigan)
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
124 Ilene H. Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears
Fig. 8. Drawing by George H. Forsyth, longitudinal section of the basilica, Monastery of St. Catherine, Mount Sinai
(drawing no. 637), Ilene H. Forsyth collection (scan: University of Michigan)
Fig. 9. Drawing by George H. Forsyth, cross-section of the basilica highlighting the east end, Monastery of St. Catherine,
Mount Sinai (drawing no. 649), Ilene H. Forsyth collection (scan: University of Michigan)
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai 125
The Expeditions
In 1956 Forsyth led a preliminary reconnaissance
mission in the Near East that culminated in a visit
to the Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai.
He invited Kurt Weitzmann, from Princeton, to join
him and colleagues from the University of Michigan
for the inal leg of the journey. Forsyth and his team
were able to spend only ive days at Sinai on this irst
trip. Weitzmann, who had long wished to study at
irst hand the monastery’s holdings in manuscripts
and icons, stayed on for several more weeks. On the
basis of this initial experience, seeing great potentials,
Forsyth and Weitzmann set up a long-term collaboration between their respective universities which would
lead to the ambitious enterprise that came to be known
as the Michigan-Princeton-Alexandria Expeditions to
Mount Sinai.2 Dean Charles Odegaard at Michigan
and Professor Rensselaer W. Lee, then Chair of the
Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton, provided essential administrative and inancial backing.
In consequence, four additional full-scale campaigns,
each lasting approximately three months, were carried
out during the years 1958, 1960, 1963, and 1965. he
University of Alexandria joined the alliance in 1958 and
the distinguished Islamicist Ahmed Fikry was brought
in as a major participant.3
2 A summary account of this history is provided in G. H.
Forsyth and K. Weitzmann, with I. Ševčenko and F. Anderegg,
he Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai: he Church and
Fortress of Justinian (Ann Arbor, 1973), 2–3 (for more on this seminal volume, see below, n. 12; see also n. 4); and in Forsyth’s article of the same title published in DOP 22 (1968): 1–19. For personal
accounts and documentary photographs, see “Island of Faith in the
Sinai Wilderness,” National Geographic 125 (January 1964): 82–104.
Weitzmann describes his part in the venture in “he Contribution
of the Princeton University Department of Art and Archaeology to
the Study of Byzantine Art,” in Byzantium at Princeton, exh. cat.,
Firestone Library, Princeton University, 1 August–26 October 1986,
ed. S. Ćurčić and A. St. Clair (Princeton, 1986), 11–30; and in his
autobiography, Sailing with Byzantium rom Europe to America: he
Memoirs of an Art Historian (Munich, 1994), 253–95.
3 Gracious help came from colleagues and friends in and from
Egypt: Professor Aziz Suryal Atiya, then of the University of Utah,
who had participated in the Library of Congress Expedition to the
monastery in 1950; Dr. Fawzi el-Fakharani; Dr. Samy Shenouda;
and Dr. Abdo Daoud were all instrumental to the work. Within
the Egyptian government, many supporters sanctioned the enterprise and fostered its benevolent reception, notably His Excellency
Dr. Naguib Hashem, then Minister of Education; Dr. Mohamed
While the members of the team varied from year
to year, Forsyth, Weitzmann, and several others, nota
bly the superb photographer Fred Anderegg, direc
tor of Photo Services at Michigan, formed the core.
Anderegg oversaw the photographic campaigns at the
heart of the mission and managed the challenging
logistics of transporting equipment and establishing
a photographic laboratory in the desert, where water
was brackish and scarce. Working with Forsyth, mov
ing with tripod from one vantage point to another,
he photographed all accessible parts of the monastery
complex, from the souterrains to the roof of the church,
documenting features of the architectural fabric as
well as interior furnishings. To photograph portable
objects—Weitzmann’s domain—Anderegg set up an
openair studio on an upper terrace, taking advantage
of the excellent light and the low humidity (at over
5000 feet). Several aides assisted him, including John
Galey, of Basel, who, during the 1963 and 1965 expeditions, devoted himself primarily to photographing
icons.4 Scholars with varying kinds of expertise joined
the team for short periods. Robert Van Nice came from
Dumbarton Oaks for a month during both the 1958
and the 1960 campaigns to help Forsyth with the architectural survey of the Justinianic complex, and in 1958
Professor Ralph Berry from Michigan’s Department of
Civil Engineering contributed his expertise. Professor
Ihor Ševčenko, then of Columbia University, participated in the campaigns of 1960 and 1963 as an expert in
epigraphy and paleography. Paul Underwood, a member of the resident faculty at Dumbarton Oaks, came
to study the apse mosaics in 1960, ater Ernest Hawkins
had completed essential cleaning and preservation.5
Kamel Nahas; His Excellency Dr. Abdel Aziz el-Sayed, Minister
of Higher Education in 1960 and Rector of the University of
Alexandria; Mr. Mohamed Kamel Siddik, then executive secretary of the University; Dr. Abdel Fattah Mohamed; and Professor
Mohamed Awwad Hussein.
4 Many of Galey’s photographs appear in Weitzmann’s he Monas
tery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai: he Icons (Princeton, 1976).
On his own initiative, Galey published a picture book, Sinai and the
Monastery of St. Catherine (London, 1980), and persuaded Forsyth
and Weitzmann to contribute essays. Forsyth’s text, “he Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai: he Church and Fortress of
Justinian,” 49–64, includes updated versions of his plans of the monastery and church.
5 Hawkins’s consolidation and cleaning of the mosaics in 1959
and 1960 revealed their initial splendor. More recently, in 1999 and
2006, the Getty Foundation provided funding to allow a team of
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
126 Ilene H. Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears
In 1963 Hawkins returned to undertake the cleaning
of the newly discovered Jephthah panel, painted in
encaustic on the marble revetment of the sanctuary.6
A stream of distinguished visitors passed through to
study the treasures and ofered opinions.7
I had the good fortune to be a member of the
1960 expedition.8 his was an especially signiicant
season: eight specialists convened at Sinai that summer, the campaign carefully orchestrated in advance. It
is on record that some four tons of supplies, including
vehicles, equipment (photographic, survey, and archaeological), generators, scafolding, and three months’
worth of provisions (3000 dehydrated meals) had been
shipped ahead from Ann Arbor to Alexandria.9 Travel
conservators and technicians to undertake necessary conservation of
the mosaics both in the apse of the church and in the Chapel of the
Burning Bush: http://www.getty.edu/foundation/initiatives/past/
arch_and_museum_conservation/arch_conservation.html (accessed
4 August 2016).
6 Weitzmann describes the discovery of the painting of the Sacriice
of Jephthah’s daughter—a pendant to the image of the Sacriice
of Isaac on the corresponding pilaster to the let of the apse—and
Hawkins’s restorations in “he Jephthah Panel in the Bema of the
Church of St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai,” DOP 18
(1964): 341–52.
7 A. H. S. and Elektra Megaw, Erica Cruikshank Dodd, and
Dorothy Shepherd were among the guests. Special assistance was
given by the conservator Carroll Wales, Mr. Margaritof of the
Byzantine Museum in Athens, Constantine Cuasis, Grace Durfee,
Walter Grunder, and Maiteland R. Lamotte. he expeditions were
particularly honored by the visits of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods
Bliss and Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Power. he support of Richard
Burleigh, then of the British Museum, Gerald Carr, Richard Crane,
Lois Drewer, James Griin, homas Mathews, A. H. S. Megaw,
Dean McKenzie, Robert Sisson, and John hacher was particularly
valuable. Scholarship will ever be in debt, however, to the monks at
Sinai and their religious oicers: His Beatitude, Porphyrios III, who
graciously authorized the inception and continuation of the project; the learned Father Gregorios, his successor, who helped further it; His Eminence, Monsignor Damianos, who, as Archbishop at
Mount Sinai, was unfailing in his warmth of mind and spirit toward
the project; Father Dionysios, former librarian at the monastery;
and Father Nikophoros, along with all the monks who received the
visiting scholars so graciously during the years of the expeditions.
Bedouin assistants, too, did much to further the enterprise. Forsyth
was happy to acknowledge the assistance of all.
8 My time “at the mountain” came shortly ater my marriage to
George Forsyth (June 1960) and a year before I moved from a position on the faculty of art history at Columbia University to one at
Michigan.
9 Described by Forsyth in “Island of Faith,” 95–96. he papers of
Robert Van Nice, housed in Dumbarton Oaks, include, among the
was arduous and uncertain. here were no true roads
beyond the Red Sea, and we drove, two or three per
vehicle, accompanied by a heavy desert truck (with
University of Michigan seals on either side) equipped
with a winch to pull us out should we become stuck in
the sand. Conditions at the monastery were Spartan.
We lived in the hospitality wing in bare rooms with
cots and a basin, and gathered for meals in a sitting
room at the end of the corridor. Bedouins cooked the
dried food we had brought with us; occasionally the
monks would make us a present of fresh vegetables
grown in the small monastery garden. We boiled the
water that came from cisterns and the so-called Well
of Moses, purifying it with iodine pills.10 he Sinai
donkey and the sound of the semantron awakened us
around 4:00 a.m., and people were at work by 6:00.
My particular task was to assist Underwood, and each
morning we would climb the four-story scafolding
brought from Michigan to scrutinize the apse mosaics,
inch by inch, using loodlight and magnifying glass,
while I recorded our observations.11
he Sinai venture was oten called a “recording
mission.” Forsyth and Weitzmann divided the tasks:
Forsyth was responsible for architecture, Weitzmann
for icons and all igural imagery: there was some small
letters from Forsyth, a copy of the eleven-page inventory of the ityseven packing cases sent over in 1960. See post by J. Cebra https://
icfadumbartonoaks.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/reminiscing-oversinai/ (accessed 4 August 2016).
10 An important member of the team was Anderegg’s photographic assistant, Grace Durfee, who, having medical training, doubled as a nurse. Learning of her presence, the Bedouins would bring
their sick to the monastery for treatment; children were carried up
by the windlass. In the mornings, as dawn was breaking, one could
look down to see their camels camped at the foot of the wall. Once
a week a dole of bread that the monks had baked would be lowered
down for the Bedouin camped below.
11 he goal was to determine precisely how the igures had
been modeled, how the semblance of plasticity had been achieved
through the color and setting of the tesserae, and, especially, how
the vivid corporeality of Christ in the Transiguration had been
accomplished. We discovered that only eight colors had been used,
varying in hue through changes in value. A Princeton-trained
Byzantinist, Underwood had been working on a reconstruction
of Justinian’s Church of the Holy Apostles in Istanbul before the
Sinai venture; his long studies of the Kariye Djami would be published in four volumes (New York, 1966–75). He never published
his notes on Sinai, though Weitzmann incorporated certain observations into his “Mosaics and Wall Paintings,” in Sinai: Treasures of
the Monastery of Saint Catherine, ed. K. A. Manais (Athens, 1990),
61–72, at 66.
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai 127
contention over which of the two would publish the
apse mosaics, as the cycle was at once architectural and
representational. he expeditions yielded a rich archive
of visual and epigraphic information, catalogued and
now housed at Michigan, with additional holdings
at Princeton. Just two volumes in the proposed series
of publications appeared: he Monastery of Saint
Catherine at Mount Sinai: he Church and Fortress of
Justinian—a volume of Anderegg’s photographs with
introductory texts by Forsyth and Weitzmann and a
short contribution on inscriptions by Ihor Ševčenko—
published by the University of Michigan Press in 1973;12
and the irst volume of Weitzmann’s he Monastery
of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai: he Icons, treating works from the sixth to the tenth century, published by Princeton University Press three years later.13
Before his death in 1991, Forsyth had completed his
ambitious architectural survey of Sinai’s structures.
He let behind dozens of inished, measured drawings
incorporating the fruits of years of on-site and ofsite
analysis, accurate witnesses to the state of the fortiied
monastery of St. Catherine at one point in its 1400year history.
Career
he Sinai project was the last and largest venture in
Forsyth’s archaeological career. When he led the exploratory expedition to the monastery of St. Catherine in
1956, he was at a turning point in his academic life. In
1953, his book, he Church of St. Martin at Angers: he
Architectural History of the Site, rom the Roman Empire
to the French Revolution, was published by the Princeton
University Press, accompanied by a folio album of measured drawings based on excavations he had directed
12 his is a folio volume, containing 198 plates: Forsyth’s idea was
to arrange the photographs to suggest an itinerary through the monastery. He contributed the essay “Introduction to the Architecture,”
5–10; Weitzmann, “Introduction to the Mosaics and Monumental
Paintings,” 11–18; and Ševčenko, “he Inscriptions,” 19–20.
13 On the ambitious publishing plan, see Forsyth and Weitzmann,
he Monastery (1973), 1–2; R. S. Nelson, “Sinai Studies: An Overview and Introduction,” in Approaching the Holy Mountain: Art and
Liturgy at St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai, ed. S. E. J. Gerstel
and R. S. Nelson (Turnhout, 2010), 12–13. A further volume, not
speciically tied to the expedition, came out a good deal later: K.
Weitzmann and G. Galavaris, he Monastery of Saint Catherine at
Mount Sinai: he Illuminated Greek Manuscripts, vol. 1, From the
Ninth to the Twelth Century (Princeton, 1990).
in Angers from 1926 to 1936. Publication was delayed
because of his service as lieutenant in the U.S. Navy in
the 1940s,14 and then by his eforts to build a strong
department of art history at the University of Michigan
ater becoming chair in 1947.15 By the early 1950s, he
was ready to consider taking up a new archaeological
project of some scope and turned to the architectural
heritage of the Near East, an interest dating back to his
time studying with Howard Crosby Butler at Princeton.
During a solo trip in 1954 he revisited famous as well as
relatively obscure sites: Jerusalem; Bethlehem; Jericho;
Petra; less familiar parts of Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria;
and, most fruitfully, Cilicia (e.g. Alahan, Kanlıdivane,
Korikos, and Meriamlik in Armenian Cilicia).
Articles documenting the results of his investigations
on this trip, particularly regarding Alahan Kilisse,16
announced the shit in his focus away from Europe, and
in 1957 he joined the team of Byzantinists studying the
Kariye Camii in Istanbul.17 In 1955 he was awarded the
Haskins Medal by the Medieval Academy of America
for he Church of St. Martin at Angers, and, in the early
months of that same year, he was invited to return to
the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton,
where he had taught for some years, now as its chair. He
14 Forsyth’s chief project during his service in the U.S. Navy was
to devise and implement a scheme for distinguishing enemy aircrat;
it was integrated into the Recognition Training Program.
15 Forsyth came to Michigan to expand the Department of
Art History in 1947; he served as chair until 1961, directed the
Kelsey Museum of Archeology until 1969, and then held the title
of Research Professor of Archaeology until his retirement in 1972.
Forsyth was responsible for recruiting onto the faculty Max Loehr
and Oleg Grabar, specialists in Chinese and Islamic art respectively,
both of whom would join the faculty of Harvard University later in
their careers. Among a number of others, he brought to Michigan
the Princeton-trained specialist in Italian Renaissance art Marvin
Eisenberg, who would chair the department for a decade.
16 G. H. Forsyth, “Architectural Notes on a Trip through Cilicia,”
DOP 11 (1957): 223–36; idem, “An Early Byzantine Church at
Kanlıdivane in Cilicia,” in De Artibus Opuscula XL: Essays in Honor
of Erwin Panofsky, ed. M. Meiss (New York, 1961), 127–37. See now
M. Gough, Alahan: An Early Christian Monastery in Southern
Turkey, ed. M. Gough (Toronto, 1985); S. Hill, he Early Byzantine
Churches of Cilicia and Isauria (Aldershot, 1996).
17 For Forsyth’s work at the fourteenth-century Byzantine church,
see R. G. Ousterhout, “(Re)Presenting the Kariye Camii: Architecture, Archaeology, and Restoration,” in Restoring Byzantium: he
Kariye Camii in Istanbul and the Byzantine Institute Restoration, ed.
H. A. Klein with Ousterhout, exh. cat., Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery,
Columbia University (New York, 2004), 32–42, at 37–38; and cat.
no. IV–1.1, pl. 33.
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
128 Ilene H. Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears
decided to remain at Michigan, where his research had
been generously supported and where he believed that
his future scholarly ventures could best lourish.
At the conclusion of the joint reconnaissance mission, it became evident to Forsyth that the structures at
the monastery of St. Catherine would provide an ideal
subject for intensive investigation. hough the site was
not quite Syria, it seemed clear to him that the church
derived from “the brilliant architectural milieu of Syria
and Palestine.”18 Its well-preserved original inscriptions, naming not only its master builder, Stephanos
of Aila, but also its patrons, Justinian and heodora
(deceased), supported a date of 548–65, at the height of
the Justinianic Golden Age, and the fact that Procopius
included an account of the building of the monastery
and fortress in his Buildings, completed ca. 560, narrowed the date even further.19 he study, he felt, would
throw important new light on the building practices of
the early middle ages.
Seeds of interest in the Near East had been
planted early in Forsyth’s life. At Princeton he had been
a student in Butler’s famous course on early Christian
architecture, which featured the scholar’s extensive
work on Syrian churches, documented in a plethora of
photographs.20 Butler gave it for the last time during
the 1921–22 academic year and died the following
summer. Forsyth, an undergraduate at the time, was
an unlikely candidate for admission to the class, but
a generation earlier his father had studied with Butler
and that connection helped. Captivated by Butler’s
mode of study and intense commitment to structures
located in the wilds of Anatolia and Syria, Forsyth was
determined to visit the region. Ater his graduation
and before he undertook graduate study in the School
of Architecture at Princeton, he embarked on a year of
18 Forsyth, “Monastery” (1968) (n. 2 above), 18.
19 Procopius, Buildings 5.8; ed. and trans. H. B. Dewing and
G. Downey, Loeb 7 (Cambridge, 1954), 355–57. Some would now
date the text before May 558, since Procopius does not mention the
collapse of the dome of Hagia Sophia. See J. Elsner, “he Rhetoric
of Buildings in the De aediiciis of Procopius,” in Art and Text in
Byzantine Culture, ed. L. James (Cambridge, 2007), 33–57, at 35.
20 H. C. Butler, Publications of an American Archaeological Expe
dition to Syria 1899–1900 (New York, 1903–14); idem, Publications
of the Princeton University Archaeological Expeditions to Syria 1904–
1905 and 1909 (Leiden, 1907–49); idem, Early Churches in Syria,
Fourth to Seventh Centuries, ed. and completed by E. B. Smith
(Princeton, 1929).
Fig. 10. Forsyth with tripod during a trip to the Near
East, 1924, Ilene H. Forsyth collection (photo: University
of Michigan)
research travel and spent much of it following Butler’s
trail (ig. 10).21 In the fall of 1924 he made an extensive
tour of Upper Egypt and was then joined by Richard
Stillwell, a close friend who also trained in architecture
at Princeton; the two traveled on to Beirut, Baalbek,
and Damascus, sharing adventures. At Christmastime,
the young men and their guides, heading for Palmyra
and further sites in Syria, were caught in a snowstorm
that obliterated all tracks through the desert; for
21 Forsyth’s connections with Princeton were long-standing. He
received his A.B. in 1923 and his M.F.A. in 1927, and taught there as
an Instructor and then Assistant Professor from 1927 to 1942.
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George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai 129
some days they relied on the hospitality of a garrison
of French oicers stationed in a mud-brick khan at
their outermost Palmyrene post. Despite the bitter
cold, Forsyth undertook an intense study of the ruins,
recording observations, making sketches, and taking
photographs. Traveling back to Europe on the Orient
Express, he wrote out a 110-page description of the
experience.22 Forsyth had been particularly stimulated
by his chance encounter with a stranger who turned
out to be one of Butler’s former guides, Khalil Coudsy,
with whom he shared a car in a caravan near Keratin.
With youthful enthusiasm he entertained the prospect
of a sustained expedition of American scholars to the
desert churches, using Khalil as guide and caretaker of
the day-to-day logistical needs. In a long, detailed letter to his close friend back in Princeton, Albert (Bert)
M. Friend, Forsyth lyrically outlined possible investigations in the area.23 In the early months of 1925 he went
on to visit various sites in Greece and inally journeyed
back to western Europe for sustained travel in France
during the spring and summer of that year. As always,
he made detailed drawings and jotted down long
descriptions as he went; he wrote to Friend, “I sketch as
oten as I brush my teeth, only otener.” Within a year
Forsyth had shited his professional focus to France.
At the Romanesque collégiale in Angers, he launched
the irst serious archaeological work of his career with a
series of excavations that were to occupy him for more
than a decade. he early experiences in the Syrian desert in 1924, however, had made an indelible mark.
Method
For Forsyth, like Butler before him, the process of surveying and drawing with the goal of producing a inished measured drawing of a site or structure was key
to understanding its essential qualities. Forsyth’s drating skills had been fostered by his father,24 and were
more fully developed at Princeton, where there was a
close relationship between the training of architects
and the study of architecture as a part of the history of
22 Preserved among the Forsyth papers.
23 Friend made Forsyth his literary executor and let his library
and papers to him; their correspondence is preserved among the
Forsyth papers.
24 Until his death, Forsyth used drating instruments once presented to him as a birthday git by his father.
art.25 Butler was convinced that archaeological excavations could serve to document the history of style and
to make the history of architecture palpable, and he
considered drawing essential for historians; he taught
a course at Princeton on “historical drawing” and
he stressed the “subjects of construction, design and
architectural details” in his other courses.26 his tradition would be continued at Princeton in the teaching of E. Baldwin Smith and others, including Richard
Stillwell, Donald Drew Egbert, and Forsyth himself,
who in the 1930s was sometime teacher of Smith’s
course on architectural ornament. he longtime chair
of the Department of Art and Archaeology, Charles
Rufus Morey, maintained that inasmuch as architecture was a manifestation of history, its study was a
humanistic endeavor and that McCormick Hall should
provide a “humanistic laboratory” where its meaning
could be probed.27 Forsyth’s early letters indicate that
he was heir to such views and also that in his thinking regarding Asian and classical forms of art, both in
relation to one another and as sources for the Christian
art that succeeded them, he (along with Butler, Morey,
Friend, and, earlier, Allan Marquand) had absorbed
the thought of such scholars as Charles-Jean-Melchior
de Vogüé and Josef Strzygowski.28 Some early training in engineering (insisted upon by his father), his
later, formal study of surveying, and his work for the
government during the war years (with the United
States Geological Survey), as well as his own inclination toward exceptional scholarly meticulousness,
gave him skills in which he was rightly conident.
Forsyth found in Georges Tchalenko, architect for the
25 he School of Architecture was inaugurated under Butler
as a section of the department in 1919 and was still located in
McCormick Hall in 1927–28. See D. Van Zanten, “Formulating Art
History at Princeton and the ‘Humanistic Laboratory’,” in he Early
Years of Art History in the United States, ed. C. H. Smyth and P. M.
Lukehart (Princeton, 1993), 175–82, at 176.
26 M. A. Lavin, he Eye of the Tiger: he Founding and Develop
ment of the Department of Art and Archaeology, 1883–1923, Princeton
University (Princeton, 1983), 18–19.
27 Van Zanten, “Formulating Art History,” 180–81; C. H. Smyth,
“he Princeton Department in the Time of Morey,” in he Early
Years of Art History, 37–42; idem, “Concerning Charles Rufus
Morey (1877–1955),” in ibid., 111–21.
28 Le Comte de Vogüé, Syrie centrale, architecture civile et relie
gieuse du I er au VII e siècle (Paris, 1865–77); J. Strzygowski, Orient
oder Rom (Leipzig, 1901); cf. C. R. Morey, “he Sources of Mediaeval
Style,” ArtB 7 (1924): 35–50.
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
130 Ilene H. Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears
Syrian Archaeological Service,29 whom he had come
to know during a visit to Bélus in southern France, a
colleague whose skills in this sphere he could admire
without qualiication. In May 1954, he wrote to Friend
from Aleppo: “He [Tchalenko] is the only man I will
acknowledge to be a more careful surveyor and dratsman than myself.”30
At Sinai Forsyth was faced with a dauntingly
irregular agglomeration of buildings in various stages
of decrepitude. Fourteen centuries of uninterrupted
community living meant that there was a thick overlay
of encrustations on the Justinianic core. In addition,
there was the sheer size of the site. he monastery’s
acreage resembled that of an entire city block, and its
varied functions made it the equivalent of a modestly
sized town.31 Forsyth seems to have relished the enormity of the challenge before him.
It had been his initial intention to carry out
excavations at the site, notably in the area of the
Burning Bush Chapel, east of the main apse of the
basilica. Here he hoped to ind traces of a presumed
earlier church or chapel and thereby to resolve the
question of whether the pilgrim Egeria might possibly have seen a Constantinian structure at this spot.
In her Peregrinatio, now generally dated to the 380s,
she describes her descent from the summit of Mount
Sinai, on its eastern side, to the site of the Burning
Bush, which she says is located in a very pretty garden
with a church behind it.32 Forsyth took archaeological
29 Director of the mission of the French Archaeological Institute
in northern Syria, Georges Tchalenko was responsible for Villages
antiques de la Syrie du Nord, 3 vols., Institut Français d’Archéologie
de Beyrouth, Bibliothèque Archéologique et historique 50 (Paris,
1953–58). On Tchalenko’s work in Syria see C. Foss, “Dead Cities
of the Syrian Hill Country,” Archaeology 49 (September–October
1996): 48–53, at 50–51.
30 Forsyth papers.
31 Indeed in 1839 David Roberts noted in his travel account that
Sinai resembled a small town. See Jerusalem and the Holy Land
Rediscovered: he Prints of David Roberts (1796–1864), ed. W. D.
Davies, E. M. Meyers, and S. W. Schroth (Durham, NC, 1996), 340.
his volume contains a reprint of Roberts’s 123 lithographs as published under the title he Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt,
and Nubia (London, 1842–44), with the commentary of Reverend
George Croly.
32 Itinerarium Egeriae (Peregrinatio Aetheriae) 1.1–5.12, at 4.7, ed.
O. Prinz (Heidelberg, 1960), 1–8, at 6: “Ante ipsam autem ecclesiam
hortus est gratissimus, habens aquam optimam abundantem, in quo
horto ipse rubus est”; trans. J. Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels (Jerusalem
and Warminster, 1981), 91–98. he standard translation when the
equipment to the monastery in the fall of 1960 in
preparation for sinking trenches at the eastern end of
the church but had to abandon all hope of excavation
when, on 1 October, an order came down from the
Archbishop forbidding digging of any kind. Although
the monks had been unfailingly gracious about other
matters, on this new rule they stood irm. Forsyth was
now forced to limit his work to a surface survey,33 but
he was soon greatly gratiied by the yields from his
subsequent exploration of the elaborate subterranean
foundations of the fortress (ig. 11), which he described
in an October letter as Piranesi-like in efect (“magniicent, eerie, great and dimly-lit spaces, laced with sixthcentury arches which carried the terracing above”).34
He was also exhilarated to ind the “original aqueduct
which drained rainwater out under the fortiication
walls from the interior of the fortress.” hese souter
rains were to prove critical to his objective of determining the rationale of the original Justinianic design
and thereby throwing light on the standing question
of the intersecting functions of the complex: monastic
enclave, defensive fortress, and pilgrimage shrine.
Forsyth also had to abandon his hopes for making use of recent technology in carrying out his work.
His expectations had been high when he invited the
Michigan engineer Ralph Berry to join the 1958 expedition, but the anticipated photogrammetric survey did
not materialize. Instead Forsyth fell back on traditional
surveying techniques. He proceeded to establish reference marks as survey points within the complex, which
Michigan-Princeton-Alexandria Expeditions took place was he
Pilgrimage of Etheria, ed. and trans. M. L. McClure and C. L. Feltoe
(London, 1919). See also J. M. Braun, “St. Catherine’s Monastery
Church, Mount Sinai: Literary Sources from the Fourth through
the Nineteenth Centuries” (PhD diss. [Library Science], University
of Michigan, 1973) now superseded in part by D. F. Caner, History
and Hagiography rom the Late Antique Sinai, Translated Texts for
Historians (Liverpool, 2009).
33 During the long course of his work on the project, Forsyth was
able to study inaccessible parts of the complex through more recent
photographs, including some taken ater the ire in the northeastern
part of the monastery that occurred on 30 November 1971. Dean
McKenzie, who visited the monastery in 1973, and Fred Anderegg, who
returned to Sinai in 1980 ater the post-Byzantine Chapel of St. George
had been rebuilt, provided photographs, and others were published
by Jordan Dimacopoulos in “Observations on the Architecture of
St. Catherine’s at Mount Sinai,” Δελτ.Χριστ.Ἀρχ.Ἑτ., ser. 4, vol. 9
(1977–79): 261–301 (in Greek; English summary, 297–301).
34 Letters to Ilene Forsyth (Forsyth papers).
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George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai 131
Fig. 11.
Forsyth and a Bedouin
assistant at Sinai measuring
the supporting arches in the
souterrains (ater National
Geographic 125 [Jan. 1964]: 98)
he would use over several seasons. With the help of
Robert Van Nice during the 1958 and 1960 campaigns,
he gathered sheaves of survey data. In 1965, when the
inal critical surveying and measuring of the subterranean foundations were to be undertaken, Forsyth
arrived at Sinai expecting to work with architectural
surveyors from the University of Alexandria; by early
October of that season, when it became clear that help
would not be forthcoming from this quarter, he conceived the alternative of training Bedouin assistants. In
a letter of 6 October 1965 he writes: “I’ll post Bedouins
with stadia rods on every one of [the] original reference
marks (fortunately marked with paint) and survey by
plane table, using them as bearings, like live pawns in
some kind of monstrous chess game.”35 On 19 October
he describes his work with a particularly able aide,
Ahmed Manoli. He reports managing well by marking his detailed photographs with a red grease pencil to
35 Ibid.
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132 Ilene H. Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears
indicate the exact places where Manoli was to hold the
stadia rod. On 20 October he writes that he has laid out
a new base line on the roof and is also still working in
the souterrains. On 25 October he notes the shortening
of the days and the slowing of his work: “he sun has
swung so far south, behind Mount Sinai, that now we
have sundown at 2 P.M., followed by chill winds that
tremor the instruments and make ingers stif.” Still he
says that the work is coming along and he expects to
have the essentials of the fortress recorded by the time
of his departure in another three weeks. He continues
to work with Manoli: “It is slow and requires a lot of
running around to ‘position’ him, but we are moving
under our own power.” On 30 October, as cold was
beginning to grip the mountain, he writes of his diiculties in coping with the weather: his fabulous “new
instrument is almost too sensitive. Imagine trying to
read a rod to the millimeter all the way across the monastery. But that millimeter makes a diference of 10 centimeters in [that] distance. Heat waves make it dance
and a breeze is like an earthquake.” Even so, he notes,
the survey is going “somewhat better.” On 3 November,
he writes: “the survey of the fortress is beginning to
take shape. It has required so much improvisation.” An
annex to the “Mosque” had turned up and he planned
“to plane table it” the next day. He was also pleased to
have been authorized by the monastery to subject to
carbon-14 tests portions of wood from the church.36
Season ater season, as he collected preliminary ield survey data, Forsyth was making analytical sketches and descriptive notes in his ield books
(ig. 12). he sketches were of diferent sizes and scales,
oten rendered freehand, with measurements indicated.
Even tiny drawings and their accessory notes, he was
aware, would later serve him as thinking aids. Typically
he worked alone when executing them, maintaining
precarious balance on a ladder. He favored a small ring
binder and devised a numbering system that allowed
him to return repeatedly to his data to make additional entries as the analysis advanced: when further
information became available or as his understanding deepened, he would amend his entries. he additions make some of the pages read like heavily glossed
medieval manuscripts. Since he carefully dated all his
observations, the resulting palimpsests document the
self-corrective method that enabled him to determine
36 See ig. 12 and n. 78 below.
the articulation of the plan at chief intersections of the
complex’s many systems and, ultimately, to reconstruct
these in his drawings. Interesting examples include the
truss of the church’s roof; the hinges and pivots of its
doors; the oven, grist mill, and olive press in the domes
tic quarters; the fenestration of the outer fortress walls;
and, most especially, the handling of the fortress’s
hydraulics.
Upon his return to his drating table in Ann
Arbor, the work of producing the measured drawings
began. Forsyth used conventional drating instruments
to transform the data gathered at Sinai into rough preliminary surveys, then into preliminary sketches, then
into preparatory drawings on mylar, and inally into
scaled, inished mylar drawings that incorporated all
of the insights gained along the way (igs. 3–9). Due
to the exceptional nature of the site, with its terraced
coniguration and numerous but irregular levels and
its strategic incorporation of native rock into parts of
the design, any vision of the whole had to be suspended
until the laborious process of piecing these bits together
was complete.
To aid him in this synthesizing process, Forsyth
relied upon a quantity of detailed photographs of the
site. From the outset he had insisted upon controlled
and comprehensive photographic campaigns, fastidiously marking out positions for the photographers and
their tripods, and indicating vantage points and angles
of view. Before providing preliminary guidelines for
Anderegg’s team, Forsyth did considerable reconnaissance, noting the position of the sun at various times
of day, seeking ways to capture images that would
highlight particular features of the structures, such as
masonry details, or bring out subtleties obscured in dim
light. He noted the ideal hours (within iteen-minute
intervals) as well as the sizes of the lenses and preferred
focal lengths. His work alongside Anderegg ensured
the exactitude of the record he believed essential to
the interpretative phase of his study (ig. 13). Forsyth
checked and updated his desiderata lists regularly, aiming to improve quality and ill in lacunae. he ilms
were immediately developed and printed in the monastery laboratory, to eliminate the dangers of deterioration that would have occurred had they been shipped
across the desert for processing, and to facilitate revisions, should they prove necessary. Another of Forsyth’s
practices, both on-site and in Ann Arbor, was to mark
photos in grease pencil to indicate places where he had
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai 133
Fig. 12.
Page from Forsyth’s Sinai
ield notes, Ilene H. Forsyth
collection (scan: University
of Michigan)
discovered that additional detailed photographs would
be needed. hese conscientious on-site procedures
yielded thousands of crisp and informative black-andwhite photographs, as well as some color Ektachrome
prints.37 During the later stages of his work, ater the
last of the expeditions in 1965, Forsyth would make
heavy use of the photographs, in coordination with his
ield data. On some of them he superimposed drawings,
37 hese photographs now form the core of the Sinai Archive at
Michigan. hey were inventoried and organized in a classiication
system devised by Lois Drewer in the 1970s.
again in erasable grease pencil, to help him puzzle out
particularly recalcitrant structural issues, such as the
extension of the course of a beam.
To supplement his growing corpus of newly made
photographs, Forsyth also gathered up pieces of archival
visual material. He especially prized early photographs,
“old views,” as he called them. Whereas the lithographs
and engravings published by the famous early travelers
to Sinai—Léon de Laborde (1836) or David Roberts
(1838–39), for example—were likely to be schematic or
romanticized, these early photographs provided invaluable evidence of the appearance of certain parts of the
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
134 Ilene H. Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears
Fig. 13. Forsyth and Fred Anderegg photographing the inscriptions on the roof beams of the basilica, Monastery of
St. Catherine, Mount Sinai, Ilene H. Forsyth collection (photo: University of Michigan)
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai 135
monastery before modern refurbishing. In a number of
cases they gave Forsyth his only means of access to parts
of the monastery. Items in his collection included the
photos made for John Shaw Smith’s travel party, which
made its way to Sinai in 1851 (surely the earliest photographic account of the monastery, for which Forsyth
was deeply grateful to A. H. S. Megaw, a descendant);
the photographs of Francis Frith, made in 1857 (said to
be the “earliest” but preceded by Smith’s); the photographs, and engravings, of Captains C. W. Wilson and
H. S. Palmer, made for the British Ordnance Survey,
1868–69; and a series of anonymous photographs taken
in 1925, 1932, and 1934, some of them housed at Olana,
Frederic Church’s estate in New York.38 hose made
in 1925 for the unknown architect of Sinai’s modern museum wing were especially instructive, as they
revealed the inner face of the original walls of the
southwestern stretch of the enclosure.
For Forsyth, photographs were never a substitute
for drawings. He was sometimes asked, even by close
colleagues, why he went to such efort to measure and
draw, in elaborate detail, architectural features such
as the Sinai capitals when he might just snap the shutter of a camera (igs. 14–16).39 But for him, the camera
view was limited, recording an object at a particular
moment in particular conditions from a single vantage
point; his drawings (based on precisely measured data
and therefore able to compensate for distortions caused
by foreshortening, shadows, and so on) could serve as
a more accurate and complete document. Moreover,
a drawing had the capacity to illustrate a detail in a
broader architectural context (for example the position
of an individual capital in relation to an entire colonnade or in relation to an entire elevation; ig. 8), a feat
38 Gerald Carr (University of Delaware), expert in the history
of Olana, kindly alerted Forsyth to their existence and helped to
acquire the photographs.
39 Forsyth devoted much time to the Sinai capitals—each one
unique and vigorously carved in local granite, covered now with
obscuring gesso—for evidence of architectural inluence, inding
one to be of a type employed in Syria and Mesopotamia. See Forsyth,
“Monastery” (1968), 12, 15; Monastery (1973), pls. LXII–LXV, esp.
LXV, C (both n. 2 above). More recent studies include E. G. D.
Maguire, “he Capitals and Other Granite Carvings at Justinian’s
Church on Mount Sinai” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1986);
A. Guiglia Guidobaldi, “I capitelli della basilica giustinianea della
heotokos, oggi di S. Caterina, sul monte Sinai,” in Costantinopoli e
l’arte delle province orientali, ed. F. de’ Mafei et al., Milion 2 (Rome,
1990), 265–342.
diicult to achieve in photographs. But more than
this, Forsyth believed that drawings could be sites of
exploration. In the manual act of drawing with pencil
on paper (he always had pencils ranging from blunt to
needle sharp ready to hand), he was able to learn as he
synthesized. As he moved from irst on-site sketches
through to inished drawings, he came to see the logic
of the builders’ choices. Tellingly Forsyth never signed
his name to his drawings but would insert, in crosssectional renderings, an in-scale silhouette of himself
surveying the structure (igs. 8, 9).
As he developed his interpretations, Forsyth
attended closely to the scant early literature on Sinai.
He found H. L. Rabino’s Le monastère de Sainte
Catherine du Mont Sinaï (1938) particularly useful.40
Yet above all he trusted his eye, giving credence to what
he could learn through studying the monument at very
close range and to what he could measure and graphically reproduce. His interpretation emerged from the
scrutiny of the monastery’s revealed structural systems and consideration of its site-speciic context: he
paid heed to the tiniest details and gave thought to its
broadest character, including the relationship of the
monastery to the sheer clifs of granite and the mountain range around it. He accordingly drew upon topographic relief maps, 360-degree panoramas, and NASA
air views when formulating his hypotheses.41
As the irst scholar to attempt a carefully reasoned
architectural study of the site, having no tradition to
build on, he was literally in uncharted territory. His
time-consuming, self-corrective method was as evident
in his later forays into interpretation of the data, at
his drating table in Ann Arbor, as it had been during
the earlier stages of the project, when he was surveying, drating, and gathering data on-site. If his method
caused him to delay publication, it also allowed him to
40 H. L. Rabino, Le monastère de SainteCatherine du Mont Sinaï
(Cairo, 1938).
41 Forsyth kept topographic relief maps on display in his study
when working. In 1973 he published a panoramic photograph as a
foldout at the opening of his Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount
Sinai. He irst presented NASA photographs of the Sinai peninsula taken from outer space in his paper at the symposium titled
“Justinian and Eastern Christendom” that took place at Dumbarton
Oaks, 4–6 May 1967; it was published in DOP the following year
(n. 1 above). For a more recent use of aerial photographs see M.
Kawatoko, A Port City Site on the Sinai Peninsula, alTur: he 11th
Expedition in 1994 (A Summary Report) (Tokyo, 1995), pl. 42.
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
136 Ilene H. Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears
Fig. 14. Drawing by George H. Forsyth, scaled image, second capital from west in the north aisle of the basilica,
Monastery of St. Catherine, Mount Sinai, Ilene H. Forsyth collection (scan: University of Michigan)
Fig. 15.
Drawing by George H.
Forsyth, second
capital from west in
the north aisle of the
basilica, Monastery of
St. Catherine, Mount
Sinai (drawing no.
639), Ilene H. Forsyth
collection (scan:
University of Michigan)
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai 137
Fig. 16.
Second capital from
west in the north aisle of
the basilica, Monastery
of St. Catherine, Mount
Sinai (photo: Fred
Anderegg, reproduced
by courtesy of the
Michigan-PrincetonAlexandria Expeditions
to Mt. Sinai)
change and reine his conclusions as the totality of his
evidence and understanding grew. When the extremely
diicult drawing of the cross-sectional cut through the
entire width of the monastery was complete (ig. 6), its
intimate relationship to the site was ever more fully
revealed and the motivations behind puzzling features
of the complex became more clear.
Analysis
Although Forsyth was inclined in his early thinking
about the church to assess it in terms of the debate over
origins, Orient oder Rom42—doubtless harking back to
his scholarly formation at Princeton—the individuality of the architecture of the Sinai structures became
steadily more apparent to him. he dichotomies posited in the older scholarly literature—paradigms setting
Asian/Oriental against Graeco-Roman/Hellenistic,
classical against sub-antique, urban (Constantinopolitan) against provincial, reined against rustic, imported
42 On Strzygowski’s controversial theses, see S. L. Marchand,
“he Rhetoric of Artifacts and the Decline of Classical Humanism:
he Case of Josef Strzygowski,” History and heory 33 (December
1994): 106–30.
against local—simply did not it.43 While he would
continue to argue that the design was rooted in the
Syro-Palestinian milieu, he came to focus increasingly
on its distinctive features, owed to the exigencies of site,
that cumulatively set it apart. Some of these had to do
with fabric: the high quality of the building materials
(granite quarried at the site); the relatively careful construction of its walls (composed of well-squared, uniform blocks of stone, nicely itted, with little mortar,
forming inner and outer sheaths for an invisible interior rubble core, in striking contrast to the rubble construction common elsewhere); the homogeneity of its
structural fabric (extending even to its contemporary
domestic quarters and its slightly later “latrine tower,”
and true as well for the massive arches of its terraces);
the handsome forms of its architectural ornament (such
as the subtle, shallow reliefs carved on the meurtrières,
the windows, and the gables). He carefully studied the
plan of the church, noting unusual features, such as the
series of chapels and side chambers lanking its aisles
and the loty proportions and lighting of the chapels at
the western end of the nave. He pondered the shrewdly
designed truss of the church’s wood roof (with its
43 In Forsyth’s time, these concepts were not yet as thoroughly
challenged as they are today.
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138 Ilene H. Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears
sheathed ceiling beams prominently presenting historiated carvings and inscriptions); the reined ittings
of parts of the church interior (the marble throne,
revetment, and chancel screen of its sanctuary; and
the stunning mosaics of its triumphal arch and apsidal semidome). Increasingly his attention was caught
by the masterful handling of hydraulics, which recognized the need for collecting, storing, and distributing
water, as well as managing its safe egress to mitigate the
threat of potential danger and damage. As he labored
over his synthesizing drawings he came to appreciate
more and more the intelligent articulation of the plan,
with terraces ofering commodious accommodation
for varied communities, stable and transient, and, most
intriguingly, the elegant exploitation of native rock at
signiicant junctures. his, he came to see, was crucial
to ensuring a long life for the sixth-century monastery
and preserving it relatively intact to our own time.
Not all the vexing curiosities of the complex could
be readily explained: the asymmetry of the church towers, the difering pitches of the church’s gables and the
roof between them, and, most markedly, the difering
axes of the basilican plan church and the monastery’s
outer enclosure walls (igs. 3, 4). Forsyth was aware how
odd the lack of alignment appeared to those familiar
with other early Christian monastic plans, such as that
of the sixth-century Wadi Natrun, or to those expecting to ind the strict symmetries and parallelisms of late
Roman sites, such as the Palace of Diocletian at Split.
His solution to the problem developed slowly as his
understanding of the site and its functions evolved.
Early on Forsyth subscribed to the common belief
that the siting of the church was dictated by a desire
to feature the Burning Bush. hough always prepared
to credit Procopius’s statements regarding the monastic
and military functions of the fortiied complex,44 he
nevertheless focused a good deal of attention on the
44 In 1988, Peter Grossmann (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut,
Cairo Branch) published the irst of several studies on the Justinianic
complex at Sinai: “Neue baugeschichtliche Untersuchungen im
Katharinenkloster im Sinai,” AA (1988): 543–58. Reading traces, he
attempted to reconstruct the two-story structures originally built
on the inner faces of the perimeter. While acknowledging that the
monastery was “fortress-like,” he saw it rather as a place of refuge
and could not imagine Procopius’s “considerable garrison of troops”
occupying the same space as the monks. For a summary of his views,
with plans, see Grossmann, “Architecture,” in Sinai: Treasures (n. 11
above), 29–39.
site’s crucial function as a pilgrimage center, despite the
fact that Procopius did not mention the bush; scholars
before him had suggested that the architect’s chief aim
was to enshrine and honor this relic while also provid
ing pilgrims ready access to it. Inevitably shades of the
thinking that undergirded contemporary scholarly
literature, including André Grabar’s Martyrium and
writings by Richard Krautheimer, Carl Kraeling, and
others, can be detected in Forsyth’s irst publications
on Sinai. In a paper delivered at Dumbarton Oaks in
1967 and published in the Papers in the following year,
he hypothesized that a U-shaped scheme was intended
to facilitate the circulation of pilgrims; his comparanda,
including ecclesiastical structures in Bethlehem,
Jerusalem, Kalat Seman in Syria, and Jerash in Jordon,
also betray the state of scholarship in those years.
According to this hypothesis, pilgrim visitors would
have followed a route extending eastward along the side
aisles of the basilica, and proceeded thence to the viewing of the bush behind the main apse (where the later
Burning Bush Chapel is now located) and back again
along the pendant aisle.45 As his work progressed, and
following an exchange with homas Mathews in the
early 1980s, Forsyth came to reject the idea that Sinai
was built according to a “pilgrimage plan” and to posit
rather that pilgrims exited from the church on its north
side and moved along the exterior of the building to
view the Burning Bush at the east end.46 Ultimately the
force of his own observations turned him away from
this early line of interpretation.
45 his is the view Forsyth put forward in “Monastery” (1968),
7–14; and later repeated in his text in Galey’s Sinai (n. 4 above).
46 Mathews and Forsyth exchanged a series of substantive letters about the pilgrims’ path and the site of the Burning Bush
in late 1979 and early 1980 (Forsyth papers). On Sinai see T. F.
Mathews, “‘Private’ Liturgy in Byzantine Architecture: Towards
a Re-appraisal,” CahArch 30 (1982): 125–38, esp. 130–31, igs. 4–9
(Forsyth supplied photos and a plan of the church); the impact of
Mathews’s views is seen in Forsyth’s entry in he Coptic Encyclopedia,
ed. A. S. Atiya (New York, 1991), 5:1681–86 (“Mount Sinai Monastery
of Saint Catherine”). Mathews’s views on the function of the side
chapels in the church were soon themselves the object of criticism.
See Grossmann, “Neue baugeschichtliche Untersuchungen,” 554. In
this article Grossmann agreed with Forsyth that the current chapel
of the Burning Bush is the latest element of the church (he dated
it to the late sixth or early seventh century; Forsyth did not give a
date) and argued that the notion of a U-shaped pilgrimage circuit
was untenable for the Justinianic era since the doors from the side
chapels adjoining the chapel are also of later date. Ibid., 555–56.
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George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai 139
Increasingly it became evident to Forsyth that the
attractions of Mount Sinai were multiple and that pilgrims followed an itinerary that had to be taken into
account when interpreting features of the monastic
complex. Care clearly had been taken to give monumental expression to the coupling of the two loca sancta
marking God’s appearance when he made his covenant
with Moses: above, the summit of the mountain, where
Moses received the Tablets of the Law and, lower
down, the site of the bush that burned but was not consumed, where Moses removed his sandals in obedience
to God’s command. he sacrosanct focal points were
linked by the “Pilgrim’s Stair” (ig. 17)—still in its original Justinianic form, with more than 3000 steps hewn
out of the live rock of the granite clifs that rise, almost
vertically, immediately to the south of the monastery.47
Already in a letter of 1960, Forsyth referred to the stair
to the summit as the “wrist of the open hand of God.”48
As time went on, he would place increasing emphasis
on the signiicance of the ascent of the mountain in
the conceptual planning of the complex below, and
he sketched in red pencil a path that led directly from
the south corner of the monastery’s perimeter wall to
the frightening place atop Jebel Musa (the “Mount of
Moses”). He intended to preface his inal volume with
a panoramic presentation of the Sinai mountain range
in which he had marked the passage from the monastery, up the stair, through the triumphal gateways, all
the way to the summit, to the place, he wrote, “where
God speaks.”
47 hese were the key sites, but the fourth-century pilgrim
Egeria (n. 32 above) listed a plethora of stopping points—referred
to in the Books of Exodus, Numbers, and I Kings—in a topography dotted with cells occupied by holy men. Her itinerary included
the place where the Law was given and the cave where Moses stayed
during his second ascent; Mount Horeb, where Elijah led and his
cave and altar; the place where Aaron and the seventy elders stood
when Moses received the Law; the Burning Bush and the spot where
Moses received the command to remove his shoes; the place where
the Israelites waited when Moses ascended the Mount; the place
where the golden calf was made and from which Moses could see
the Israelites dancing about it; the place where Moses broke the irst
Tablets of the Law; and other sites, ending with the place where
Moses constructed the tabernacle and fulilled God’s commands.
See now W. D. Ward, he Mirage of the Saracen: Christians and
Nomads in the Sinai Peninsula in Late Antiquity (Oakland, 2014),
67–91.
48 Forsyth to Ilene Forsyth, 9 October 1960 (Forsyth papers).
he irst monumental granite gateway arch, contemporary with the fortress structures and mortised
into the clif as it spans the steps of the stair, formed
a triumphal passage for pilgrims ascending the mountain’s face into the brilliant sun at its summit. In David
Roberts’s time (1839), this arch marked the place where
pilgrims could make confession and receive absolution
from a monk before continuing their climb.49 hey
then passed beneath a second arch, the so-called Gate
of St. Stephen, on which, during the 1960 expedition, a
damaged inscription was discovered: † Ὑπὲρ σωτηρίας
τοῦ ἀββᾶ Ἰωάν[ν]ου τοῦ ἡγουμένου καὶ . . . (“For the
salvation of Abba Iohannes the Abbot and . . .”). Ihor
Ševčenko dated the inscription on paleographical
grounds to the sixth or seventh century and suggested
that the Iohannes in question might be the great John
Climacus (John of the Ladder) himself.50 his John
(d. ca. 650), who had entered the Sinai community at
age sixteen and risen to the abbacy, was responsible
for he Heavenly Ladder, a classic work of monastic
literature, ofering spiritual exercises for monks in
their ascending quests for spiritual perfection.51 he
metaphor of the scala paradisi, the symbolic ladder
to paradise, was most powerfully evoked in the pilgrims’ path at Sinai.52 When pious visitors, having
49 See Jerusalem and the Holy Land Rediscovered (n. 31 above),
352–53 (lithograph of the “Ascent to the Summit of Sinai” with Rev.
Croly’s commentary).
50 I. Ševčenko, “he Early Period of the Sinai Monastery in the
Light of Its Inscriptions,” DOP 20 (1966): 255–64, at 262; idem,
“Inscriptions” (n. 12 above), 19–20.
51 On Climacus and the ethos of Sinaite monasticism see J.
Chryssavgis, John Climacus: From the Egyptian Desert to the Sinaite
Mountain (Aldershot, 2004); still useful is the Princeton dissertation
submitted in 1947 by Weitzmann’s student J. R. Martin, which was
subsequently published as he Illustrations of the Heavenly Ladder
of John Climacus (Princeton, 1954). On its genesis see Weitzmann,
Sailing with Byzantium (n. 2 above), 161–62. On a famous late
twelth-century icon at Sinai bearing an image of the scala paradisi
in which monks climb a ladder of thirty rungs, each corresponding
to a chapter in the tract, some yanked of by the devil, see entries
by K. Corrigan and B. Pentcheva in he Glory of Byzantium: Art
and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 843–1261, ed. H. C.
Evans and W. D. Wixom (New York, 1997), 376–77 (no. 247) and
Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons rom Sinai, ed. R. S. Nelson and
K. M. Collins (Los Angeles, 2006), 245–47 (no. 48).
52 On the way that the pilgrim’s experience was guided by “material and visual markers,” see S. Coleman and J. Elsner, “he Pilgrim’s
Progress: Art, Architecture and Ritual Movement at Sinai,” World
Archaeology 26, no. 1 (June 1994): 73–89.
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140 Ilene H. Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears
Fig. 17. Ascent to the Summit of Sinai, lithograph by David Roberts, 1842–49, Ilene H. Forsyth
collection (scan: University of Michigan)
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George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai 141
ascended the mountain, descended and entered the
church below, they saw the two sacred sites dramatically and graphically linked in the gold-ground mosaics
that shimmered above the spandrels of the triumphal
arch crowning the sanctuary (igs. 18–20). To the let
of the arch was an image of Moses removing his sandals before the Burning Bush and to the right, Moses
receiving the Tablets of the Law. Just beneath these
scenes, in the apse of the semidome, was the brilliant
mosaic portrayal of the Transiguration of Christ. hus
enframed, the scene of the manifestation of Christ’s
divinity on Mount Tabor marks the passage from the
era under the law (sub lege) to the era under grace (sub
gratia), with Moses and Elijah (as well as the awestruck
apostles Peter, James, and John) present as witnesses.53
Architectural design and pictorial message meshed.
As Forsyth wrote: “Such perfect blending of didactic
and architectural arts, each reinforcing the other, is an
extraordinary example of signiicant form.”54
he shit to a greater emphasis on the summit as
a major component of the religious experience at the
site afected Forsyth’s approach to the problem of the
alignment of the basilica. He began to rethink his initial assumption that the position of the church was
determined by the ixed location of the Burning Bush
and that the Justinianic builder was following the axis
of a former church, presumably the one mentioned by
the pilgrim Egeria in the late fourth century. As he progressed with his work, however, his growing awareness
of the sophistication of the constructions caused him to
relect that, while Egeria had said that the bush “is alive
today and throws out shoots,” the precise location of
the bush she saw is conjectural. he signiicance of the
placement of the Burning Bush Chapel receded, while
that of the stair and summit of the mountain grew,
and the critical importance of the steep slopes adjacent
53 he literature on the mosaics is large. For a reading of these
three theophanic images as a paradigm of spiritual ascent, see
J. Elsner, “he Viewer and the Vision: he Case of the Sinai Apse,”
AH 17 (March 1994): 81–102. Cf. A. Andreopoulos, “he Mosaic of
the Transiguration in St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai:
A Discussion of Its Origins,” Byzantion 72 (2002): 9–41.
54 Forsyth in Galey, Sinai, 62–63. Little by little it became clear
that the entire fabric of the building was sixth century in date. On
8 December 1963, speaking of the marble revetments in the apse,
Ernest Hawkins wrote to Forsyth: “here is no getting away from
the fact that the wall panels are all of one period and that they predate the mosaic” (Forsyth papers).
to the fortress began to loom large. his would have a
bearing on Forsyth’s sense of the manner in which the
mastermind of the complex—whether Stephanos of
Aila, the named builder of the church, or another—
balanced the intersecting functions of a site that was
monastic, military, and a center of pilgrimage.
he buildings and their enclosing walls form
a rough square, elongated and compressed. hey are
squeezed into a narrow valley (wadi) between granite
clifs on either side and appear to be clambering up the
rise of the clifs to the south (ig. 1). he pitch of these
adjacent slopes surely presented a signiicant challenge,
as well as advantages, to the architect. As Forsyth studied the outcroppings of granite that were mortised into
parts of the structure, and as he followed the adjustments of levels in its terracing system, the steepness of
the site clearly seemed more and more determinative
with regard to the unaligned axes of the basilica and
the perimeter walls. he inclusion of these outcroppings within the complex, he saw, added strength and
stability; their presence revealed the soundness and
stoutness of the design. Intelligent use of the native
stone was evident, for example, in the incorporation of
the contour of the ridge of rock along the south lank
of the church into the plan for the chapels and aisles
of that side of the basilica, along with the adjacent
passage. his stratagem, never before observed, was
revealed to Forsyth only as his survey developed. he
outcroppings are evident in his drawings of the levels
of the church in some of his sections and plans.55 His
cut through the monastery as a whole is particularly
enlightening (ig. 6). Here Forsyth plays with the evidence of a drop to a natural table or plateau of native
rock extending diagonally north beneath the current
nave of the church. As the largest lat spread of rock
surface available, this provided a convenient base for
the basilica, oriented east–west, the largest structure
within the monastic enclosure. Although it is clear that
there was substantial excavation of native rock, some
outcroppings were allowed to remain. hey are particularly evident near the southwest corner of the church;
Forsyth regarded this area as the stabilizing linchpin
of the design. he siting of the church surely reduced
the need for even more extensive excavation, and the
55 A number of Forsyth’s Sinai drawings are relevant, especially
drawings 624 (ig. 7, SW corner), 632; cf. 609, 653, 654 (Forsyth
papers).
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142 Ilene H. Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears
Fig. 18. Moses at the Burning Bush, mosaic on the
triumphal arch at the east end of the basilica, Monastery
of St. Catherine, Mt. Sinai, Ilene H. Forsyth collection
(photo: University of Michigan)
Fig. 19. Moses receiving the Tablets of the Law, mosaic
on the triumphal arch at the east end of the basilica,
Monastery of St. Catherine, Mt. Sinai, Ilene H. Forsyth
collection (photo: University of Michigan)
rotated position of the perimeter walls seemed similarly
to exploit natural ridges of granite. he compensation
for the loss of some imputed aesthetic value, owing to
the consequent non-symmetry and non-parallelism in
the design of the whole, represented a signiicant practical gain. Construction of the arcuated galleries to the
north, which key into outer outcroppings, provided
additional level places, such as the open plaza to the
west of the church, near what Forsyth tentatively identiied as the original guest house (a structure rebuilt in
the eleventh century as a mosque).56 In sum, Forsyth
came to see unusual features, including the skewed axes
of the church and enclosure and the “sunken” location
of the church (built at the level of the court in which
the Burning Bush could be visited), as, in large part, an
architect’s inspired adjustment to the rocky declivity of
a site demanding carefully calculated terrace design.
Investigation of the natural rock led Forsyth to
focus on the broad problem of water management. he
unusual siting of the fortress’s perimeter walls—athwart
the wadi and locked into the native rock of the adjacent
slopes—was best understood, he came to think, in combination with its complex system of terraces and souter
rains. He recognized that, as the levels dropped down
toward the north corner of the monastery, the declining
56 Forsyth, Monastery (1973) (n. 2 above), 8. He would continue to
ponder the original function of the structure.
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George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai 143
Fig. 20. Transiguration, apse mosaic at the east end of the basilica, Monastery of St. Catherine, Mt. Sinai,
Ilene H. Forsyth collection (photo: University of Michigan)
slope and sinking loor provided good gradients for the
drainage conduits. At the same time, the steep slopes,
channeling runof, contributed to particularly dangerous conditions during lash loods. Forsyth heard about
one such event while on site. he monastery’s courier,
Pericles Caranicolaou, had been transporting guests to
Sinai when a sudden lood brought a terrifying “wall of
water” rushing towards them, and he was forced to drive
the car up the steep side of a gorge to avoid being swept
away.57 Forsyth recognized that controlling such looding by means of natural channels made to serve as sluices
beneited the monastery. Converging subterranean conduits led to the west–northwest corner of the fortress
(ig. 5); here Forsyth uncovered a complex of sluicegates
that allowed graded control of various volumes of water.
57
Forsyth, “Island of Faith” (n. 2 above), 96–97.
Emissions could thus be stored in cisterns or channeled
to the monastery gardens farther down the slope. In this
way the water’s dangerous force was harnessed, prevent
ing it from undermining the perimeter walls even while
collecting reserves to satisfy the communal need for this
essential commodity. here was a natural spring within
the stronghold, a well near the north side of the church,
known traditionally as the Well of Moses. It hardly provided suicient water for the community in the 1960s
and no doubt always needed to be supplemented from
the cisterns.58 Siting the complex on the steep slopes, a
bold and risky strategy, ofered substantial rewards.
58 Forsyth drew a large camel cistern outside the fortress’s perimeter wall, near the north corner (ig. 4). See also the schematized plan
published by Alberto Siliotti in Guide to Exploration of the Sinai
(Vercelli, 1994), 126.
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144
Ilene H. Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears
Forsyth, of course, studied with great care Procopius’s account of building during Justinian’s reign.
hough Procopius provided only a short description
of the complex at Sinai, if considered within the context of Buildings as a whole, the recurrence of themes
rousing Procopius’s rhetorical prowess proved revealing. Marginal notations in Forsyth’s personal copy of
the Loeb edition of Buildings show him continually
weighing Sinai’s systems against those of structures
built in other parts of the empire.59 Procopius repeatedly commented on remarkable feats of engineering
set in motion by the emperor; he was himself obviously
interested in such tactical matters and especially preoccupied with hydraulics. He provides, for example, surprisingly detailed accounts of the means for controlling
damaging loods, including the conduits, cisterns,
and sluicegates at Daras and Antioch. In his marginal
notes Forsyth indicated how these could be likened to
the design at Sinai, and he did the same with cisterns,
notably that of the Yerebatan Serai near Hagia Sophia
in Constantinople. Procopius explains the danger of
torrential rainfall undermining the foundations of fortresses as he credits Justinian’s directives for managing
to control these threats through the construction of
aqueducts and lood gates.60 He speaks of the advantages of building on sleep slopes (praising Justinian for
his genius in recommending this practice), and at several
places describes the technique of building between two
clifs by mortising construction into live rock.61 Still,
Procopius was quick to acknowledge the disadvantages:
care had to be taken with regard to water and security.
Procopius described Sinai as a “precipitous and
terribly wild mountain,” calling the entire peninsula
“unwatered” and producing no crops.62 Eutychius of
59 Procopius, Buildings 5.8; Dewing–Downey (n. 19 above), 355–
57. On Procopius’s purposes and rhetorical stratagems, see among
others: Av. Cameron, Procopius and the Sixth Century (Berkeley,
1985); Elsner, “he Rhetoric of Buildings in the De aediiciis of
Procopius,” 33–57; De aediiciis: Le texte de Procope et les réalités,
ed. C. Roueché, J.-M. Carrié, and N. Duval, AntTard 8 (Turnhout,
2000); A. Kaldellis, Procopius of Caesarea: Tyranny, History, and
Philosophy at the End of Antiquity (Philadelphia, 2004).
60 Procopius, Buildings; Dewing–Downey, 121 (Daras), 131
(Baras), 143 (Edessa), 151 (Zenobia), 167 (Antioch), etc.; for cisterns,
91, 113–15, 127, 167; for sluicegates, 111, 121, 169.
61 For living rock, Procopius, Buildings; Dewing–Downey, 91, 121,
345.
62 Procopius, Buildings 5.8; Dewing–Downey, 355.
Alexandria, writing in Arabic some 400 years later,
spoke of the monastery’s situation “in a narrow place
between two mountains” and said that Justinian
rejected a site at the summit of Mount Sinai because
“there was no adequate supply of water.”63 hese
historical discussions inlected Forsyth’s interpretation of the site, leading him to consider the extent to
which the design should be regarded as a project in
water control.64 His admiration for the architect grew
as he uncovered the means that had been contrived to
63 For an English translation of the relevant passage in the
Annales of Eutychius (Sa‘id ibn Batrīq), see P. Mayerson, “Procopius
or Eutychius on the Construction of the Monastery at Mount Sinai:
Which Is the More Reliable Source?” BASOR 230 (April 1978):
33–38, at 36–37; Mayerson worked from the seventeenth-century
Latin translation by Edmund Pococke reprinted in PG 111:1071–72.
For recensions of the original Arabic text, published in Paris (1906–
9) and Leuven (1985), see CSCO 50–51 and 471–72 (= Scriptores
Arabici 6–7 and 44–45), edited respectively by L. Cheikho et al.
and M. Breydy, the latter providing also a German translation (on
Sinai, 472:88–90).
64 Evidence revealed ater the ire of 1971, combined with earlier
observations regarding the substructures in the area of the north
corner of the fortress, enabled Forsyth to reconstruct the drainage
system at this lowermost point in the monastery. He noted that a
sixth-century rainwater channel drains the complex and collects runof at the northern end of the northwest wall, diverting it to the monastery garden (drawings 602, 619; Monastery [1973], pl. XX, B). He
concluded that two arched openings north of this drain, along with
four similar openings in the northeast wall (drawings 602, 620; notes
on drawings 604, 605, 619, 623a) served as “emergency loodgates”
(igs. 4 and 5). hat this part of the perimeter wall experienced great
pressure at times may be indicated by the large relieving arch with ill
visible on the exterior (Monastery, pls. IV, B; V, A). In Tsafrir’s view,
as expressed to Forsyth, this arch was the vestige of a former entrance,
“the blocked door of the Abbot.” Forsyth debated this idea in his
ield notes (p. 459), writing: “Such an interpretation seems impossible for the following reasons:—the ‘door’ clearly did not exist in the
mid-eighteenth century, nor did the present top story of the corner.
Probably they both belong to the same later campaign of construction, the ‘door’ really being a reinforcement of the lower, older wall
before superposing on it the great burden of the top story which at
this point might have crushed the three drains immediately below;—
‘door’ is very improbable at such excessive width (5.65 m!) and height:
arch is much too thin and lat (and pinches out at south side) to carry
the massive load above a void, sans rubble; arch has no real supporting jambs (on north side it rests on sharp vertical line of former buttress; but on south side there is a jagged line of courses;—inner face
of rubble ill under arch is visible down to the course above drains.
For above reasons the ‘door’ surely is not a door.” See Y. Tsafrir,
“St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai: Drawings by I. Dunayevsky,”
IEJ 28 (1978): 224–27, ig. 4:12, pls. 49A–B; for water runof in
the area, see I. Finkelstein and A. Ovadiah, “Byzantine Monastic
Remains in the Southern Sinai,” DOP 39 (1985): 39–79.
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George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai 145
minimize the damage of torrential runof while collecting precious water for the monastery’s use.
Forsyth long tussled with the vexing question of
the monastery’s defensive capacities and the related
question of the military versus monastic function of
elements of the complex. Procopius’s discussion of
Sinai, while preoccupied with questions of security
and defense, incorporates a rare account of the monks’
religious life. Drawing on topoi, Procopius describes it
as “a kind of careful rehearsal of death” and speaks of
the monks being “superior to all human desires”; their
solitude is precious to them, he says, and they “enjoy it
without fear.”65 Forsyth repeatedly pondered the statement that Justinian “built a very strong fortress and
established there a considerable garrison of troops,”
the enemy being “barbarian Saracens” who might
travel secretly by this route into Palestine proper.66 He
wondered how considerable the troop presence might
actually have been and how reliable the monastery’s
defenses were. Many of his notes deal with the weakness of the siting from a defensive point of view. He
heavily annotated his personal copy of a mid-sixthcentury guide to military strategy written by an anonymous army engineer at the height of the Justinianic
era, noting the point where the strategist ofered guidance for the siting and protection of forts and cities
(“suitable sites . . . are those on high ground with steep
slopes all about to make approach diicult”).67 Still,
as Eutychius would say, at Sinai one could climb the
northern slope and toss a stone at the monks inside
the monastery.68 It troubled Forsyth that the steep
slopes would have readily allowed invading archers
to dominate the fortress. He considered the evidence
for military preparedness—several meutrières and
loopholes, as well as indications, especially on the
65 Procopius, Buildings 5.8; Dewing–Downey, 355–57.
66 Procopius, Buildings 5.8; Dewing–Downey, 357. As Cameron
observed, for Procopius, Sinai “Saracens” was probably a general
term for tribal barbarians, raiding parties, or even “bedraggled beggars.” Cameron, Procopius, 96–97. In he Mirage of the Saracen (n. 47
above), Ward’s overarching argument is that Christian monks justiied their occupation of Sinai by making the indigenous nomadic
peoples into a barbaric “Saracen” other.
67 “Anonymous Byzantine Treatise on Strategy,” in hree Byzantine
Military Treatises, ed. and trans. G. T. Dennis, Dumbarton Oaks
Texts 9 (Washington, DC, 1985), 28–43, esp. 33.
68 Mayerson, “Procopius or Eutychius,” 37.
southeast wall, that there was a chemin de ronde abut
ting the crenellated walls, allowing circulation and
potentially useful in defense.69 Although early in his
thinking he entertained the idea that the monastic
fortress might have been an outpost in an elaborate
defense system, or part of a limes, he became increasingly aware that, contrary to Procopius’s description of
it as “very strong,” the structure’s defensive character
was not very formidable. he eicacy of the loopholes
was questionable—they were “too cramped for shooting,” “too casual” in arrangement, and too “sparse” in
number—and he concluded that their primary function was to aford light and ventilation.70 Moreover
the complex lacked efective lanking towers to provide enilading ire. his led to the conclusion that the
towers made a show of invulnerability, that Sinai was
a “token fortress,” no more than suiciently intimidating to “overawe” tribesmen; he quoted in support
Procopius’s scornful reference to the weakest kind
of mud barricade at Rusafa being suicient to check
Saracen raids.71
69 See he Monastery, pl. VII, C–D. For Grossmann’s suggestion that rooms were constructed in two stories as casements along
the inner face of the walls, see “Neue baugeschichtliche Untersuchungen,” 544–51 (n. 44 above); the idea is supported by U. Dahari,
Monastic Settlements in South Sinai in the Byzantine Period: he
Archaeological Remains (Jerusalem, 2000), 54–64, at 57–59. Forsyth
concerned himself with reconstructing monastic living quarters. In
analyzing the substructures in the east corner of the monastery, for
example, he concluded that the original sixth-century refectory (a
loty longitudinal hall measuring about 13 × 5 m) was located above
the three smaller rooms along the southeast wall and was warmed
by the remarkable beehive oven below. Assuming two long tables,
he estimated that the refectory’s seating capacity would have been
approximately ninety-six. Forsyth, Sinai Field Notes, 1965.85, 109,
146. See also Monastery (1973) (n. 2 above), pl. VII, E (put-log holes
for ceiling beams of refectory).
70 Forsyth, Sinai Field Notes, 1956.104 and 1965.140.
71 Procopius, Buildings 2.9; Dewing–Downey, 157 (n. 19 above).
On the basis of a remark in “he Monastery” (1968) (n. 2 above), 18,
Dahari, following Grossmann, imputes to Forsyth a conviction that
the monastery was a military citadel sustaining a garrison (Monastic
Settlements, 63), not taking into account the more qualiied statement in Monastery (1973), 5–6. Dahari, 57, suggested that “the
wall was meant to serve as a passive defense measure at best.” Most
recently, in Mirage of the Saracen, 121–26, Ward defends Procopius’s
appraisal of the strategic importance and eicacy of the fortiications
at Sinai, arguing that soldiers may indeed have been garrisoned there
early on.
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146 Ilene H. Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears
Implications
Critical questions, diicult to answer, will doubtless
long continue to bedevil our thinking about Sinai. A
number of them have to do with the fortress’s remote
location, particularly how and why such an extensive
and expensive venture should have been undertaken.
Forsyth spoke of “the sheer physical achievement of
implanting in a howling wilderness this sophisticated
structure, partly built of recalcitrant local granite
and partly of materials imported with ininite toil.”72
Clearly the motivations driving the commission were
extraordinary, as recent discoveries have conirmed.
Excavations at the summit of Jebel Musa have
now made it possible to reconstruct the appearance of
the small basilica constructed at the awesome site of the
delivery of the Tablets of the Law. At some point much
of this structure, once squeezed into a declivity atop
the rocky ledge, dramatically collapsed, possibly the
victim of an earthquake.73 Since the current structure
was largely of twentieth-century date (1933–34), Forsyth
devoted little attention to it, even if he, like others,
was aware that Justinianic elements had been incorporated into its fabric.74 he Hellenic Archaeological
Mission to South Sinai has now assembled evidence to
suggest that it incorporates the apse of a sixth-century
church (which had itself incorporated the fourthcentury oratory mentioned by Egeria). hree-aisled and
timber-roofed, the church on the summit bore striking similarities in plan, building material, and interior
ornamentation to the Justinianic basilica in the complex below; the discovery of pieces of marble and mosaic
tesserae indicates that the chapel was decorated in the
same opulent manner. Petros Koufopoulos and Marina
Myriantheos-Koufopoulou have called attention to
the extraordinary challenge of transporting inished
blocks of red granite (weighing ca. 100–300 kg) from
the quarrying site near the fortress to the summit of the
mountain on steep, rock-cut steps.75 he materials for
72 Forsyth, “Monastery” (1968), 19.
73 See S. Kalopissi-Verti and M. Panayotidi, “Excavations on the
Holy Summit (Jebel Mūsā) at Mount Sinai: Preliminary Remarks on
the Justinianic Basilica” and P. Koufopoulos and M. MyriantheosKoufopoulou, “he Architecture of the Justinianic Basilica on the
Holy Summit,” in Approaching the Holy Mountain (n. 13 above),
73–105, 107–17.
74 Forsyth, “Monastery” (1968), 14 n. 17.
75 Koufopoulos–Koufopoulou, “Architecture,” 110.
making mortar had to be hauled up as well, and water
too, should the three newly built vaulted cisterns run
dry. his church, a “humbler imitation” of the lower
church, may even have been built by Stephanos of Aila.76
hat the architect of the lower church enjoyed
local renown is indicated by the length and placement
of the inscription that recalls his endeavor, especially
when compared to those honoring Justinian and
heodora—all three originally visible above eye level in
the lateral beams of the nave ceiling. Forsyth studied
with particular fascination the carved wood beams and
trusses of the roof, which have, miraculously, remained
relatively undisturbed since Justinian’s time (ig. 13).
hirteen great beams span the nave of the
church—all of them “monoliths” cut from a timber
more than twenty feet in length and so broad in diameter that they could be quartered to create these supports.
Each beam forms the lower base of a ive-part triangular
truss composed of diagonal raters itted with bearing
blocks, a vertical tension member, and two small diagonal compression members, the whole resting in a state of
static equilibrium (igs. 9, 13).77 he three visible faces
of the beams were sheathed by carved wood planks.78
All the wood had to be imported. Just how building
76 Owing to diferences between the structures, Kalopissi-Verti
and Panayotidi, “Excavations,” 90–91, are not prepared to concede
that Stephanos built both, as assumed by Peter Grossmann in “Wadi
Fayran/Sinai: Report on the Seasons in March and April 1985 and
1986 with an Appendix on the Church at Mount Moses,” ASAE 75
(1999–2000): 153–71, at 162–65.
77 In 1961, before the two last expeditions to Sinai, Louis F.
Michel, a student of George Forsyth at Michigan, wrote a seminar
paper, “Carpentry at the Monastery of St. Catherine, Mount Sinai,
Egypt,” ofering a superb statical analysis of the truss system on
which Forsyth would rely. Michel argues that the trusses are “overdimensioned,” capable of bearing at least iteen times more than the
weight of the extant roof.
78 Having received results of carbon-14 testing from Richard
Burleigh at the British Museum (supplementing earlier tests),
Forsyth responded in a letter of 19 October 1976 by saying the test
conirmed that “the roof frame of the church is an original and unreconstructed product of the 6th century and is therefore earlier by
some ive centuries than similar structures which are in a comparable state of preservation elsewhere.” On the matter of wood type,
Harold L. Mitchell, Chief of the Division of Timber Growth and
Utilization Relations, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest
Service, Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, Wisconsin, reported
in March 1961: “he wood specimen from the temple [monastery] in
the Mt. Sinai area is identiied as belonging to the Laricones section
of Pinus. he most likely prospect in this section is Pinus nigra var.
caramanica, which is native to Asia Minor. Some authors consider
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai 147
Fig. 21. Camel bearing timber, loor mosaic in sixth-century basilica, Petra, Jordan (ater Petra Rediscovered, ig. 267)
elements of such size were carried across the desert and
up to the monastery remains uncertain. Drat animals
would not have fared well in the mountains, and though
camels oten balk at such labor, in a sixth-century
mosaic pavement that turned up in recent excavations at
Petra, a site presenting analogous challenges to builders,
a camel is portrayed with a very long beam strapped to
its back (ig. 21).79 he Sinai timbers would have been
worked on-site by the inishers who assembled the
trusses as well as the carvers who fashioned the extensive friezes on the sheaths decorating the undersides of
the beams: these friezes are carved with animated birds
and quadrupeds, sea creatures and Nilotic animals, and
vegetal rinceaux. hey were painted red and gold in the
eighteenth century when ceiling panels were dropped
between the beams, hiding (but not damaging) the
this variety to be a distinct species and refer to it as Pinus pallasiana”
(Forsyth papers).
79 See Z. T. Fiema, “he Byzantine Church at Petra,” in Petra
Rediscovered: Lost City of the Nabataeans, ed. G. Markoe (New
York, 2003), 329–49, at 243–46, ig. 267. Forsyth and Anderegg corresponded about the problem of how the beams were transportated:
paired camels was their best guess. 13 July–3 August 1975 (Forsyth
papers).
three signiicant inscriptions on the vertical faces of the
sheathing, transcribed by Ševčenko as part of his survey
of extant inscriptions (ig. 22).80
he inscriptions naming heodora and Justinian
appear on the west face of the seventh and eighth beams,
positioned to be visible to anyone entering the church
and approaching the apse. hey are relatively short:
† Ὑπὲρ μνήμης καὶ ἀναπαύσεως τῆς γεναμένης ἡμῶν
Βασιλίδος θεοδώρας (“In memory and for the repose of
our deceased Empress heodora”) and † Ὑπὲρ σωτηρίας
τοῦ εὐσεβεστάτου ἡμῶν Βασιλέως Ἰουστινιανοῦ (“For
the salvation of our most pious Emperor Justinian”).
80 On the carved sheaths, see L. J. Drewer, “he Carved Wood
Beams of the Church of Justinian, Monastery of St. Catherine,
Mount Sinai” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1971). Comparing
the carving to that at the contemporary church of St. Polyeuktos in
Constantinople, Drewer, 11–29, argues that the carvers were not
Constantinopolitan but inluenced by work from the capital. Here
and in later articles she interprets the program as rich in references
to paradise and messianic peace. See also H. Maguire, Earth and
Ocean: he Terrestrial World in Early Byzantine Art (University
Park, PA, 1987), 28–30. Related iconography is found on the contemporary wood door leading from the narthex to the nave. Forsyth
and Weitzmann, Monastery (1973), pls. XLVI–LVII (door), LXVI–
LXXXIII (beams and trusses).
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
148 Ilene H. Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears
Fig. 22. Ihor Ševčenko examining latex molds of the inscriptions on the church beams and lintel
at the Monastery of St. Catherine, Mount Sinai (ater National Geographic 125 [Jan. 1964]: 94)
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai 149
hese imperial memorials are separated from the far
longer inscription honoring the builder, and they are
diferently oriented: his appears on the irst beam of
the nave, on the eastern face, visible upon departing
the church. As transcribed and emended by Ševčenko,
it reads: † Κ(ύρι)ε ὁ θ(εὸ)ς ὁ ὀφθεὶς ἐν τῷ τόπῳ {του}
τούτῳ, σῶσον καὶ ἐλέησον τὸν δοῦ[λον] σου Στέφανον
Μαρτυρίου, δι(ά)κο(νον) καὶ τέκτονα Ἀϊλήσιον, κ(αὶ)
ἀνάπαυσον τὰς ψυχὰς τῶν τέκνων αὐτοῦ Γεοργ(ίου) [καὶ
Νόννας]81 (“O Lord God who was seen in this place,
save and have mercy on your servant Stephanos, son
of Martyrios, the deacon and builder from Aila, and
give rest to the souls of his children Georgios and
Nonna”).82 Stephanos’s epithet is signiicant: he is
called τέκτων, possibly to be translated as “architect”
but more likely as “builder”; the term properly refers
to an artisan working in wood.83 He is also called
“deacon” (διάκονος), a coupling that may suggest an
unusual status. It is striking that the local architect was
granted so prominent a memorial, and others involved
in the sixth-century enterprise were commemorated as
well. he dedicatory inscription along the base of the
mosaic in the apse documents that the work, owed to
the gits of many, was accomplished under “Longinus,
priest and abbot” and by the efort of “heodore the
81 Ševčenko, “Early Period of the Sinai Monastery” (n. 50 above),
262. Rabino’s earlier transcription and translation, Le Monastère
(n. 40 above), 18, 101, ofers an alternative. † Κύριε ὁ θεὸς ὁ ὀφθεὶς ἐν τῷ
τόπῳ τούτῳ σῶσον καὶ ἐλέησον τὸν δοῦλον σου Στέφανον Μαρτυρίου,
Δίκ. καὶ τέκτονα Ἀϊλήσιον καὶ Νόνναν καὶ ἀνάπαυσον τὰς ψυχὰς τῶν
τέκνων αὐτῶν Γεωργίου Σεργίου καὶ Θεοδώρας (“Seigneur qui te montras en ce lieu, sauve et prends en pitié ton serviteur Stéphanos, d’Aïla,
ils de Martyrios, constructeur et architecte, et Nonna, et donne le
repos aux âmes de ses enfants Géorgios, Sergios et héodora”). he
odd spacing of the inscriptions, with breaks, is owed to the application of decorative roundels at intervals.
82 Adapted from the recent translation by Dahari, Monastic
Settlements, 60, based on a Hebrew translation published by Yoram
Tsafrir in 1990. Tsafrir and Forsyth were in contact; the Israeli
scholar visited Ann Arbor to look at Forsyth’s drawings. For Tsafrir’s
perspective, see “Monks and Monasteries in Southern Sinai,” in
Ancient Churches Revealed, ed. Y. Tsafrir (Jerusalem, 1993), 315–33.
83 On terminology and the changing implications of mechanikos,
mechanopoios, and architekton among other professional designations, including vocabulary related to the carpenter’s trade, see G.
Downey, “Byzantine Architects, heir Training and Methods,”
Byzantion 18 (1946–48): 99–118; ODB 1:382–83; R. Ousterhout,
Master Builders of Byzantium (Princeton, 1999), esp. 43–45.
priest.”84 In the corner roundels Longinus and “John
the Deacon” are represented. All were local churchmen,
as was the patron whose name was discovered on the
second triumphal arch of the stone stairway, as noted
above: “For the salvation of Abba Iohannes, the abbot
and . . . .” In Buildings Procopius created a memorial to
Justinian as instigator of building projects, trumpeting
the ruler’s participation in the redesign and refurbishment of settlements in his empire, presenting him as
deeply involved in inding solutions to thorny engineering problems. Yet neither Justinian nor Procopius
ever visited the monastery. he on-site inscriptions call
attention to the complex array of patronage, distant
and local, and competing claims to honor and to the
prayers of monks and pilgrims.
•
It was Forsyth’s conviction that, however much the
design of the complex at Sinai belongs to larger currents
in early Byzantine architecture, the spatial intelligence
of the designer and his creativity as an engineer can be
understood only in relation to local exigencies. Materials
and artisans might have come from afar, and little could
be accomplished without imperial donation, but on-site
conditions demanded adaptive strategies. As Forsyth
sought to show, the monastery of St. Catherine exists
semi-intact to our day, in its bold fastness, owing to the
brilliance of its architect. his igure studied the site and
pinned the monastery and its church, irrevocably, to
the rocks of the sacred mountain, even as he helped to
orchestrate a pilgrim’s progress to the summit—where a
second, complementary basilica was constructed.
he practical, aesthetic, and spiritual dimensions
were deeply interwoven, Forsyth believed, down to the
smallest detail. If the experience of seeing the apsidal
mosaics is memorable, particularly at sunrise as an eastern light illumines them, or at sunset, when they dazzle
with another sort of glow, it is because of the builder’s
careful placement of the eastern and western windows
of the gables. he surprising heights of the eastern and
western gable façades, so apparently disjunct with regard
84 In Forsyth and Weitzmann, Monastery (1973), Ševčenko,
“Inscriptions,” 20, noted that this was one of only two inscriptions at Sinai without spelling errors, which indirectly supported
Weitzmann’s claim, “Introduction,” 16, that the mosaicists came from
Constantinople (both n. 12 above).
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
150 Ilene H. Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears
to the much lower height of the roof over the nave of
the church, may too have played a calculated role in
the design. As Forsyth tried to account for the peculiar
efect of diferent pitches for the roof and the gables, he
saw that, aesthetically, these tall gables seem to “lit” the
church from its “sunken” position in the overall plan.85
As his studies progressed, he became increasingly disinclined to explain unexpected features as the product
of “provincial” awkwardness, seeking their rationale in
imperatives presented by local conditions. hrough his
patient gathering of data, much of it underground in the
souterrains, he was able to ind merit especially in those
aspects of the structures that capitalized on peculiarities of the site. For him, the organization of component
parts in an irregular manner constituted a brilliant
response to the governing necessity of designing a terraced plan, one that ofered ample facilities for the control, collection, and use of water.
Forsyth’s suite of inished drawings ofers a lucid
record of his decades-long pursuit of the logic of the
architect’s decisions. As the outward sign of his internalized search for the motivations that drove the creative process, they concretize revelations that came to
him in incremental fashion. he many dated entries on
85 he availability of wood of particular measure might have been
a factor as well, a lower-pitched truss requiring shorter lengths of the
precious commodity.
• Among the many scholars who assisted
in the early stages of the preparation of this study, Lois
Drewer should be singled out for special mention.
Others who contributed in important ways include
Kirk Ambrose, Lisa Bessette, Annemarie Weyl Carr,
Louis Michel, Andrew Midkif, and Rebecca Price.
he authors together extend their thanks to Paroma
his Sinai ield notes provide evidence of the layered and
accretive nature of his reasoning. Gradually, over time,
Forsyth came to understand the monastic complex as a
masterpiece of strategic siting and hydraulic engineering, a successful subjection of a recalcitrant rocky and
mountainous site to architectural ingenuity.86
Department of History of Art
University of Michigan
110 Tappan Hall
855 S. University Ave.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1357
forsythi@umich.edu
esears@umich.edu
86 In the fall of 1953, Erwin Panofsky read through Forsyth’s
newly published monograph, he Church of St. Martin at Angers,
and examined its large-scale measured drawings. What he intuited about Forsyth’s purposes and articulated in a letter might
well be said of the work that Forsyth undertook at the Monastery
of St. Catherine a few years later: “Quite apart from the unparalleled attention to every detail and the magniicent plates (which will
enable future generations to rebuild the whole thing, stone by stone,
should it be destroyed by an earthquake or an atomic bomb), you’ve
managed to keep the whole thing alive, to convey the impression of
an organism growing and decaying in and with its environment, and
to coordinate the individual object with a truly impressive image
of general developments.” Panofsky to Forsyth, 14 September 1953;
in E. Panofsky, Korrespondenz, ed. D. Wuttke (Wiesbaden, 2006),
3:484–85.
Chatterjee and Jordan Pickett for bibliographical suggestions, to the staf at the Visual Resources Collection,
University of Michigan—Sally Bjork, Katherine
Mollon, Matthew Quirk, and Cathy Pense Rayos—
for help with the photographs, and to the anonymous
readers of the article for useful comments.
dumbarton oaks papers | 70
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Ilene Forsyth with Elizabeth Sears, “George H. Forsyth and the Sacred Fortress at Sinai,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 70 (2016): 117-50.
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