The Sinai Archives collection comprises a series of black & white negatives, which were taken during the expeditions to the Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai, undertaken by the Universities of Michigan and Princeton with courtesies extended by the University of Alexandria. Photography was under the direction of the University of Michigan. The negatives are the product of four campaigns in 1958, 1960, 1963, and 1965. They recorded every detail of the sixth century Justiniac Church of Saint Catherine, as well as the monastic buildings, the mosaics and frescoes of the church, the monastery's liturgical objects contained in the church's treasury, and the extensive collection of icons and manuscripts. The collection is arranged into five series based on the type of the photographed material, including icons, architecture, mosaics, manuscripts, and objects.
George H. Forsyth Jr. was born in Highland Park, Illinois, in 1901, to parents George H. and Sarah (Brockunier) Forsyth. The junior Forsyth attended Princeton University and earned his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Fine Arts degrees in 1923 and 1927, respectively. While teaching later at Princeton, Forsyth directed a series of archaeological excavations, between 1930 and 1936 in Angers, France, which recovered important religious artifacts (published with drawings as The Church of St. Martin at Angers, Princeton University Press, 1953). Forsyth first arrived at the University of Michigan as a visiting professor in 1946, and was later appointed the chairman of the Art History department at the University of Michigan in 1957. After an exploratory archaeological mission in 1956, George H. Forsyth Jr. led a team of archaeologists and art historians to Mount Sinai in 1958, launching a series of expeditions there, sponsored by the University of Michigan and Princeton University, in cooperation with the University of Alexandria. Professor Forsyth, of Michigan, and Kurt Weitzmann, of Princeton, led all scholarly aspects of the enterprise. The goal was to document the history of the art and architecture of the Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai. The group photographed the church and monastery with the project continuing over a series of three additional expeditions until its completion in 1965. Photography was under the direction of Fred Anderegg of the University of Michigan. Early during the project Forsyth and his colleagues managed to save the church's most important mosaic by noting its detachment from the apse and bringing conservators to repair the mosaic. The work was done by Ernest Hawkins of the Byzantine Institute. From 1961 to 1969, Forsyth served as the Director of the Kelsey Museum of Ancient and Medieval Archaeology, but later returned to teaching as Professor of Archaeology in 1969, until his retirement in 1972. George H. Forsyth Jr. died on January 26, 1991 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The Greek Orthodox monastery at Sinai, otherwise known as St. Catherine's Monastery or the Holy Monastery of Sinai, is the world's oldest active monastery, built during the sixth century by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. The monastery was originally dedicated to the Virgin Mary but was later rededicated to St. Catherine of Alexandria. According to tradition, St. Catherine of Alexandria is buried at the monastery. The location is particularly famous as the traditional place where God gave Moses the commandments and spoke to him through the burning bush. The monastery there retains many of its original furnishings, including the wood doors of the western portal of the church and its wood ceiling beams. These bear dedications to the Emperor Justinian and his late empress, Theodora, indicating that the monastic church was completed between the dates of their deaths, 548 C.E. and 565 C.E. The expedition's goal was to record details of the monastery's architecture, its extensive collection of icons, its other artworks and its library of manuscripts. It was carried out between 1958 and 1965. The goal is realized in the photographic collections of the Sinai Archive.
