Saint Catherine

Saint Catherine is a town in the South Sinai Governorate of Egypt, situated at the foot of Mount Sinai, and the site of Saint Catherine's Monastery. The town is 1,586 metres above sea level and 120 kilometres from Nuweiba; in 1994 its population was 4,603 people, and in 2002 the Saint Catherine area was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. During the Pharaonic era, although Saint Catherine was not yet established as a city, the area was part of the Egyptian Empire in the province of Deshret Reithu, and in the 16th century BCE the Egyptian pharaohs built the way of Shur across Sinai to Beersheba and on to Jerusalem. The region provided the Egyptian Empire with turquoise, gold and copper. Its climate is desert (BWh) under the Koppen-Geiger system.