Catherine of Alexandria, a Christian martyr according to tradition, had initially been sentenced to death on the wheel.

When this failed to kill her, however, she was beheaded, and angels took her remains to Mount Sinai.

Monks from the Sinai Monastery will find her purported remains around the year 800.

The monastery is commonly known as Saint Catherine's, but its full, official name is the Sacred and Imperial Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount of Sinai, and the patronal feast of the monastery is the Transfiguration.

The relics of Saint Catherine of Alexandria were purported to have been miraculously transported there by angels and it became a favorite site of pilgrimage.

The oldest record of monastic life at Sinai comes from the travel journal written in Latin in about 381-384 by a woman named Egeria.

She visited many places around the Holy Land and Mount Sinai, where, according to the Hebrew Bible, Moses received the Ten Commandments from God.

Saint Catherine's Monastery is built by order of Emperor Justinian I, enclosing the Chapel of the Burning Bush ordered to be built by Helena, the mother of Constantine I, at the site where Moses is supposed to have seen the burning bush; the living bush on the grounds is purportedly the original.

Structurally the monastery has the oldest known surviving roof truss in the world, a king post truss.

It is also referred to as "St. Helen's Chapel."