Saint Catherine’s Monastery is located in Sinai, a place associated with well-known events narrated in the Old Testament, making the region the ultimate locus sanctus (holy place). Built in Egypt in the mid-sixth century by Emperor Justinian on the site of Moses’s Burning Bush at the foot of Mount Sinai, the fortified monastery remains intact to this day. In this lecture, Maria Vassilaki investigates how and when the Sinai landscape was transformed from a mere background setting into an independent composition.