Describes the role of the icon in Byzantine religious practices with emphasis on forty-three rarely exhibited icons and six manuscripts from the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine at Sinai, Egypt. Edited by Robert S. Nelson and Kristen M. Collins With contributions by Thomas F. Mathews, David Jacoby, and Father Justin Sinaites. Foreword by His Eminence Archbishop Damianos of Sinai, Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine at Sinai. Isolated in the remote Egyptian desert, at the base of Mount Sinai, sits the oldest continuously inhabited monastery in the Christian world. The Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine at Sinai holds the most important collection of Byzantine icons remaining today. This catalogue, published in conjunction with the exhibition Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai, on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from November 14, 2006, to March 4, 2007, features forty-three of the monastery's extremely rare (and rarely exhibited) icons and six manuscripts still lit