The Saint Catherine´s monastir was built by Justinian the first at the mountain Sinai around 530 AD to protect the here living hermits. To the sanctuaries of the monastery are belonging the original source of Moses and the original burning bush.

The local Bedouin are selling here small geodes and nodules with sparkeling quartz-crystals inside to the tourists. They collect them in the environment of the monastery. One location is the Gazellental Valley. Now and then these nodules are showing also agate formations in grey and cream-colored tones. The agates developed in limestones and show also the signs typical for it, like a silicified sediment as crust and broad banding of the chalcedony-layers inside the nodule.