Pilgrims to Sinai in the fourth century witnessed a flourishing monastic presence at the traditional sites of God’s revelations to the Prophets Moses and Elias. Sinai was an extension of the Holy Land. As such, it was also a part of the Greek speaking world. This is borne out by inscriptions dating from the sixth century, when the Emperor Justinian ordered the construction of a basilica and surrounding fortress walls. And yet, if Greek was the language of the Sinai monks at that time, it was not exclusively so, for Sinai was the destination of monks and pilgrims from the whole of Christendom. The history of the centuries immediately following must be reconstructed from the surviving documentary evidence. Manuscripts, icons, and the writings of Saints Hesychius and Philotheus testify to continuity at Sinai. It is especially in the basilica of Sinai that we can sense this continuity even today.

The distribution of loanwords between papyri, inscriptions, and literature is investigated: more appear in literature than in other sources, but papyri have the highest density of Latinisms. Local and regional loanwords existed, and these can be seen not only in papyri and inscriptions, but also in literature, which preserves traces of loanwords specific to the city of Rome. Special attention is paid to the New Testament (especially Acts of the Apostles), Atticising writers (especially Athenaeus and Lucian), the Edict of Diocletian, Roman historians, medical writers (especially Galen), Hesychius, the antiquarian John Lydus, and texts on Roman law (especially Theophilus Antecessor, the Scholia Sinaitica, and Modestinus).