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The Michigan-Princeton-Alexandria Expeditions to Saint Catherine's Monastery (Mount Sinai, Egypt) series comprises the bulk of the collection. This series is arranged into five subseries: Correspondence, Travel Preparations, Field Work, Visual Materials, and Publication Activities. The Michigan-Princeton-Alexandria Expeditions are typically referred to as "Mt. Sinai" and occurred in four campaigns in 1958, 1960, 1963, and 1965. Materials of particular note include correspondence with Kurt Weitzmann, of Princeton University who co-led the expeditions, and Fred Anderegg, UM director of photography; trip preparatory materials such as equipment lists and medical supply information; field notebooks (two volumes); full-scale architectural drawings of the monastery and surrounding fortress, which were cataloged during Ilene's posthumous publication efforts (Box 9); and extensive repurposed source material, such as photographs, negatives, drawings, and field notes, reproduced and annotated for various publication activities. This material is described more fully at the subseries level.

The Publication Activities subseries includes materials created by George Forsyth resulting in articles, exhibitions, a monograph executed during his life, and materials created and culled together by Ilene Forsyth posthumously. This subseries is comprised of correspondence with publishers including the University of Michigan Press, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, and Princeton University Press; annotated manuscripts and chapter drafts; two annotated galley proofs of The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai: the church and fortress of Justinian / Plates published with Kurt Weitzmann, Ihor Ševčenko, and Fred Anderegg (Box 14); and notes, drawings, and photographs reproduced for publication activities. Forsyth made detailed notes on photographs, scraps of paper, and envelopes during his continued analyses of his field notes and other source materials. The processing archivist transcribed existing folder titles or created titles based on information from envelopes, and where appropriate envelopes were kept with file contents to preserve Forsyth's notes.

George Forsyth died prior to completing the publication of his landmark drawings of Saint Catherine's Monastery (Mount Sinai, Egypt). Publication efforts were continued posthumously by his wife, Dr. Ilene H. Forsyth, an art historian and professor at the University of Michigan. Her extensive efforts to publish George's work are documented is approximately three linear feet of manuscripts, correspondence, topical files, and a catalog of drawings, 1995-1997, located in Box 9.