The iconic image of Christ Pantocrator ("Christ, Ruler of All") was one of the first images of Christ developed in the early Church and remains a central icon of Eastern Christians. The oldest known surviving example of the icon of Christ Pantocrator was painted in encaustic on panel in the sixth or seventh century, and survived the period of destruction of images during the Iconoclastic disputes that racked the Eastern church, 726 to 787 and 814 to 842, by being preserved in the remote desert of the Sinai, in Saint Catherine's Monastery.