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Jordan
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"Madaba"
Jordan
Friday, December 27, 2013
Seventh Day of my Holy Land Trip, Mount Zion, Jerusalem
My Holy Land Trip
"Madaba"
Jordan
Madaba visitors center, Madaba, Jordan:
A street in Madaba, on the way to Greek orthodox church of St George, Madaba, Jordan:
Carpet Street, Madaba, Jordan:
Madaba Tourism Directorate, Madaba, Jordan:
Jordan
Madaba visitors center, Madaba, Jordan:
Madaba is one of the oldest towns still existing that was mentioned in
the Bible (Joshua 13 v9) as being part of the territory parcelled out by Moses
to the Reubenites and the Gadites : "From Aroer, that is upon the bank of
the river Arnon, and the city that is in the midst of the river and all the
plain of Medeba unto Dibon". The land was taken from the Moabites, as is
said in Numbers 21 v30: "Heshbon is perished, even unto Dibon and we have
laid them waste even unto Nopha, which reacheth unto Medeba". This is
indeed going a very long way back.
A street in Madaba, on the way to Greek orthodox church of St George, Madaba, Jordan:
Dibon, incidentally, also still exists. Under the name of Dhiban it is
the last town before Wadi Mujib (Nahal Arnon in Hebrew) when you go south on
the Kings' Highway. There are numerous ruins and an important tell; it is here
that the Mesha Stele was found in 1868. The stele recounts the rule of the
"King Mesha" around 850BC and is now in the Louvre, but copies of it
are displayed in museums all over Jordan, and you will find many references to
it in histories of Jordan. See the webpage "The Mesha stele".
Madaba was an
important town at the beginning of the Christian era, and had its own bishop.
Imposing churches were built there, including the Cathedral, the Church of the
Apostles, the Church of the Virgin and the Church of St Elianos as well as St
George's (the famous "Church of the Map"). All of these churches were
copiously decorated with mosaics, the finest dating from the sixth and seventh
centuries AD. Because of the iconoclasts, few remain and many of those in poor
condition. However, a number of mosaics have been moved to Madaba to the Museum
there from other sites on the Madaba Plateau : the mosaic from the baths of
Herod's citadel at Mukawir dates from the 1st century AD.
Madaba Tourism Directorate, Madaba, Jordan:
The Church of the Apostles in
Madaba is a little bit away from the Old Town and the Mosaic Museum (or
Archaeological Park). A special shelter has been built to protect the floor
which has a gorgeous mosaic in the Centre, showing a collection of
"dancing pigeons" which I find very attractive. I didn't see one
couple of pigeons identical to another.
Here are two details of the work here: the
beautiful medallion in the center of the floor shows a personification of the
Sea. Notice the rudder held in the left hand. I am voluntarily showing copies
made at the Mosaics School rather than the original which is both very
difficult to take in photo and very dusty as you can see from the photo of the
floor above. The colors show here much better and it is easier to appreciate
the beauty of the work.
Carpet Street, Madaba, Jordan:
Mosaics, incidentally,
could be useful as well as ornamental. In the Archaeological Park you can see
the mosaic shown below at the entrance to one of the houses. It indicated that
shoes should be removed! Note the outline of a sandal above the round bit,
which you can see better on the larger scaled photo.
Shortly after the establishment of the Caliphate, Madaba was abandoned
and its ruins were untouched for centuries. At the end of the nineteenth
century, some Christian families in Kerak decided to move away from there,
following trouble with their Moslem neighbors. They settled in Madaba, took over the lands and began to cultivate
them and to construct their own houses and places of worship. The Islamic
authorities allowed them to do so, but on condition that the Christian churches
should only be built on the sites previously occupied by the Byzantine
churches. This led to a general exploration of the town ruins, and the
clearance of many buried churches. You will find many "modern"
buildings on the ancient sites - in Madaba do not judge the age of a house or
any building by its exterior!
Madaba visitors center, Madaba, Jordan:
Incidentally, Charl al Twal of the Mariam Hotel is a descendant of one
of the first of these Christian families to move to Madaba and is happy to
describe some of the experiences of these early settlers.
The clearance and rebuilding are still going on: new finds are regularly
made in the town.
Hippolytus Hall was a rich Byzantine mansion, and the
mosaic found there in 1982 beneath the present day Church of the Virgin is one
of the treasures of Madaba.
The mosaic depicts the legend
of Phaedra and Hippolytus as dramatized by Euripides. On the right Aphrodite is
seated beside Adonis, and is threatening with her slipper one of the Cupids
presented to her by the Three Graces. On the left, a servant is carrying a
basket of fruit and a dead partridge. One of the Cupids has his head in a
beehive, a reference to a love poem by Theocritus.
Madaba visitors center, Madaba, Jordan:
Mount Nebo usually means the Moses Memorial Church and the viewpoint
from outside it (see "Photos of Jordan - Mount Nebo"). The church is
a simple one nowadays, but in the sixth century it was the church for a
important monastery with all that this implies. In particular, the floor was
covered with mosaics of different periods.
The mosaic shown above dates from 597AD when the church was rebuilt and
greatly enlarged. Again the left and right hand photos are details of the
central one. Today it is displayed on the wall.
The mosaic on the left was discovered when the
597AD was removed for cleaning. A perfectly beautiful mosaic, dating from 531AD
it shows four panels of scenes of hunting and husbandry.
Madaba Tourism Directorate, Madaba, Jordan:
The animals are beautifully depicted, and
notice (in the enlargement) the peasant sitting under a tree while his charges
graze.
The animal at the bottom is a bit weird,
something of a mixture of a zebra and perhaps a giraffe? Presumably the artist
had seen neither.
This village just off the road from Madaba to
Mount Nebo is mostly neglected by tourists, but it contains one of the most
beautiful mosaics discovered in Jordan, almost perfectly preserved. A shelter
has been built to protect it in the ruins of the church of St Lot and St
Procopius. It is pity that no public transport goes to
Khirbet al Mukhayyat.
Again I show two details of the complete
mosaic and with them you can better appreciate how impressive the mosaic is.
Some other mosaics have
been found there but are not on general display - see the page on the Madaba Plateau.
Archeological Park of Madaba, Virgin Mary Church, Madaba, Jordan:
Most of the mosaics of Transjordan date from between the 1st century and
the eighth century AD. Mosaics were used in many buildings to decorate walls,
floors or ceilings, employing motifs mostly from everyday life : harvesting,
hunting, fishing or just pastoral or mythological themes. Church mosaics often
depicted stories from the Bible.
Sadly, with the decree of the Emperor Leo in AD726, forbidding the use
of people and animals in "images" ("God is the only
creator") most of these mosaics were badly defaced. Those which survive
today more or less intact, are almost always the mosaics which had been hidden
by a later mosaic built above them. Otherwise all too often we see a mosaic
with pastoral scenes or vignettes, but with the people hammered out. This is
just as frustrating as you might imagine: a beautiful scene, and a big hole in
the middle!
The Greek orthodox church of St George, Madaba, Jordan:
This decree applied chiefly to churches, and the majority of the mosaics
we can see today were found in Byzantine churches. Archaeologists digging in
the ruins of churches in Jordan are accustomed to finding thousands of
multicoloured glass tiles, which shows the extent of the mosaic decorations of
the period. Ceilings and floors covered in brightly coloured pictures - they
must have been beautiful!
In Madaba the best known mosaic is the map of the Holy Land to be seen
in the Church of St George. The great majority of visitors stop here for half
an hour or so and nowhere else in Madaba, which is a pity. The central part of
the map focuses on the City of Jerusalem.
Madaba visitors center, Madaba, Jordan:
The mosaic Map of Madaba was discovered in 1896 and was immediately
recognised as an outstanding discovery. It was published a year later. This
discovery drew upon the city the attention of scholars worldwide. It also
positively influenced the inhabitants who shared the contagious passion of
Brother Giuseppe Manfredi to whose efforts we owe the discovery of most of the
mosaics in the city.
What you see there today is just a remnant of the original mosaic which
measured over 16m long by 6m wide and which depicted most of the present day
Near East from Lebanon to the Nile Delta and from the Mediterranean to the
eastern desert of Jordan. It dates from the sixth century and besides
decorating the church was probably intended to help pilgrims making their way
from one holy site to another. St George's Church is, of course, a modern
church, and the original Byzantine building was much larger. This mosaic must
have taken years to make.
The Greek orthodox church of St George, Madaba, Jordan:
The Madaba Mosaic Map is a unique piece of art realised in 6th cent. A.D. as a decoration for the pavement of a church in the town of Madaba (Jordan) in the Byzantine Near East. At that time Madaba was part of the so called Provincia Arabia, and was inhabited by Aramaic speaking Christians descendant from the ancient biblical people of the Moabites. The mosaic was discovered accidentally about one hundred years ago (in 1897) while constructing a new church for the Greek-Orthodox Arab community, which was then settling on the very ruins of the ancient town of Madaba.
Copy of the mosaic map at Greek orthodox church of st George Madaba' Jordan shows all the places of holy land, Madaba, Jordan:
The mosaic represents the biblical land from Egypt to Lebanon, including Sinai, Israel, Palestine, and Transjordan. Unfortunately the northern sector is almost completely lost, and the rest suffered a lot of damage too. The original panel would have measured about 94 square meter but only 25 are still preserved. What remains is still of the greatest importance for art, history and biblical topography. The city of Jerusalem is depicted with the uppermost care but a total of 156 places or biblical memoirs are present in the preserved portion of the map.
Copy of the mosaic map at Greek orthodox church of st George Madaba' Jordan shows all the places of holy land, Madaba, Jordan:
The mosaicist conceived and carried out his masterwork with great topographical skill and biblical knowledge. The Madaba Mosaic map is deemed by some scholars to be the best topographic representation ever done before modern cartography. As a source of biblical topography the map is fully comparable with the well-known treatise on the biblical places written in Greek about 395 A.D. by the historian Eusebius of Caesarea and translated into Latin by Jerome about 490 A.D.
Our aim is to present the richness of this little known masterpiece of art , religion and science to all people interested in the biblical places or just in the best achievements of humanity.
Copy of the mosaic map at Greek orthodox church of st George Madaba' Jordan shows all the places of holy land, Madaba, Jordan:
Details of the Map:
SECTION 1
Phoenicia and Galilee:
The two captions of Phoenicia had been
noticed, towards the northern wall of the church even before the discovery of
the Map... All we can see of what Galilee was a small fragment of mountain with
two uncaptioned vignettes and one more vignette accompanied with the caption
Agbaron
SECTION 2
The Jordan Valley:
The geological depression (Ghor in Arabic)
that separates the mountain of Palestine from the trans Jordanian plateau is characterized
in the Map by the meandering course of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea basin.
This region, with its tropical climate, is
defined by various topographic symbols: palm trees at the oases of Jericho,
Betagla Archelais and at the spas at Calliroe and Zoara; bushes by the banks of
the river, to define their inaccessibility due to the thick vegetation (kikkar
hayarden in the Hebrew biblical text zor or ghowier in arabic); the pulley
driven ferries to indicate the fording spots on the river. The inhospitable desert
nature of great part of the Ghor is depicted by a lion (disfigured by
iconoclasts) chasing a gazelle. Fish are represented in the rivers thus
depicting the life supporting waters of the river as opposed to the lifeless
brackish waters of the Dead Sea. Look-out towers with ladders to access them
are also common.
SECTION 3
On the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, where
the river Jordan comes to an end, and laying between two valleys (wadi),
positively identified as the wadi Zerqa Ma'in and wadi Mujib-Arnon, one sees
two spas: at Baaru (modern-day Hammamat Ma'in) depicted as being inside the
mountain and the thermal baths of Kalliroe (today's Zara) pride of the Madaba
region.
Here, apart from the two little palm trees that indicate the oasis,
there are also indicated three springs whose waters are gathered in basins. The
water of the southernmost spring sprouts directly from the mountain before
ending up in the sea like the other two. On his dead bed, King Herod came to
the hot waters of Calliroe in search of relief from his pains.
SECTION 4
Moab and Edom:
The mosaicist underlined the mountainous
nature of the land of Moab, to the east of the Dead sea, locked between the
wadi Mujib-Arnon to the north and the wadi Hesa-Zared to the south.
SECTION 5
Mount Ephraim and Benjamin;
Laying between the present northern limit of
the central fragment of the map and the vignette depicting Jerusalem we find
the territory of the tribe of Ephraim (Lot of Ephraim) and Benjamin (Lot of
Benjamin). The mosaicist quotes the biblical text containing the patriarchal
blessing.
SECTION 6
Mountain of Judah and the Shephelah:
South of Jerusalem, the mountain of the Tribe of Judah from Bethlehem
to Hebron, is definitely distinguishable graphically from Shephelah, the low
hills situated between the central mountain and the Mediterranean coast. The
localities are ideally set along two roads that are still used to this day.
SECTION 7
The Sea-Coast:
The places that lie between the Mediterranean sea and the Palestinian
mountains are distributed on a relatively wide section of the Map. The
northernmost city is Lord also Lydea also Diospolis.
SECTION 8
The Arabah and the Negev:
Three roman forts, Praesidium, Thamara and Moa have been placed by the
mosaicist in the valley of Arabah to the south of the Dead Sea. These forts
guarded the roads which joined the edomite territory to the Palestinian coast
crossing the Negev which is graphically represented by three isolated
mountains.
SECTION 9
Ascalon, Gaza, Negev and Sinai
In an isolated fragment of the mosaic there has been preserved the
port of Askalon on the Palestinian coast. The vignette of the city shows a
network of colonnaded and porticoed roads. Outside the city walls there is the
shrine of the Egyptian Martyrs, Ares, Promos and Elijah, which was venerated by
the pilgrims.
SECTION 10
The Sinai Desert and Egypt:
The mosaicist of Madaba synthesized graphically the Sinai Peninsula with a mountain situated between the Negev in Palestine and the Egyptian Delta. Three troponins refer to as many incidents during the exodus.
SECTION 11
Jerusalem:
(Note: Jerusalem site still under construction)
Walls are visible around the big cities, including Jerusalem, Jericho, and Ashdod. Jerusalem is the focus of the map. Clearly visible are the north-south Cardo and valley streets (lined with columns), the Damascus Gate plaza and pillar, the city walls, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Church of Holy Zion (Hagia Sion), and Justinian's "Nea" Church
The Real Geography of the Madaba Map:
It is most interesting that following the depiction on this map of the "Baptism Site of Christ" excavations were undertaken and the site of Bethany was uncovered, exactly on the site shown on the map!
Here you can see a detail of the River Jordan, with what is possibly a bridge or at least a crossing point between the two banks. A detail often remarked on is the fish, which arriving close to the Dead Sea turn and swim back again - no fish are shown swimming in the Dead Sea which at that time was just as salty and unsuitable for fish as it is today.
Notice too that just north of the bridge, the (presumably) hunters have been erased by the iconoclasts. No attempt has been made to restore them, since we have no idea what they actually looked like. A mixture of mosaic tiles has been put in place.
There is a most interesting website about the mosaic map, largely based on the work of Father Michele Piccirillo of the Franciscan Institute at Mount Nebo.
Antony Varghese Kanappilly
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