Madaba Map
31°43′3.54″N 35°47′39.12″E / 31.7176500°N 35.7942000°E
The Madaba Map, also known as the Madaba Mosaic Map, is part of a floor mosaic in the early Byzantine church of Saint George in Madaba, Jordan.
The mosaic map depicts an area from Lebanon in the north to the Nile Delta in the south, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Eastern Desert.
It contains the oldest surviving original cartographic depiction of the Holy Land and especially Jerusalem. The map dates to the sixth century AD.
History
The Madaba Mosaic Map depicts Jerusalem with the New Church of the Theotokos, which was dedicated on 20 November 542. Buildings erected in Jerusalem after 570 are absent from the depiction, thus limiting the date range of its creation to the period between 542 and 570.[1] The mosaic was made by unknown artists, probably for the Christian community of Madaba, which was the seat of a bishop at that time.
In 614, Madaba was conquered by the Sasanian Empire. In the eighth century, the ruling Muslim Umayyad Caliphate had some figural motifs removed from the mosaic. In 746, Madaba was largely destroyed by an earthquake and subsequently abandoned.
Elements of the inscribed mosaic were noticed and reported to the Jerusalem Patriarchate in 1884 and 1886, during the preparation work for the construction of a new Greek Orthodox church on the site of its ancient predecessor.[2] Patriarch Nicodemus I of Jerusalem was informed, the church building erected and roofed over (summer 1895-August 1896), but the full mosaic was only noticed during clearing work for a new cement-slab floor in October 1896, and no research was carried out until December of that year, after the floor had already been laid around the mosaic by local workers under the supervision of a Greek architect.[2][3][4]
In the following decades, large portions of the mosaic map were damaged by fires, activities in the new church, and by the effects of moisture. In December 1964, the
Description
The floor mosaic is located in the
Topographic representation
The mosaic map depicts an area from
The largest and most detailed element of the topographic depiction is Jerusalem (
Scientific significance
The mosaic map of Madaba is the oldest known geographic floor mosaic in art history. It is used heavily for the localisation and verification of biblical sites. Study of the map played a major role in answering the question of the topographical location of Askalon (Asqalan on the map).[13]
In 1967, excavations in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem revealed the Nea Church and the Cardo Maximus in the very locations suggested by the Madaba Map.[14]
In February 2010, excavations further substantiated its accuracy with the discovery of a road depicted in the map that runs through the center of Jerusalem.[15] According to the map, the main entrance to the city was through a large gate opening into a wide central street. Until the discovery, archaeologists were not able to excavate this site due to heavy pedestrian traffic. In the wake of infrastructure work near the Jaffa Gate, large paving stones were discovered at a depth of four meters below ground that prove such a road existed.[16]
Copies of the map
- The Archaeological Institute of Göttingen University contains a copy of the map in its archive collections. This copy was produced during the conservation work at Madaba in 1965 by archaeologists of the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Trier.
- A copy produced by students of the Madaba Mosaic School is in the foyer of the Akademisches Kunstmuseum at Bonn.
- The entrance lobby of the YMCA in Jerusalem has a small replica of the Jerusalem part of the map incorporated in its floor.[17] At the Byzantine Cardo in the Old City there's another copy of the Jerusalem section, with explanations.
See also
- Early Byzantine mosaics in the Middle East
- Umm ar-Rasas mosaics
- Eusebius of Caesarea
- Itinerarium Burdigalense
- Egeria
- Jerome
- Anonymous pilgrim of Piacenza
- Chronicon Paschale
- John of Würzburg
References
- ISBN 978-0-19-973414-6. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
- ^ a b Meimaris, Yiannis (1999). Eugenio Alliata; Michele Piccirillo (eds.). "The Discovery of the Madaba Mosaic Map. Mythology and Reality: The Madaba Map Centenary. 1897-1997. Travelling through the Byzantine Umayyad Period". Collectio Maior (40). Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press. pp. 25–36. Archived from the original on 3 October 2013. Retrieved 9 June 2011 – via ChristusRex.org (Franciscan Cyberspot), 2000 webpage expanding on 1999 book.
- ^ Donner, 1992, p.11
- ^ Piccirillo, Michele (21 September 1995). "A Centenary to be celebrated". Jordan Times. Franciscan Archaeology Institute. Retrieved 18 January 2019.
It was only Abuna Kleofas Kikilides who realised the true significance, for the history of the region, that the map had while visiting Madaba in December 1896. A Franciscan friar of ltalian-Croatian origin born in Constantinople, Fr. Girolamo Golubovich, helped Abuna Kleofas to print a booklet in Greek about the map at the Franciscan printing press of Jerusalem. Immediately afterwards, the Revue Biblique published a long and detailed historic-geographic study of the map by the Dominican fathers M.J. Lagrange and H. Vincent after visiting the site themselves. At the same time. Father J. Germer-Durand of the Assumptionist Fathers published a photographic album with his own pictures of the map. In Paris, C. Clermont-Ganneau, a well known oriental scholar, announced the discovery at the Academie des Sciences et belles Lettres.
- ISBN 978-90-390-0011-3. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
- ^ Ute Friederich: Antike Kartographie[permanent dead link]
- JSTOR 1516086.
- ^ Where is now the "Old Roman Bridge" (Arabic: Mukatta' Damieh), near the confluence of the watercourse Naḥal Yabok, not far from Wadi Fara'a, and which once marked the entry into Judea when one passes over the midland countries.
- OCLC 636083006.. This particular entry has inscribed in Greek uncials: "Morasthi, whence was Micah the prophet." The text is said to have been borrowed from Eusebius' Onomasticon.
- ^ Beside which is inscribed a verse taken from Judges 5:17, "Why did Dan remain in ships?"
- ^ "Where Our Fathers Left off". 12 July 2022.
- OCLC 1040774903.
- ^ Vogt, Jana (19 August 2006). Architekturmosaiken am Beispel der drei Jordanischen Städte Madaba, Umm al-Rasas und Gerasa – via www.grin.com.
- ^ ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES NO. 5 Jerusalem- the Nea Church and the Cardo
- ^ "Archaeologists find Byzantine era road". CNN. 11 February 2010.
- ^ "Dig uncovers ancient Jerusalem street depicted on Byzantine map".
- ^ "Jerusalem Architecture in the British Mandate Period". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
Bibliography
Early sources
- Abel, F.-M. (1924). "Le Sud Palestinien d'apres la carte mosaique de Madaba". Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society (in French). IV: 107-117.
- JSTOR 44101959.
- Palmer, P.; Dr. Guthe (1906), Die Mosaikkarte von Madeba, Im Auftrage des Deutschen Vereins zur Erforschung Palätinas
Later sources
- Leal, Beatrice (Fall 2018), "A Reconsideration of the Madaba Map", Gesta, 57 (2): 123–143, S2CID 194929753.
- Madden, Andrew M., "A New Form of Evidence to Date the Madaba Map Mosaic," Liber Annuus 62 (2012), 495-513.
- Hepper, Nigel; Taylor, Joan, "Date Palms and Opobalsam in the Madaba Mosaic Map," Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 136,1 (April 2004), 35-44.
- Herbert Donner: The Mosaic Map of Madaba. Kok Pharos Publishing House, Kampen 1992, ISBN 90-390-0011-5
- Herbert Donner; Heinz Cüppers (1977). Die Mosaikkarte von Madeba: Tafelband; Abhandlungen des Deutschen Palästinavereins 5. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. ISBN 978-3-447-01866-1.
- Avi-Yonah, M.: The Madaba mosaic map. Israel Exploration Society, Jerusalem 1954
- Michele Piccirillo: Chiese e mosaici di Madaba. Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Collectio maior 34, Jerusalem 1989 (Arabische Edition: Madaba. Kana'is wa fusayfasa', Jerusalem 1993)
- Kenneth Nebenzahl: Maps of the Holy Land, images of Terra Sancta through two millennia. Abbeville Press, New York 1986, ISBN 0-89659-658-3
- Adolf Jacoby: Das geographische Mosaik von Madaba, Die älteste Karte des Heiligen Landes. Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung , Leipzig 1905
- ISBN 9780870991790
External links
- Article on the map and its Göttingen copy (in German)1999 (PDF)
- Madaba Map
- The Madaba Mosaic Map at the Franciscan Archaeological Institute
- Madaba Mosaic Map web page at San Francisco State University
- Byzantine Jerusalem and the Madaba Map
- Madaba Map at Bibleplaces.com