The mosaic map was located just inside the walls near the north gate, legible from the direction of the road that approaches from Hesban and Mount Nebo and leads southeast into the city center. 7 Madaba was surrounded by walls with towered gates, and at least one of its main streets was colonnaded. 6 It may also have been a stopping point for merchants traveling from the port of Aylah, on the Red Sea to the south, to either Jerusalem or such cities as Amman and Jerash farther north. 5 Thanks to the tomb of Moses on nearby Mount Nebo, Madaba was an important pilgrimage destination. 4 They presided over a diocese of about 20 square miles, extending from the Dead Sea in the west to the edge of the steppe in the east. ![]() Names of the bishops of Madaba between the fifth and eighth centuries are known. On the evidence of the richly decorated mansions and churches uncovered in archaeological excavations, the town was also a flourishing religious and commercial center during Late Antiquity. Madaba is one of Jordan’s major towns and home to a large proportion of the country’s Christians. In what follows, I propose an alternative hypothesis for the form and purpose of the building that first housed the map. ![]() Yet the mosaic does not fit comfortably-either physically or iconographically-in such a setting. Interpretations of the map have been strongly influenced by the assumption that it was commissioned for a religious space the current consensus is that the mosaic was designed to decorate the east end of a church either identical or similar in form to the nineteenth-century Greek Orthodox church of St. The relationship between the mosaic and its built environment also remains an unsettled question. 3 Its subject matter and format as a map, its detailed depiction of settlements and landscapes, and its large number of inscriptions are all without close parallels among late antique mosaics, and these differences have not been fully taken into account in analyses of the mosaic’s original social context. Much has been written about the mosaic in the years since its discovery, but despite its fame, the Madaba map remains a puzzle. 74, courtesy of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, Mount Nebo, and the American Center of Oriental Research, Amman). Figure 1.ĭrawing of extant fragments of the Madaba mosaic map (from Michele Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan, ed. The surviving portion of the mosaic depicts the so-called Holy Land, with detailed topographic representations of cities and villages, mountains, deserts, and seas along with more than 150 inscriptions that provide information about them ( Fig. The map was uncovered during building work in 1896 and is now among Jordan’s main tourist attractions. 2 The mosaic known as the Madaba map stands apart from the rest it is unique not only among Jordanian floors but also among late antique representations across the entire Mediterranean basin. Over the past hundred years, a dozen churches or chapels and a number of grand private houses have been excavated in the city, most with preserved mosaic pavements of the Byzantine and early Islamic periods. 1 Madaba is one of the key archaeological sites. After laying out the case against an original church context, I argue that the map was instead designed for a secular hall, most likely one used for legal hearings, and then discuss some new ways of interpreting the architectural motifs on the map in light of this reading.Īmong the late antique mosaics of the eastern Mediterranean, the church floors of Jordan are the most numerous and best known. In addition, it appears to have been designed for a hall with a north–south axis, not an east–west one. It contains little overtly Christian imagery, and it does not resemble other Jordanian church floors in its composition, layout, choice of motifs, or use of inscriptions. The mosaic does not fit well into a church setting, however, either physically or in terms of its content. On the basis of this presumed ecclesiastical context, the map has been interpreted either as a pilgrimage guide or as a unique expression of a Christian worldview, displaying all the sacred sites of the Holy Land with Jerusalem at the center. Previous analyses of the mosaic have been based on two assumptions: that it was designed for an early Byzantine church and that this supposed church was roughly similar in form to the nineteenth-century church that now houses the mosaic. It depicts rivers, mountains and deserts, villages and cities, and has more than 150 inscriptions that describe them. ![]() The largest extant fragment of the map encompasses modern Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, and parts of Egypt. The mosaic map of Madaba, Jordan, has been attracting visitors and puzzling art historians since it was uncovered in the 1890s.
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