#madaba map

What did Jerusalem’s main road look like about 1,500 years ago?

An archaeological excavation conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority in 2010 near the Old City’s Jaffa Gate brought to life a 1,500 year-old map.

The Madaba Map is an ancient mosaic map that paves the floor of Saint George’s Church in the city of Madaba, Jordan.

The map, created in 6th-7th centuries CE, depicts the Land of Israel during the Byzantine period.

It clearly shows the entrance into Jerusalem from the west via a central single gate that led to the main street of the city.

In the past, the reliability of the map, which, among other buildings, provides the earliest visual description of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, has been questioned.

The excavation, located near David Street known to tourists as the terraced shopping street exposed for the first time, archaeological evidence of Jerusalem’s central street from about 1,500 years ago.

The salvage excavation, carried out in the wake of infrastructure works undertaken in the area and funded by the Jerusalem Development Authority, gave the archaeologists and the public a rare glimpse into archaeological remains underlying the asphalt and the paving stones.

Familiar with the Madaba Map, Dr. Ofer Sion, Director of the Excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, suspected that the ancient main street underlay the modern road.

"After removing a several archaeological layers, about 4.5m below modern street level, we were excited to discover the large stone slabs, each about one meter long, that were part of the ancient street.

It’s great to see that today’s bustling David Street preserves the route of the Byzantine-period busy street from 1,500 years ago.”

The Madaba Map, whose extant part measures 16x5m, depicts the land of Israel as known to the mosaic artist.

Map encompasses the entire country, with emphasis on Jerusalem and its Christian sites.

It shows that many churches were first constructed in Jerusalem during this period, when city underwent a religious transformation from a pagan to a Christian city.

The churches can be identified by their red tiled roofs illustrated on the map.

The Madaba Map

Part of a floor mosaic the in the church of Saint George depicting the Holy Land in the 6th century AD,

St. George, Madaba, Jordan, 6th century

Madaba Map, Jordan

The Madaba Map (also known as the Madaba Mosaic Map) is part of a floor mosaic in the early Byzantine church of Saint George at Madaba. The Madaba Map is a map of the Middle East. Part of it contains the oldest surviving original cartographic depiction of the Holy Land and especially Jerusalem. It dates to the 6th century AD.

The Madaba Mosaic Map depicts Jerusalem with the Nea Church, which was dedicated on the 20th of November, AD 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. 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 Persian empire. In the 8th century AD, the Muslim Umayyad rulers had some figural motifs removed from the mosaic. In 746, Madaba was largely destroyed by an earthquake and subsequently abandoned. The mosaic was rediscovered in 1884, during the construction of a new Greek Orthodox church on the site of its ancient predecessor. 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 Volkswagen Foundation gave the Deutscher Verein für die Erforschung Palästinas ("German Society for the exploration of Palestine") 90,000 DM to save the mosaic. In 1965, the archaeologists Heinz Cüppers and Herbert Donner undertook the restoration and conservation of the remaining parts of the mosaic.

The mosaic map of Madaba is the oldest known geographic floor mosaic in art history. It is of major use 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). 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.

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. According to the map, the main entrance to the city was through a large gate opening into a wide central street. Until now, 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 4 meters (13 ft) below ground that prove such a road existed.

Sections from Madaba Map mosaic in St. George's church, an early Byzantine church at Madaba, Jordan. Dates to the 6th century AD. This map provides us with the earliest topographical description of Jerusalem.

The map mosaic in Madaba, dated 560-565 C.E. and depicting biblical lands from southern Syria to central Egypt, was discovered in 1884 and reported to the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Ottoman Jerusalem. New church construction destroyed almost 75% of the map, originally 22 by 7 meters. 

The much damaged fragment that remains indicates that the topical features were not chosen for their intrinsic importance, but also for their significance as sites of events mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, the Gospels, or church history.

-Trade, Travel, and Exploration in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia, pg 351.