Madaba Map
The Mosaic Map of Madaba (also Madaba Mosaic Mosaic or Palestine ) is part of a mosaic in the St. George Church in Madaba (Jordan). The Madaba Mosaic is the oldest surviving original cartographic depiction of the so-called Holy Land and especially Jerusalem. It dates from the mid- 6th century AD
History
The Mosaic Map of Madaba shows in Jerusalem, the Nea Church, consecrated in 542 AD on November 20. In Jerusalem after 570 AD constructed buildings missing in the mosaic representation, so that the origin of the map to the period of 542 AD was narrowed to 570 AD. The mosaic was created by unknown artists - probably on behalf of the Christian community of the city of Madaba, which was a bishopric in the Christian- Byzantine period. In the 8th century the Muslim Umayyad rulers could remove some of the figurative elements of the mosaic. 614 Madaba was conquered by the Persians and 746 severely damaged by an earthquake. The deserted by its inhabitants city fell. In 1894 the mosaic during the works for the construction of a new Greek Orthodox church was uncovered at the site of ancient Byzantine church. Large parts of the mosaic map were damaged in the following decades by fires, fire burials in the church as well as water and moisture effects. In December 1964, the Volkswagen Foundation provided the German Association for the Study of Palestine DM 90,000 for the salvation of the mosaic available. The later director of the Rheinische Landesmuseum Trier, Heinz Cüppers, and the Old Testament scholar Herbert Donner led from September 1965 to November 1965 the much-needed work on the restoration and conservation of the surviving parts of the mosaic map by.
Description
The floor mosaic located in front of the apse of the church of St. George in Madaba and is not north oriented, but oriented to the east, that the location of places on the map corresponds to the actual directions. Originally it had a length of 21 m and a width of 7 m and consisted of over two million tesserae. The current size is 16 m by 5 m.
Topographic representation
On the mosaic map of Madaba an area from Lebanon in the north to the Nile Delta in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean was shown to the eastern desert. The map shows, inter alia, the Dead Sea with two fishing boats, bridges connecting the banks of the Jordan, in Jordan floating fish that retreat from the salty Dead Sea; one of iconoclasts by arbitrarily inserted tesserae almost obliterated lion chasing a gazelle in the desert of Moab, the. palm umstandene Jericho, Bethlehem and other biblical- Christian sites The card served well to facilitate pilgrims the orientation in the Holy Land. All physiographic units are labeled with explanations in Greek language. In a combination of folding perspective and looking bird -like representation about 150 cities and towns are mapped and named on the mosaic map.
The largest and most detailed element of the topographic depiction is Jerusalem in the center of the map, with the HAΓΙAΠOΛIΣIEPOYΣAΛHM (Greek Ἁγία πόλις Ιερουσαλήμ " Holy City of Jerusalem " ) is called. The mosaic shows clearly seen some significant structures of the Old City of Jerusalem: Damascus Gate, the Lion Gate, the Golden Gate, the Zion Gate, the Holy Sepulchre, the David Citadel and the Cardo Maximus. The clear presentation of the topography of the city makes the Madabakarte the most important testimony of Byzantine Jerusalem. Unique are the detailed representations of the towns Neapolis, Ashkelon, Gaza, Pelusium and Charachmoba on the Madabakarte that correspond to almost the quality of a map.
Scientific Importance
The Mosaic Map of Madaba is the first geographic floor mosaic in art history. It is for localization and verification of biblical sites of great importance. The evaluation of the Madabakarte contributed to solve the question of the topographical location of Ascalon (on the map ' Asqalan ). In 1967, the Nea Church and the Cardo Maximus discovered during excavations in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem on the sites, which suggested their representation on the Madabakarte. The map also displays the location of Zoar, thus giving evidence of archeology to search for Sodom and Gomorrah.
Copies of the mosaic map
A copy of the mosaic map of Madaba is located in the Institute of Archaeology of the University of Göttingen collection. It was made in 1965 by archaeologists of the Rheinische Landesmuseum Trier during the restoration works in Madaba. Another replica of the map that was created by students of the Madaba Mosaic School is to see in the foyer of the Academic art museum in Bonn.