Mosaic map of Madaba
The mosaic map of Madaba (also Madaba mosaic or Palestine mosaic) is part of a late antique mosaic in St. George's Church in Madaba ( Jordan ). The Madaba mosaic is the oldest preserved original cartographic representation of the so-called Holy Land and especially Jerusalem . It dates from the middle 6th century AD.
history
The mosaic map of Madaba shows the Nea Church in Jerusalem , which was consecrated on November 20, 542. Structures built in Jerusalem after 570 are missing in the mosaic, so that the origin of the map can be limited to the period from 542 to 570. The mosaic was created by unknown artists - probably on behalf of the Christian community of the city of Madaba, which was the bishopric in Christian-Eastern Roman times. The map shows important Christian pilgrimage sites on both sides of the Jordan.
In late antiquity , other elaborate mosaics were made in the city, some of which have been preserved and can be viewed. In 614 Madaba was conquered by the Persians , came back to Ostrom in 630 , then fell to the Arabs around 636 and was badly destroyed by an earthquake in 746. The city then abandoned by its residents fell into disrepair.
In 1894 the mosaic was uncovered during the construction of a new Greek Orthodox church on the site of the late antique ruin. Large parts of the unprotected mosaic map were damaged in the following decades by fires, construction work, cremations in the church as well as the effects of water and moisture. In December 1964, the Volkswagen Foundation finally made 90,000 DM available to the German Association for the Exploration of Palestine for the rescue of the mosaic. The later director of the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier , Heinz Cüppers , and the Old Testament scholar Herbert Donner carried out the urgently required work for the restoration and conservation of the remaining parts of the mosaic map from September 1965 to November 1965.
description
The floor mosaic is located in front of the apse of St. George's Church in Madaba and is not north oriented , but oriented to the east, that the situation of the places on the map approximately corresponds to the actual directions. Originally it was 21 meters long and 7 meters wide and consisted of over two million tesserae . Today's size is 16 m × 5 m. In the 8th century, the Umayyad Muslim rulers had some of the figurative elements removed from the mosaic.
Topographic representation
The mosaic map of Madaba originally represented an area from Lebanon in the north to the Nile Delta in Egypt and from the Mediterranean to the eastern desert . The map shows u. a. the (fishless) Dead Sea with two boats, bridges that connect the banks of the Jordan , fish swimming in the Jordan, retreating from the salty Dead Sea; a lion almost unrecognizable by iconoclasts through arbitrarily inserted tesserae , hunting a gazelle in the desert of Moab , Jericho , Bethlehem and other biblical-Christian sites surrounded by palm trees . The map hardly served to make it easier for pilgrims to find their way around the Holy Land, but apparently had a representative character. All natural spatial units are labeled with explanations in Greek , which mostly refer to the Bible. In a combination of a folding perspective and a bird's eye view , around 150 towns and villages are shown and named on the mosaic map.
The largest and most detailed element of the topographical representation is Jerusalem in the center of the map, which is referred to as HAΓΙA ΠOΛIϹ IEPOYϹAΛHM (Greek Ἁγία πόλις Ιερουσαλήμ, "Holy City Jerusalem"). The mosaic clearly shows some significant structures of the Old City of Jerusalem : the Damascus Gate , the Lion Gate , the Golden Gate , the Zion Gate , the Church of the Holy Sepulcher , the Citadel of David and the Cardo Maximus . The comprehensible representation of the topography of the city makes the Madabakarte the most important testimony to the late antique Jerusalem. The detailed representations of the cities of Neapolis , Ashkelon , Gaza , Pelusium and Charachmoba on the Madabakarte are also unique, each of which is marked by characteristic buildings (temples, churches, colonnaded streets , etc.).
Scientific importance
The mosaic map of Madaba is the oldest known geographic floor mosaic in art history . It is of great importance for the location and verification of biblical sites. The evaluation of the Madaba map, for example, helped to solve the question of the topographical location of Askalon (on the map 'Asqalan ). In 1967, during excavations in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, the Nea Church and the Cardo Maximus were discovered at the sites that their representation on the Madabakarte suggested.
Copies of the mosaic map
A copy of the mosaic map of Madaba is in the collection of the Archaeological Institute of the University of Göttingen . It was made in 1965 by the archaeologists of the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier during the restoration work in Madaba. Another replica of the map created by students from the Madaba Mosaic School can be seen in the foyer of the Academic Art Museum in Bonn .
literature
- Michael Avi-Yonah : The Madaba mosaic map: with introduction and commentary . Israel Exploration Society, Jerusalem 1954
- Victor Roland Gold: The Mosaic Map of Madeba. In: The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 21, No. 3, September 1958, pp. 49-71.
- Herbert Donner, Heinz Cüppers: The restoration and conservation of the Madeba mosaic map . In: Journal of the German Palestine Association 83 (1967), pp. 1–33.
- Hans Georg Thümmel: To the interpretation of the mosaic map of Madeba. In: Journal of the German Palestine Association 89 (1973) pp. 66–79.
- Herbert Donner, Heinz Cüppers : The mosaic map of Madeba (= treatises of the German Palestine Association . Volume 5), Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1977, ISBN 3-447-01866-6
- Herbert Donner: Communications on the topography of the East Bank based on the mosaic map of Mādebā: A glimpse . In: Journal of the German Palestine Association 98 (1982), pp. 174–191.
- Herbert Donner: The Mosaic Map of Madaba: an introductory guide . Kok Pharos Publishing House, Kampen 1992, ISBN 90-390-0011-5 .
- David HK Amiran: The Madaba Mosaic Map as a Climate Indicator for the Sixth Century . In: Israel Exploration Journal 47, 1/2 1997, pp. 97-99
- Rainer Warland : The mosaic map of Madaba and its copy in the collection of the Archaeological Institute of the University of Göttingen. In: Georgia Augusta. Volume 71, 1999, pp. 41-48 ( digitized version ).
- Andrew M. Madden: A New Form of Evidence to Date the Madaba Map Mosaic. In: Liber Annuus , 62, 2012, pp. 495-513.
Individual evidence
- ^ Ute Friederich: Ancient cartography. Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn p. 2, as of November 4, 2005
Web links
- View into paradise (Tagesspiegel, April 4, 2010)
Coordinates: 31 ° 43 ' N , 35 ° 48' E