How it began
The Madaba Map is part of a floor mosaic in the early Byzantine church of Saint George in Madaba, Jordan. It shows Jerusalem with the New Church of the Theotokos, dedicated in November 542, and leaves out buildings put up after 570, which places its making between those years. The artists are unknown. It contains the oldest surviving original cartographic depiction of the Holy Land, and especially of Jerusalem.
How it works
The map originally measured 21 by 7 meters and used more than two million stone cubes, called tesserae. About 16 by 5 meters survive. It faces east toward the altar, so that places on the floor line up with the real compass directions. It covers the land from Lebanon to the Nile Delta and from the Mediterranean to the Eastern Desert, with about 150 towns and villages, each labeled in Greek. The makers combined a view from above with buildings folded flat, and drew on the 4th-century Onomasticon of Eusebius for place names.
What changed first
Jerusalem is the largest and most detailed element, with its gates, main colonnaded street and principal churches. Several other cities are drawn in enough detail to be read almost as street plans. The map may also have helped pilgrims orient themselves. Madaba was largely destroyed by an earthquake in 746 and abandoned, and the mosaic lay buried.
What lasted
Builders of a new Greek Orthodox church came across the mosaic in the 1880s, and its full extent was noticed in 1896. It has since been used to locate and verify ancient sites. In 1967, excavations in Jerusalem found the Nea Church and the main street where the map shows them. In 2010, paving stones of another road shown on the map were found four meters below ground near the Jaffa Gate.
Where it stands today
Fire, damp and use of the church damaged large parts of the map in the 20th century. In 1965 the archaeologists Heinz Cueppers and Heinrich Brandt restored and conserved what remained, with funding from the Volkswagen Foundation. The mosaic is still in the floor of Saint George's church in Madaba, and copies are kept in Goettingen, Bonn and Jerusalem.
