 | Just 30 kilometres from Amman, along the 5,000-year-old Kings´ Highway, is one of the most memorable places in the Holy Land. After passing through a string of ancient sites, the first city you reach is Madaba, known as the “City of Mosaics".
Best known for its spectacular Byzantine and Umayyad mosaics, Madaba is home to the famous 6th century Mosaic Map of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. With two million pieces of vividly colored local stone, it depicts hills and valleys, villages and towns as far as the Nile Delta.
 | | Mosaic Map of the Holy Land in St. George's Church.
| The Madaba Mosaic Map covers the floor of the Greek Orthodox Church of St. George, which is located northwest of the city centre. The church was built in 1896 AD, over the remains of a much earlier 6th century Byzantine church. The mosaic panel enclosing the Map was originally around 15.6 X 6m, 94 square meters, only about a quarter of which is preserved.
Other mosaic masterpieces found in the church of the Virgin and the Apostles and in the Archaeological Museum, depict a rampant profusion of flowers and plants, birds and fish, animals and exotic beasts, as well as scenes from mythology and the everyday pursuits of hunting, fishing and farming. Literally, hundreds of other mosaics from the 5th through the 7th centuries are scattered throughout Madaba's churches and homes.
In line with Jordan's commitment to restoring and preserving its mosaic masterpieces, Madaba’s extensive archaeological Park and Museum complex encompasses the remains of several Byzantine churches, including the outstanding mosaics of the Church of the Virgin and the Hyppolytus Hall, part of a 6th century mansion.
 | | Institute For Mosaic Art and Restoration at Madaba.
| Close to the Church of the Virgin is the Madaba Institute For Mosaic Art and Restoration, which operates under the patronage of the Ministry of Tourism. The only project of its kind in the Middle East, the Institute trains artisans in the art of making, repairing and restoring mosaics.
CONTACT INFO
Madaba Institute For Mosaic Art and Restoration
P.O Box 1140, Madaba, Jordan 17110. Telephone:  + 962 5 3248632 Fax: + 962 5 3240759, Email: Madabamosaic_school@yahoo.com
 |  | Don’t miss Madaba’s Museum. It contains some outstanding mosaic panels as well as ancient traditional Jordanian embroidered dresses, jewellery and pottery. | |  | Mukawir
 | | Herod's hilltop stronghold of Mukawir.
| Within an hour’s drive from Madaba along the picturesque King’s Highway, is Mukawir, Mukawir the hilltop stronghold of Herod the Great. Upon Herod’s death, his son Herod Antipas inherited the fortress and it is from here that he ordered John the Baptist to be beheaded after Salome’s fateful dance.
Mount Nebo
 | | The Byzantine Church at Mt. Nebo.
| Also within the area is Mount Nebo, one of the most revered holy sites of Jordan and the place where Moses was buried. A small Byzantine church was built there by early Christians, which has been expanded into a vast complex. During his visit to Jordan in 2001, the Late Pope John Paul II held a sermon here that was attended by some 20,000 faithful. | | Stand on the platform in front of the church and admire the view. It overlooks the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea, across to the rooftops of Jerusalem and Bethlehem and is absolutely breathtaking. | | | Hammamat Ma'in
 | | Thermal springs at Hammamat Ma'in.
| Southwest of Madaba is Hammamat Ma’in, the thermal mineral springs that for centuries have attracted people to come and immerse themselves in the sites’ warm therapeutic waters. There is an excellent 4-star hotel here, which offers indoor and natural outdoor hot pools, a swimming pool and spa facilities.
Umm Ar-Rasas
 | | Umm Ar-Rasas.
| To the east of Madaba, is Umm Ar-Rasas, a very ancient site that is mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. The rectangular walled city is mostly in ruins but does still include several buildings, as well as four churches and some beautiful stone arches. The main attraction is outside the city walls within the Church of St. Stephen, which contains a very large, perfectly preserved mosaic floor laid down in 718 AD. It portrays fifteen major cities of the Holy Land from both east and west of the River Jordan. This magnificent mosaic is second only to Madaba’s world famous mosaic map of Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
| Madaba is an ancient town of the Jordanian Plateau, which was resettled by Christian Arab tribes from the Karak region in 1880 A.D. It is now inhabited by Christians and Muslims alike. A great deal of antiquity has been found here, much of which can now to be seen in the Museum and in Archaeological Parks.
Modern Madaba is built on an artificial mound which conceals the remains of much earlier sites. The town has a long history, being first mentioned in the Bible at the time of Exodus, about 1200 BC. A tomb of this period has been found in the east of the town.
By Maccabaean times (c.165 BC) it had been reoccupied by the Ammonites, but in around 110 BC it was taken, after a long siege, by John Hyrcanus. It remained in Jewish hands until the time of Alexander Jannaeus, and was one of the towns promised to Aretas, king of the Nabataeans, if he helped Hyrcanus II to recover Jerusalem.
 | | Madaba Archaeological Park. | The Romans made it a typical provincial town, with colonnaded streets, fine temples and other buildings, large water cisterns and a town wall. The town continued to flourish throught the 8th century and beyond. As the date of the mosaic floor in the church is 767 A.D. Traces of the Roman town can be seen in the long stretches of the paved street in Madaba’s Archaelogical Park.
Umm ar-Rasas
 | | The Tower at Umm ar-Rasas. | The Old and New Testaments mention it, the Romans fortified it and the local Christians were still embellishing it with Byzantine-style mosaics well over one hundred years after the beginning of Muslim rule: Kastron Mefaa, modern Umm ar-Rasas, has a long history.
The rectangular walled city is mostly in ruins but does still include several buildings, as well as four churches and some beautiful stone arches. The main attraction is outside the city walls within the Church of St. Stephen, which contains a very large, perfectly preserved mosaic floor laid down in 718 AD. It portrays fifteen major cities of the Holy Land from both east and west of the River Jordan. This magnificent mosaic is second only to Madaba’s world famous mosaic map of Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
Less than 2km north of the fortified town, the highest standing ancient tower of Jordan puzzles the specialists: a 15 metre high, square tower with no door or inner staircase, now inhabited by birds.
Madaba Archaeological Museum
Several neighboring houses built on Byzantine mosaic floors in Madaba were purchased by the Department of Antiquities to form the core of a museum for the city. The site was opened in 1987.
A number of mosaics from Hesban, Ma’in Qastal, and Mount Nebo are on display in the open courtyard of the museum, along with a collection of lonian and Corinthian capitals, and a number of Byzantine collonettes and altars. The museum also houses several collections of pottery, glass, and Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic periods.
 | | A mosaic with Greek writing that reads 'Thalassa', meaning 'Sea'. | An important collection Islamic pottery and bronze vessels found inside a room of the Umm al-Walid was conserved at the Institute of Conservation in Geneva and is now on display in Madaba. There is also a collection of silver Ptolemaic coins from Muraba’ at Musa and a collection of gold Umayyad dinars. Madaba is considered important center of mosaic artistry with large numbers of mosaic floors found all over the ancient city, most famous among them is the map of the Holy Land in the modern Greek Orthodox Church.
To complement the ancient "school of Madaba", a modern school teaching mosaic conservation was established in the city.
Mosaic sites are found surrounding Madaba at Ma’in, Hesban, Siyagha, Mukhayyat, Masuh, Makawer, Nitel, Jamil, and most important at Umm ar-Rasas (ancient Kastorn Mefaa) with its fourteen churches, most of which date to the fifth and sixth centuries AD. The most famous, however, is the Church of St. Stephen dated to the Abbasid period (eighth century AD).
Madaba Folklore Museum
The Madaba Folklore and Archaeological Museums form one complementary unit. They are both located in the same group of old houses built on ancient mosaic floors. The site was opened in 1978.
The museum is composed of:
- The traditional house: the house is built on Byzantine mosaic floors. These include purely geometric designs, a scene showing two peacocks and two rams surrounding a vessel from which two vine scrolls emanate, and a classical mythological scene depicting a dancing Bacchantes and a nude Satyr.
- A room measuring 3.58x5.37m, with a mosaic floor decorated with four trees emanating from the corners and meeting a circle in the center containing a human head. The spaces between the trees have the figures of two birds, two rams, two hares and a bull and lion eating grass together.
- The ethnographic museum is composed of two halls with displays of gold and silver jewellery, cosmetic items, traditional Jordanian costumes, rugs and other traditional household items.
| Religion & Faith
Located just 86 kilometres south of Amman, Madaba has been inhabited for at least 4,500 years and is mentioned in the Bible as the Moabite town of Medeba (Numbers 21:30). After several centuries of Moabite and Nabataean rule, Medeba and the surrounding lands became part of the Roman Province of Arabia with the Emperor Trajan’s conquest of the Nabataean Kingdom in 106 AD.
During the 1st century AD, Christianity spread rapidly through the Roman province of Arabia, but the Romans persecuted believers. Several martyrs died for their beliefs in Madaba, under the orders of Emperor Diocletian. In the 4th century, the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, which then became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire.
During the Byzantine era from the 5th century onwards, Madaba had its own bishop, and numerous churches were constructed from the 6th to the 7th century. Mosaic floors were the hallmark of this era and continued to be made in Madaba until the 8th Century. In 749 AD, a devastating earthquake leveled the city and it was abandoned. In 1897, three Christian families, consisting of a group of 2,000 people, migrated to Madaba from the ancient crusader town of Karak. After that event, the city became predominantly Christian. Numerous mosaics were discovered when new housing and churches were built to provide for the new immigrants.
Sites of religious interest in and around Madaba include:
St. George Greek Orthodox Church
 | | Mosaic map of the Holy Land.
| Situated in the centre of the town, St. George's Greek Orthodox Church contains a remarkable mosaic map that portrays the entire ancient Holy Land dating from 560 AD. The map depicts the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon in the north, to Egypt to the south, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Arabian Desert in the east. The mosaic was discovered in 1897 when a flat area on a hill was chosen on which to build a church.
 | | St. George's Church.
| When the area was cleared for construction, a church foundation and a large mosaic was discovered that represented the floor of an ancient Byzantine church built around 560 AD. The original mosaic was an astounding 15.7x5.6 meters and is at present 15x3 meters. It displays all the major cities and features in the Holy Land with remarkable accuracy. Jerusalem, and all its major features, is the most important city and is placed in the center of the map. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is clearly shown as well as the Cardo Maximus, a colonnaded main street that ran east/west through the center of the Old City. Fragments of the Cardo Maximus, built by the Romans after they destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD, can still be seen in Jerusalem today. There are 157 Greek captions that label most of the important towns and features of the Holy Land at that time. The mosaic also includes the Jordanian towns of Karak and Madaba.
Mount Nebo
 | | The Brazen Serpent Cross at Mt. Nebo.
| According to the final chapter of Deuteronomy, Mount Nebo is where the Hebrew prophet Moses was given a view of the Promised Land that God was giving to the Hebrews. "And Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho." (Deuteronomy 34:1).
According to Jewish and Christian tradition, Moses was buried on this mountain by God himself, and his final resting place is unknown. Scholars continue to dispute whether the mountain currently known as Nebo is the same as the mountain referred to in the Torah.
Islamic belief holds that Musa (Moses) was buried not on the mountain but a few kilometres to the west, somewhere beyond the River Jordan.
 | | The church at Mt. Nebo.
| On the highest point of the mountain, Syagha, the remains of a church and monastery have been uncovered. The church, discovered in 1933, was constructed in the second half of the 4th century to commemorate the place of Moses' death. The church design follows a typical basilica pattern. It was enlarged in the late fifth century A.D. and rebuilt in A.D. 597. The church is first mentioned in an account of a pilgrimage made by a lady Aetheria in A.D. 394.
Six tombs have been found hollowed from the natural rock beneath the mosaic-covered floor of the church. In the present presbytery you can see remnants of mosaic floors from different periods. The earliest of these is a panel with a braided cross presently placed on the east end of the south wall.
 | | The late Pope John Paul II holds a sermon at the presbytery.
| On March 19, 2000, Pope John Paul II visited the site during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land (Mount Nebo being one of the most important Christian sites in Jordan). During his visit he planted an olive tree beside the Byzantine chapel as a symbol of peace.
In addition to Mount Nebo, there are four other holy sites that were designated by the Vatican as Millennium 2000 pilgrimage sites.
The serpentine cross sculpture (the Brazen Serpent Monument) atop Mount Nebo was created by Italian artist, Giovanni Fantoni. It is symbolic of the bronze serpent created by Moses in the wilderness (Numbers 21:4-9) and the cross upon which Jesus was crucified (John 3:14).
Umm Ar Rasas
A rectangular walled city, about 30 kilometres south-east of Madaba, which is mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. It was fortified by the Romans, and local Christians were still embellishing it with Byzantine-style mosaics well over 100 years after the start of the Muslim Umayyad rule.
Most of the city now lies in ruins, but there are several buildings in its eastern part, including churches, a courtyard with a well, staircases and stone arches that have all been excavated and restored. More recent excavations have revealed some of the finest Byzantine church mosaics in the Middle East.
 | | St. Stephen's Church Mosaic. | Just outside the city walls is the recently unearthed Church of Saint Stephen with its perfectly preserved outstanding mosaic floor, the largest of its kind to be discovered in Jordan and second only to the world famous mosaic map at Madaba. The mosaic depicts the images of 27 Old and New Testament cities of the Holy Land, east and west of the River Jordan.
Just two kilometres north of Umm Ar-Rasas is the highest standing ancient tower in Jordan, believed to have been used as a place of solitude by early Christian monks. The tower is 15 metres high and has no door or inner staircase. Today it is inhabited only by flocks of birds.
Dhiban
Known during Biblical times as Dibon, it was the capital of ancient Moab. It is located about 30 kilometres to the south of Madaba, just before the spectacular descent into Wadi Mujib - aptly dubbed as Jordan’s Grand Canyon.
The site comprises two hills: the southern hill, which is now occupied by the modern town and the northern hill which was excavated in the 1950s and 1960s. Excavations indicate that this site was occupied in the Early Bronze Age (c.3000 BC), with no evidence that it was occupied in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages (c.1950-1250 BC).
According to the Biblical account, Dibon was captured from the Moabites by Sihon, King of the Amorites (Numbers 21: 21-30), who in turn was overthrown by the Israelites. Omri, King of Israel, subdued Moab and his heirs, until Mesha, the king of Moab who was residing in Dibon, revolted and extended his kingdom northwards as far as Nebo. To celebrate his victory, Mesha built a new royal quarter, which he called Qarhoh (the prominent).
It included a highplace for the Moabite god Kemosh, a palace, an acropolis with gates and towers, and houses for his people. He also set up a stela recounting his achievements. The basalt stone stela was discovered in 1868 and now graces the Louvre Museum in Paris. It is the longest known Moabite inscription. The Bible describes King Mesha as a sheep-breeder who “had to deliver annually to the King of Israel a hundred thousand lambs, and the wool of a hundred thousand rams” (2 Kings 3:4). This together with the story of Ruth (Ruth 1: 1-5) attests to Moab’s agricultural productivity.
In 731 BC, Moab was under Assyrian domination. Later, Moab joined a general revolt against the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, which led to the state’s destruction in 582 BC, five years after the sack of Jerusalem.
For about five centuries the site was deserted. Prosperity returned to Dibon under the Nabataeans, who built a fine temple at the southeastern quadrant of the hill. Also the walls on the summit of the site were rebuilt as was a north gate. Two inscriptions and the remains of a bath indicate there was a Roman garrison here in the 3rd century. Architectural features from the Byzantine and subsequent Ommayad periods include the remains of a 6th century church and two small domed structures. In the 19th century, the village relocated to the south hill, using the ancient tell as a burial ground. | |
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