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Another reconsideration of the Madaba map
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 March 2023
Abstract
It has recently been claimed that the Madaba map illustrates notions of law and ownership, and that it was displayed in a hall with secular functions. The present article rejects this claim, asserting that while we have insufficient evidence for determining the building's context, the map speaks in religious language. I argue that the Madaba map conveyed the very same message communicated by both early Christian typological imagery and Palestinian pilgrimage art, suggesting that apart from conceptualizing the topography of Palestine in religious terms and as a sacred space, the map gave expression to the theological notion of Fulfilment.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham
Footnotes
I am very grateful to Professor Ingela Nilsson for her meticulous editing of the manuscript, as well as to the anonymous readers whose advice greatly helped me to sharpen the argument.
References
1 The description of the sequence of events is based on Y. Meimaris, ‘The discovery of the Madaba mosaic map: mythology and reality’, in M. Piccirillo and E. Alliata (eds), The Madaba Map Centenary, 1897–1997: travelling through the Byzantine Umayyad period (Jerusalem 1999) 25–36 (25–33), and on Clermont-Ganneau, C., ‘The Madaba mosaic’, Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement 29.3 (1897) 213–25 (213–17)Google Scholar.
2 Bliss, F., ‘Narrative of an expedition to Moab and Gilead in March, 1885’, Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement 27. 3 (1895) 203–35 (212)Google Scholar; Schumacher, G., ‘Madaba’, Mitteilungen und Nachrichten des deutschen Palästinavereins 18 (1895) 113–25Google Scholar (114, pl. B).
3 K. M. Koikylides, Ὁ ἐν Μαδηβᾷ μωσαϊκὸς καὶ γεωγραφικὸς περὶ Συρίας, Παλαστίνης, καὶ Αἰγύπτου χάρτης (Jerusalem 1897) fig. after 26; Lagrange, M. J., ‘La mosaïque géographique de Mâdaba’, Revue biblique 6.2 (1897) 165–84 (167)Google Scholar.
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5 F. Bliss (the author of fig. 1), for example, who visited the site in 1895, reported that the Greeks intended to ‘rebuild’ the church ‘on the old lines’, but, on the other hand, Father Paul de St Aignan of the Franciscan Convent of Jerusalem, who was about to publish the Koikilides/Arvanitakis report in 1897, reported to Ch. Clermont Ganneau that there was no exact ‘symmetry’ between both buildings; see Bliss, ‘Narrative of an expedition’, 8; Paul de St Aignan's letter is published in a translation into English in Clermont-Ganneau, ‘The Madaba mosaic’, 217.
6 Leal, B., ‘A reconsideration of the Madaba map’, Gesta 57.2 (2018) 123–43 (126)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 M. Avi-Yonah, The Madaba Mosaic Map: with introduction and commentary (Jerusalem 1954).
8 Ibid., 14.
9 For a detailed explanation, see ibid., 10–15.
10 Ibid., 15 n. 28.
11 Leal, ‘A reconsideration’, 126, n. 13.
12 Ibid., 134, n. 56. It should be emphasized that Avi-Yonah reprinted the Koikylides/Arvanitakis plan as part of his reconsideration of the nineteenth-century plans and in relation to his own reconstruction, which appears on the next page.
13 Ibid., 134.
14 Ibid., 124.
15 Ibid., 135.
16 Ibid., 136.
17 Ibid., 137.
18 Ibid., 134, n. 53.
19 Ibid., 134.
20 ‘Koikylides and Arvanitakis’ belief’ was based on information they had received from Athanasios Andreakis, who, as noted by Meimaris (‘The discovery’, 30), did not produce any plan to prove the existence of these two phases.
21 Quote from Leal, ‘A reconsideration’, 135.
22 Ibid., 137.
23 Ibid., 137.
24 Ibid., 138.
25 Ibid., 139.
26 Ibid., 140.
27 Clermont-Ganneau, ‘The Madaba mosaic’, 224.
28 Avi-Yonah, The Madaba mosaic, 15.
29 Ibid., 11 and 16.
30 Leal, ‘A reconsideration’, 127. The same opinion is held by G. W. Bowersock, Mosaics as History: the Near East from Late Antiquity to Islam (Cambridge MA 2006) 17, and by H. Dey, ‘Urban armatures, urban vignettes: the interpermeation of the reality and the ideal of the late antique metropolis’, in S. Birk, T. Myrup Kristensen and B. Poulsen (eds), Using Images in Late Antiquity (Oxford 2014) 197.
31 Meimaris, ‘The discovery’, 30; Leal directs us to this statement (‘A reconsideration’, 127, n. 20).
32 Ibid.
33 Leal, ‘A reconsideration’, 127. It should also be noted that Leal's fig. 11 somewhat contradicts her other statement, in which she says that ‘it would certainly have been possible for Asia Minor to have been depicted at a condensed scale, much as Egypt is at the southern edge of the map’; ibid.
34 Ibid., 139.
35 J. Simon, ‘Images of the built landscape in the Later Roman world’, PhD Diss., University of Oxford, 2012, 23.
37 Kramer, B., ‘The earliest known map of Spain (?) and the geography of Artemidorus of Ephesus on papyrus’, Imago Mundi 53 (2001) 115–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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39 R. J. A. Talbert, Rome's World: the Peutinger map reconsidered (Cambridge 2010) 144–7.
40 For details and a list of Madaba map's ‘latent’ roads, see Avi-Yonah, The Madaba Mosaic, 28–30.
41 References to some views of whether this ‘map’ was graphic or textual are given in L. Di Segni, ‘The “Onomasticon” of Eusebius and the Madaba map’, in Piccirillo and Alliata, The Madaba Map Centenary, 114–20 (119, n. 6, n. 7).
42 Tsafrir, Y., ‘The maps used by Theodosius: on the pilgrim maps of the Holy Land and Jerusalem in the sixth century C.E.’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 40 (1986) 129–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar (135–6).
43 See, for example, R. Talgam, Mosaics of Faith: floors of Pagans, Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and Muslims in the Holy Land (Jerusalem 2014) 240.
44 C. Delano-Smith, ‘Milieus of mobility: itineraries, route maps, and road maps’, in J. R. Akerman (ed.), Cartographies of Travel and Navigation (Chicago 2006) 16–68 (38–9).
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48 Avi-Yonah, The Madaba mosaic, 10. This suggestion was widely accepted. See, for example, Donceel-Voûte, P., ‘La carte de Madaba: cosmographie, anachronisme et propagande’, Revue Biblique 95.4 (1988) 519–42 (520–1)Google Scholar; L. Brubaker, ‘The conquest of space’, in R. Macrides (ed.), Travel in the Byzantine World (Aldershot 2002) 235–57 (236–7).
49 For a detailed identification of streets, gates, and churches in the city vignette, see Y. Tsafrir, ‘The holy city of Jerusalem in the Madaba map mosaic’, in Piccirillo and Alliata, The Madaba Map Centenary, 155–63; Avi-Yonah, The Madaba mosaic, 50–60.
50 Considering the Christian traditions associated with the column at the Damascus Gate in Byzantine Jerusalem (a marker of the center of the world), one may interpret the emphasis placed upon it as part of this strategy; for this column, see ibid., 52.
51 For a recent interpretation of this mosaic, see Moskvina, A., ‘Liturgy and movement: the complex associated with St Stephen's Church at Umm er-Rasas, Jordan’, Convivium 3.2 (2016) 68–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
52 The inscriptions are usually used in research as a source for historical geography and in discussions on the map's literary sources; see e.g. Avi-Yonah, The Madaba Mosaic, 35–77; H. Donner, The Mosaic Map of Madaba: an introductory guide (Kampen 1992) 36–98; Piccirillo and Alliata, The Madaba Map Centenary, 48–101.
53 I use the translation given in Avi-Yonah, The Madaba Mosaic, 35–77.
54 Three Egyptian martyrs executed in AD 310 and buried in Ashkelon; see J. Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (Warminster 1977) 85 and n. 41.
55 Ibid., 85 and n. 42.
56 Identification of the biblical quotations by Avi-Yonah, The Madaba mosaic, 26–7.
57 Ibid., 28
58 Ibid., 72.
59 Ibid., 71.
60 Ibid., 44,
61 Avi-Yonah, The Madaba Mosaic, 72.
62 E. Klostermann (ed.), Das Onomastikon der Biblischen Ortsnamen (Leipzig 1904; repr. 1966) 64, 24–5, 65, 1–7 (Gilgal); 6, 8–16 and 76, 1–3 (the Oak of Mamre); 52, 1–5 (the place where the eunuch was baptized).
63 P. Brown, The Cult of the Saints: its rise and function in Latin Christianity (Chicago 1981) 86.
64 In a sense, the Madaba map expressed not only Christian notions regarding the sacred topography of Palestine, but also a Greco-Roman approach, regarding the identity of a place as a construct of memories from the past. For that concept, see K. Clarke, Between Geography and History: Hellenistic construction of the Roman world (Oxford 1999) 245–93. For the complex relationship of the Byzantines to Hellenistic traditions of geographical spaces, see Papadopoulos, A. G., ‘Exploring Byzantine cartographies: ancient science, Christian cosmology, and geopolitics in Byzantine imperial-era mapping’, Essays in Medieval Studies 27 (2011) 117–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the Madaba map's entire narrative and message, as well as the map's potential to encourage typological interpretations associated with the specific biblical events, see P. Arad, Christian Maps of the Holy Land: images and meanings (Turnhout 2020) 16–23.
65 The quotation is from Spain, S., ‘“The promised blessing”: the iconography of the Mosaics of S. Maria Maggiore’, Art Bulletin 61.4 (1979) 518–40 (525)Google Scholar.
66 J. Elsner, Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph: the art of the Roman empire, ad 100–450 (Oxford 1998) 228.
67 Most of the surviving ampullae are kept in two church treasuries in Bobbio and in Monza in northern Italy; major publications include A. Grabar, Ampoules de Terre Sainte (Monza–Bobbio) (Paris 1958); Weitzmann, K., ‘Loca sancta and the representational arts of Palestine’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 28 (1974) 35–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; G. Vikan, Byzantine Pilgrimage Art (Washington 1982) 10–14; C. Hahn, ‘Loca sancta souvenirs: sealing the pilgrim's experience’, in R. Ousterhout (ed.), The Blessings of Pilgrimage (Urbana 1990) 86–95. The Vatican wooden box was published in C. R. Morey, ‘The painted panel from Sancta Sanctorum’, in W. Worringer, H. Reiners, and L. Seligmann (eds), Festschrift zum sechzigsten Geburtstag von Paul Clemen, 31. Oktober 1926 (Bonn 1926) 150–67; Weitzmann, ‘Loca sancta’; Fricke, B., ‘Tales from stones, travels through time: narrative and vision in the casket from the Vatican’, West 86th 21.2 (2014) 230–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
68 To use John Elsner's words on this type of ampullae; Elsner, J., ‘Replicating Palestine and reversing the reformation: pilgrimage and collecting at Bobbio, Monza and Walsingham’, Journal of the History of Collections 9.1 (1997) 117–29 (121)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
69 Dating of the inscriptions ranges from the sixth to the eleventh centuries; for the different suggestions, see Fricke, ‘Tales from stones’, 234 and n. 16.
70 Ibid., 234 and 241.