Jordan: Madaba

There are so many ancient mosaics in Madaba that, before you dig to build a foundation for a new house, you have to contact the antiquities bureau so they can deal with all the ancient mosaics you're going to find buried in the earth. If you love ancient mosaics, Madaba is the place for you.

We made two stops in Madaba, the first one to see what is called the "Madaba map" which is a floor mosaic in the church of St George that is from the 6th century CE. It is the oldest extant map of the holy land. It's oriented to the points of a compass instead of with north facing the top of the church, so north is actually kind of to the left when you're facing the front of the church. It's a map of the middle east, with Jerusalem being a prominent feature in it - it's not to scale so Jerusalem is allowed to take up a huge space.

Below are some pictures of the map, followed by some other mosaics hanging in the church of St George:



The church itself, with the map in the front on the floor:



Sorry we should have taken a picture of the guide to what was on the map, which was in english.

Our second stop was at the Madaba Archaeological Park. The church of the Virgin Mary is in this open-air museum, with its mosaic floor that was discovered beneath somebody's house in the 19th century (see why the antiquities bureau is always involved when houses are built?). This church is from the 6th century CE and the mosaic on its floor from the 8th century. Here are some pictures of that floor mosaic:



There are also some floor mosaics from Hippolytus Hall, from the 6th century as well:



The park also contains the crypt of St Elianus from ~600CE (the church that stood above it is in ruins, only the crypt is left). In this crypt are, duh, more mosaics, including a tree of life at the bottom of the stairs that led into the crypt from the church:



A peacock on the floor of the crypt, obviously part of a much larger mosaic:



And, finally, looking at mosaics made us hungry so our driver found us the best falafel in Madaba. He knew all the places that the locals went to and never disappointed us with what he scrounged up for lunch or snacks when we were hungry.