The Madaba Mosaic Map in the St. George Church

 

In the center it reads in red: ΒΗΘΛΕΕΜ (Greek for Bethlehem)

St. George is an early Byzantine church in Madaba, Jordan. Church an map date back to the period between 542 and 570 [1]. As being a mosaic it survived the vicissitudes of time and is „the oldest surviving original cartographic depiction of the Holy Land and especially Jerusalem“ nowadays. During the 8th century some figural motifs had been removed, but the city had been abandoned after a devasting earthquake in 746.

In red one can read ΗΑΓΙΑΠΟΛΙΣΙΕΡΟΥΣΑ[ΛΉΜ],
which means Holy City of Jerusa(lem)

Map used in an anjacent room of the museum
to avoid explanation inside the church

In 1884 the mosaic was rediscovered during the excavations on occation of the building of a new Orthodox Church on the old site. During the 1960ies German archeologists were working on the restauration and conservation of the mosaic (Heinz Cüppers and Herbert Donner). There is an interesting work in German by Jana Vogt [2]. About 150 towns and villages are depicted on the map. Even without knowing ancient Greek one can decipher quite a lot of biblical locations.

The rather unobtrusive church

Artisan working on the Jerusalem part of a mosaic replica

Modern mosaic replica of the whole map

Links and Annotations:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madaba_Map    
[2] https://www.grin.com/document/59736 cited in [1] as: Jana Vogt: Architekturmosaiken am Beispiel der drei jordanischen Städte Madaba, Umm al-Rasas und Gerasa. Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald, Greifswald 2004 (Hausarbeit – seminar paper)

.