Jordan: Mt. Nebo and Madaba

As we traveled from Amman to Petra we made several stops along the way. The first was to Mt. Nebo, where Moses once stood and gazed over the Promised Lands. Wow! It was an amazing experience and we felt so blessed to have the opportunity to visit this historic site. We wandered around the grounds for an hour or so, just soaking in all the beauty of the views around us.
Our next stop was in Madaba, the city of mosaics. Our driver's family had a store in Madaba, so we stopped in to visit and then he took us to the St. George's church to see one of the oldest mosaics in existence. We had a little time to meander through the streets and browse in the shops. We picked up a beautiful mosaic of Jerusalem for Isaac's dad here, and we were very excited about the purchase and couldn't wait to see how it would look in his office at the new church.
Jihad had told us we would stop for lunch along the way, and we were just leaving Madaba around 4:00, so we were all getting really hungry by this point. About an hour later we pulled off at a roadside restaurant to eat. The sprawling restaurant boasted a large gift shop, and we found a beautiful Jerusalem mosaic for ourselves, as well as a lovely tree-patterned mosaic for my mom. When our meals came we gobbled them down... completely unaware of the effects they would have on us later...

*Jihad gave us a wonderful informational packet called Jordan: Religion and Faith, produced by the Jordan tourism board. It contained a wealth of information about the religious and historical significance of sites we visited. I pulled some direct quotes from this book, which will all be italicized below. If you would like to access the Jordan tourism site to learn more, you can visit their website, www.visitjordan.com




Mt. Nebo was the final station in Moses' historic flight from Egypt to the Holy Land. Another name for Mt. Nebo is Pisgah (Siyagha in Arabic).

And Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mt. Nebo, to the top of Pisgah which is the opposite of Jericho. Deuteronomy 34:1

Mount Nebo became a place of pilgrimage for early Christians from Jerusalem and a small church was built there to commemorate the end of Moses' life. Some of the stones from the church remain in their original place in athe wall around the apse area. The church was subsequently expanded in the 5th and 6th centuries into the present day large basilica with its stunning collection of Byzantine mosaics.









The Moses Memorial Church at Mt. Nebo




Looking over the Promised Lands... the picture does not do this breathtaking view justice.

From Mt. Nebo's windswept pomontory, overlooking the Dead Sea, the Jordan River Valley, Jericho, and the distant hills of Jerusalem, Moses viewed the Holy Land of Canaan that he would never enter. He died and was buried in Moab, but his tomb remains unknown. After consulting the oracle, Jeremiah reportedly hid the Ark of the Covenant, the Tent, and the Alter of Incense at Mt. Nebo.




The Serpentine Cross, which stands just outside the sanctuary, is symbolic of the bronze (or brazen) serpent taken by Moses into the desert and the cross upon which Jesus was crucified. During the exodus, God instructed Moses to erect a bronze serpent on a pole to stop a plague he had sent to kill the rebellious Israelites. All who looked up at the serpent were spared death. The curative serpent wrapped around a pole would later become the symbol of the pharmaceutical industry. The raised serpent would also be recalled in the New Testament as a precursor to the lifting of Jesus on the cross- giving life to all who looked up to the raised figure.









Walking through Madaba
Madaba and its hinterlands were repeatedly mentioned in the Old Testament as Medeba. Ut is featured in narratives elated to Moses and the Exodus, David's war against the Moabites, Isaiah's oracle against Moab, and King Mesha of Moab's rebellion against Israel. Some of the finest art of the early Christian centuries can still be seen in Madaba city and its surrounding regions in central Jordan. Between the 4th and 7th centuries AD, the prosperous ecclesiastical center of Madaba produced one of the world's finest collections of Byzantine mosaics, many fine examples of which are well preserved. Madaba is dubbed "The City of Mosaics."










St. George's Church in Madaba




Madaba's real masterpiece, in the Orthodox Church of St. George, is the 6th century AD mosaic map of Jerusalem and the Holy Land- the earliest religious map of the Holy Land in any form to survive from antiquity.



"The Restaurant" =P