Monday, July 05, 2021

Ghost roads on the Madaba Map?

HOLY HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY: Why Roads Aren't Marked on the Madaba Map, the Earliest Map of the Holy Land. In the 6th century, the earliest map depicting the Land of Israel was created – the only map from the first millennium depicting a country in full, but what purpose did it serve? (Pnina Arad, Haaretz).
What we have here is a picture that combines topography and religious tradition, and that eliminates the gaps between past and present. The inscriptions create a narrative that seemed to have two aims: to place the past of the Scriptures in the geographic space of the land, and to conceptualize that land as a sacred space.
PaleoJudaica posts on the Madaba Map are here and links (cf. here).

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