Middle East
A firsthand guide to Jordan's Holy Land, the cluster of biblical sites around Madaba: Mount Nebo where Moses saw the Promised Land, the Byzantine Madaba Map, the baptism site at Bethany Beyond the Jordan, and floating in the Dead Sea.
Scenes from Jordan's Holy Land, from Mount Nebo to the Dead Sea, captured on my trip.
Jordan's Holy Land
Everyone books Jordan for Petra and Wadi Rum. Far fewer realize that the country holds a string of major biblical sites, most of them within an hour of each other, on the quiet eastern side of the Jordan River. We spent a day working through five of them, from the hilltop where Moses is said to have seen the Promised Land to the lowest point on the surface of the Earth.
Where did Moses see the Promised Land?
Mount Nebo. This is the ridge where, according to Deuteronomy, Moses looked out over Canaan after forty years in the desert, was told he would never enter it, and died in the land of Moab with his burial place left unknown. On a clear day the view still delivers: the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea, Jericho, and the distant hills of Jerusalem. Christians have been climbing up here to remember Moses since the 4th century, when the first church was built on the summit, making it one of the oldest continuous pilgrimage sites in Jordan. The modern memorial protects a remarkable set of Byzantine floor mosaics, and the abstract Serpentine Cross outside nods to the bronze serpent Moses raised in the wilderness.
Why is Madaba called the City of Mosaics?
Because it is carpeted in them. In the Byzantine period Madaba was a wealthy Christian town, and its churches and houses were floored with elaborate mosaic scenes, many of which have survived under later construction and are still being uncovered. Walk the town today and you will find workshops cutting stone by the same method their ancestors used 1,500 years ago. It is the best place in Jordan to understand how ordinary this art form once was here.
What is the Madaba Map?
The single greatest thing in Madaba lies on the floor of St George's Greek Orthodox Church. The Madaba Map is the oldest surviving map of the Holy Land, a Byzantine mosaic laid around 560 AD from more than two million individual stones. It shows the region from Lebanon to the Nile, oriented east rather than north, with Jerusalem enlarged at the center in astonishing architectural detail. It was rediscovered in 1884 when the new church was being built, and only about a quarter of it survives today. Here is the part that makes it worth the stop: it charts the Dead Sea and the baptism site you can go stand in later the same day. You are looking at a 1,500-year-old map of the exact ground under your feet.
Where was Jesus baptized?
At Bethany Beyond the Jordan, known in Arabic as Al-Maghtas, on the east bank of the Jordan River. This is the site the Vatican recognizes as the place where John the Baptist baptized Jesus, and in 2015 it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List. A rival tradition places the baptism on the west bank in Israel, and the two sit almost within sight of each other across a river now narrow enough to wade in places. What survives on the Jordan side is a quiet complex of Byzantine churches, chapels, pools, and pilgrim stations built up around the event over two thousand years.
Can you actually float in the Dead Sea?
You cannot do anything but float. The Dead Sea is the lowest point on the surface of the Earth, sitting around 430 meters below sea level, and its water is roughly 34 percent salt, close to ten times saltier than the ocean. That density makes sinking physically impossible, so you bob like a cork whether you want to or not. Nothing lives in it, which is where the name comes from. Go soon, because the sea is dropping by about a meter every year as the Jordan River that feeds it is diverted upstream.
How do you visit Jordan's holy sites?
All five cluster around Madaba, less than an hour from Amman, which makes them easy to string together in a single day. A logical loop runs Madaba and St George's Church first, then Mount Nebo ten minutes away, then down to the baptism site and the Dead Sea shore below it. If you only have time for one, make it St George's for the map, then let the map send you to the rest.
Where should you stay near Jordan's holy sites?
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