MADABA
"Who fished the murex up?
What porridge had John Keats?"
R. BROWNING
After fourteen hours in the saddle we were thankful to dismount at the
friendly door of the presbytery at Madaba, where, by kind permission of
the Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem, we were admitted to enjoy the
hospitality of the parish priest, a Piedmontese, and his assistant, an
Arab, both speaking excellent French, as well as Italian, the official
language of the patriarchal clergy.
We found their reception room crowded with a group of some dozen
villagers, prominent among whom was a dignified-looking shech, who at
once claimed acquaintance with the Professor, and proved to have been
his guide in this district upon a former occasion. He was engaged in a
discussion with the priests, which we had evidently interrupted, and the
moment opportunity permitted he returned to his point. There was nothing
discourteous in his persistence, he was obviously attempting to make a
bargain, and the price offered had already, we were told, reached 200
francs. The priest met all his advances with a decided negative, which
grew more and more imperative as time went on, but time is of no value
to an Arab, and we could not but be reminded of the parable of the
importunate widow. After a time, at the express desire of our hosts,
they all withdrew into an outer room while we enjoyed our much-needed
refreshment, but when we afterwards went out to look about us they
returned to the charge, and we even found them still at it next morning.
The very delicate point at issue was afterwards explained to us. The
man, a member of the Eastern branch of the Church, desired to marry his
niece, and having failed—after perhaps equal pertinacity in enforcing
his point—in obtaining permission from his own priest had come to see
whether it might be worth his while to change his religious views, in
hope of receiving the sanction of the Latins. Apparently he thought the
real question at issue was "How much?"—and from time to time, after
consultation with his companions, he would raise his bid by a few
piasters. Again and again the priests roundly assured him it was of no
avail; he was not to be convinced, and when we finally rode away he was
sitting on a stone by the door of the presbytery. It would have been
interesting to know what were the special attractions of the lady for
whom he was willing to venture so much.
Madaba may best be described as a village of what, in England, we should
call "squatters." They are Christian exiles from the Moslem town of
Kerak, who, about 1880, took possession of a city which had been in
ruins some thirteen hundred years, having been devastated, according to
a learned monograph upon the subject by the Dominican Père Séjourné,
most probably by Chosroes, in his destructive march to or from the
north. The present population, of some 900, of whom about two-thirds are
Greeks, the rest Latins, occupies a small hill about 100 feet in height,
of which almost a third is debris. The new residents, in digging for
foundations, have brought to light a great deal that is of extreme
interest and, as naturally follows, have destroyed still more. Dr Bliss,
referring to the article of Père Séjourné, and describing the town in
1895, observes that certain ruins have disappeared in the meantime, and
we, in turn, failed to find others which appear in the sketches of
Professor Brünnow, also of 1895.
Madaba is undoubtedly a place very precious to the archæologist; to the
merely æsthetic it is disappointing and sad. The ruin, the débris, the
desecration, the filth of the last quarter of a century force themselves
upon our consciousness to a degree difficult to overcome, and it
requires an effort, of which we were little conscious elsewhere, to
realise its former dignity. When Joshua was old and well stricken in
years it must have been a little discouraging to him to learn that,
besides other large tracts of country in this district, "all the plain
of Madaba unto Dibân" remained to be possessed. Mesha, King of Dibân,
over six hours' ride to the south, mentions upon the famous Moabite
stone (897 B.C.) that it belonged to the Israelites in his period, the
reign of Omri, but it afterwards passed into the possession of the
Moabites, and, still later, into that of the Nabateans, who came hither
from the south of Arabia. Madaba withstood Hyrcanus during a siege of
six months about a century before Christ, and, during the Christian era,
was the seat of a bishopric. Early in the seventh century, like many
places on this side of Jordan, it disappears from history.
Madaba must have been a town of some importance, although the space
enclosed within its walls was barely a quarter of a mile square. Père
Séjourné, the Dominican archæologist, saw gates on the north and east
which have disappeared, but indications remain of the existence of four.
The population was well provided for as to water, for, in addition to
two smaller reservoirs, a pool at the S.W. angle measures 108 yards
long, by 103 yards wide, and 13 feet deep. It is now used as a field for
the cultivation of tobacco, for as long as it served its original
purpose it was the cause of constant feuds with the Bedu. There was a
street of columns 150 yards in length. Bliss and Baedeker mention five
churches, the Père Curé told us he had evidence of the existence of
eight, for which almost disproportionate number the bishopric may
account. The piety of to-day takes another form. Schumacher, in a
valuable monograph (1895), relates that the former curé, Pater Biever,
describing his ten years' experience among the people, related that the
hardest things to teach them had been not to bring their sabres and
other weapons into church and not to greet him, if they chanced to
arrive while service was proceeding, with the usual respectful but
loud-voiced, _Marhabā jā chūre!_—"May thy path be broad, O priest!"
When he enunciated the teaching, "Love your enemies, do good to those
that hate you," an old shech called out: "Halt, priest! you can preach
that to the old women." In certain respects the people of Madaba stand
higher than the Christians west of the Jordan, and offences against
morality are very rare—among the genuine Bedu they are almost unknown.
Monogamy is the rule in Madaba, though in Kerak, whence the people come,
polygamy is found even among Christians, and among others is quite usual.
In matters of peace and warfare they observe the rules of the Bedu, and
Schumacher quotes interesting examples of what he truly calls the sound
views of honour and manliness, to be noticed even among the wild customs
of these children of nature.
Their absolute disregard of the beautiful, their indifference to the
abominations of their surroundings, is almost incredible. Chickens and
goats defile the most exquisite mosaics; a Corinthian capital, picked up
by chance, is inserted between an unhewn stone and a slab of marble; a
squalid hut has a carved lintel. Père Séjourné points out that in a
small church, which Bliss describes as the most interesting which he
visited, an inscription reveals the age of the building, and serves, so
to speak, as a _point de repère_ for others. It recites that "the mosaic
work of this sanctuary and of the holy house of the altogether pure
Sovereign Mother of God has been made by the care and the zeal of this
town of Madaba ... in the month of February of the year 674, indication
5"—that is, 362 of our present era. Another church, portions of which
have to be sought for in several different dwellings, has been regarded
as the cathedral; it is 125 feet long, with aisles twice the breadth of
the nave, which is 29 feet, all in Corinthian style.
But the _pièce de résistance_ at Madaba, the goal of the savant's
pilgrimage, is the celebrated mosaic—the Madaba map—which, discovered in
1884, was not known to the public till 1897. We were armed with a letter
from the Greek patriarch desiring that the Professor and his party might
have every assistance in their investigations. We accordingly made our
way to the Greek church at the foot of the rising ground upon which the
town is built. They had not been aware of our coming, and suggested
that, in order that suitable preparations might be made, we should
return next day, which was, unfortunately, impossible. By the time that
a solid mass of dust and dirt had been laboriously removed (for the
means taken for the preservation of the mosaic, render it accessible
only in detached sections, each covered by glass) the twilight was so
far advanced that we saw it very imperfectly, and are glad therefore not
to depend upon our own impressions for a description. It is a map, in
fine mosaic, of Palestine, including a part of Lower Egypt, much broken
and injured at the edges, and, obviously, reduced in extent. It serves,
at present, as part of the flooring of the Greek church, but, on account
of its value, as possibly the oldest map of Palestine in existence, it
is, very properly, covered in with glass, on a principle strongly
resembling a cucumber frame.
The colours, which are various, and arranged with a view to science
rather than to art, are as fresh as the day they were laid, and the
mosaic is a combination of a map, a picture, and a ground plan.
Père Cléopas, a Greek priest, who is spoken of as the discoverer,
although it had been locally known for thirteen years, thus describes
it: "The artist was not content to give simply the names of the towns,
but, moreover, with careful pains, he shows the form, size, and plan of
any town of importance; and further how many doors and gates it has,
whether these lie to east or west, what important buildings it contains,
what is their style, and what is the old name of the town, as well as
that in use; where hills are found and where plains; where rivers and
brooks and forests; where springs and where hot springs; where ponds and
lakes; where boats and ships; where palms and where bananas; all these,
in their natural colours, are exactly indicated upon the map."
It is worth while to give some short account of the Madaba map, not only
because the history is interesting in itself, but because it is
thoroughly typical of much which happens in this country. The facts are
taken from a _Mémoire_ presented by Mons. Clermont-Ganneau to the French
Academy, and subsequently published in the _Recueil d'Archéologie
Orientale_.
The discoverer of the mosaic was a Greek monk, of whom the very name has
been forgotten, and who, in 1884, communicated the fact to the Greek
Patriarch, who took no notice whatever. One feels little regret that
this worthy ecclesiastic was, later, exiled to Constantinople, and
succeeded by the patriarch Gerasimos, who, in 1890, six years after the
original discovery, found the letter, and immediately sent off an
architect with orders that the mosaic should be included in the church
about to be erected at Madaba. We have the testimony of four monks that,
at this time, the mosaic was almost complete, but the intelligent
workman destroyed much of it in order to lay the foundations of the
church, sacristy, and out-buildings; broke up part to insert a pilaster,
and left much of the bordering, with its decorations of biblical
imagery, outside. He then returned, with the assurance that the mosaic
was unimportant.
Another six years elapsed, and Father Cléopas, librarian of the Greek
patriarchate, who chanced to be arranging a visit to Jericho, was
prevailed upon by Monsignor Gerasimos, who had never lost interest in
the reported discovery, to continue his journey as far as Madaba, in
order to report upon it. He returned in January 1897, thirteen years
after the original discovery, bringing with him a sketch of the map, and
some notes. M. Arvanitaki, a professional map-maker, was at once
despatched to make a drawing. He was a Greek, a member of the
Astronomical Society of France, and an accomplished linguist, a matter
of great importance when abbreviations and contractions had to be
correctly rendered. Before his work could be finished the patriarch
died, and the geometer, not being new to the little ways of Jerusalem,
was about to abandon an undertaking which any succeeding patriarch might
possibly repudiate, but was, fortunately, encouraged by the Franciscans,
who undertook to translate the MS. of Père Cléopas into French, and to
publish the work of the artist in twelve sheets of half-a-metre square.
This was successfully accomplished by means of Lumière's orthochromatic
plates, and was forwarded to the Academy of France on the 16th of March.
The story of the misfortunes of the map was, however, not yet complete.
The Greek patriarchate claimed the original drawings, and the negatives
were broken on their way to Paris. M. Clermont-Ganneau, however,
succeeded in reproducing them, and made them the basis of a
communication to the Institute, and so of introducing the valuable
"find" to the archæological world.
Meantime, Père Vincent, of the Dominican Order in Jerusalem, had made
another drawing, which was published in pamphlet form with a monograph
by his learned colleague, Père Lagrange, collaborating with Père Cléopas
himself. A further record was made, also early in March, by Père Germer
Durand, of the Assumptionist Order, who also laid a complete photograph
before the Academy of France, consisting of ten sheets, taken from
above, a light scaffolding having been erected for the purpose, an
experiment pronounced in the _Mémoire_ as having been "carried out in
the most satisfactory manner possible." Within two months, therefore, of
the visit of Père Cléopas, the mosaic, neglected for thirteen years, had
been the subject of three separate monographs. The representative of the
English Palestine Exploration Fund made a visit to Madaba which was
wholly unsuccessful, but the German architect, Paul Palmer, of
Jerusalem, assisted by a couple of artists, succeeded in triumphing over
many difficulties, political as well as mechanical, and has made a
reproduction of the map, of the original size and colouring, which now
hangs, by the desire of the patriarch, in the Greek School at Jerusalem,
where it is accessible to all comers, an object of permanent value to
scholars and archæologists.
The discovery has naturally given rise to a vast amount of discussion,
and has involved much reconsideration of earlier topographical
conclusions. We can never sufficiently regret all that has been so
gratuitously lost, although, in Palestine, one necessarily becomes
somewhat hardened to losses of the kind. Trustworthy witnesses who saw
the map before the mutilation recently inflicted concur in testifying
that it originally recorded the position of Ephesus, Smyrna, and
Constantinople, showing that it must have included Asia Minor and the
Bosphorus.
And so we wrangle and regret; we take long journeys to see this marvel
of the science of at least thirteen hundred years ago; we dispute who
shall be accounted the first to perceive its worth; what nation first
presented the facts to the world; what bearing they have upon the
learning of to-day; and, meantime, the name of the discoverer, though he
may still be living, is never mentioned, and no one thinks of the human
soul that imagined, the human hands that wrought—the nameless Byzantine
priest into whose labours we have entered!
"Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats.
Both gorge. Who fished the murex up?
What porridge had John Keats?"