On our last full day in Jordan, we travelled to the Jordan Valley from Petra with a few stops along the way.
Madaba – St. George’s Church
Our first stop was in the village of Madaba, just south of Amman to visit St. George’s Church. This newer church was built over the restored ruins of a sixth century church which contained an amazing mosaic map of the Middle East. The Madaba Mosaic Map is the oldest surviving original cartographic depiction of the Holy Land. It was estimated to originally be 21m by 7m and contain over 2 million mosaic stones. Some parts of it have been destroyed due to earthquakes, fires, and neglect during Muslim rule, but about 16m by 5m remain in a patchwork sort of way. Archeological finds in areas depicted on this map have verified its accuracy, especially with regards to Jerusalem.
The church entrance and the board explaining the remains of the mosaic map.
The original floor.
The church itself was also adorned with lots of mosaic icons/pictures that are more modern. The mosaic tradition is strong in this area.
Mount Nebo
Speaking of mosaics, they are also found in and around Mount Nebo. Mount Nebo is the mountain where it was traditionally believed that Moses died, overlooking the Jordan Valley into the Promised Land. On the way to the church on Mount Nebo we stopped at a mosaic store called Tree of Life. One of the co-founders is confined to a wheelchair and the shop was opened to allowed artists, especially those with disabilities, to work there and have their art displayed.
We got an explanation of how the work is painstakingly done The work is done upside down, with the artist using a paste on each stone and placing it down onto a special cloth so that all the flat surfaces are down. When the mosaic is done, the face up back is glued together and it is than flipped and the front cloth and paste are removed and the stones polished. This allows it to be as flat as possible on front face side. The guy doing the demo was actually the co-founder and he was wearing a Canadian sweatshirt so we had to get a picture with him!
The store was full of stunning art work.
Just down the road overlooking the valley was the Moses Memorial Church on Mount Nebo. This is an even newer church that was built overtop of an old church. It too had a mosaic floor and though it didn’t have as much historical or archeological significance as the map in Madaga, it was bigger, better preserved, and stunning.
A sculpture portraying the bronze snake that God told Moses to make to save the Israelites and the view down into the Jordan Valley.
Dead Sea
We ended this day by heading to our hotel on the Dead Sea and going for a “swim” in the Dead Sea. Maybe going for a sit is a better description.
We even got to do the Dead Sea mud. Since I was holding the camera, I needed a few helping hands.
A fun picture from our hotel balconies looking out to the Dead Sea. The hotel used to be closer, but the Dead Sea is shrinking in size every year because so much water is sucked out of the Jordan River for Israel and Jordan, so not as much reaches the Dead Sea.
Bethany Beyond the Jordan
On our last morning in Jordan before heading over to Israel, we stopped in the area called Bethany Beyond the Jordan which is where it is traditionally believed that John the Baptist baptized Jesus.
We had a hike through the river valley to reach….you guessed it, a church. This was a newer one, but beautifully decorated on the inside and close to the place where they do baptisms now.
The Jordan River and the current baptism site looking across the border to the Israel baptism steps. I had seen the Jordan River before so I was somewhat curious to see the others reaction were. They were all a bit surprised at how small it was. It was even smaller than I remembered and definitely muddier, but it is the end of the river, right before it goes into the Dead Sea.
I was intentional in saying “current baptism site” above because a little ways away from the location is the ruins of an older church with steps down to a baptism location that is shaped as a cross. The river used to pass by this site centuries earlier and they would do baptisms here. This just shows that things change, especially rivers. So knowing the exact spot where Jesus was baptized is unrealistic, however this definitely fits the “if not here, than near” category.
Our time in Jordan was supposed to be done after that, but we had quite the experience leaving Jordan. Our driver was initially turned back at the bus terminal entrance as it seemed they would only let in passengers. So he tried to explain to us where we had to go inside to get our bus tickets and to deal with Jordanian exit immigration and customs. While we were trying to figure that out, another guard came up and overruled the first one and let our driver walk in with us.
He brought us right past the main bus desk (where I’m sure we would have incorrectly gone if he wasn’t with us) and instead went beside that building to a little outdoor kiosk and talked to a young man there. He told us this guy would take care of us now and then he left. The new guy brought us across the parking lot to immigration. There was much confusion as he wanted to take all our passports and said we would get them back on the bus. We didn’t like handing over our passports to someone we just met, but an immigration officer said this was how they did it. We had to wait quite a while in the lobby of the immigration office and noticed other men coming in with stacks of passports from people on other buses. In the midst of all of this, we met a lovely Jordanian lady who lived in the States for a long time, married an American, and has dual citizenship. She and her husband recently felt called to move to Israel to teach at a Christian school in Bethlehem. We eventually got on the bus, but sat there for a long time still and we exchanged stories and felt better with her explaining things.
In the end, it took us almost 5 hours to get across the boarder. We found out later that earlier that day, a Jordanian MP was caught trying to use his diplomatic status to smuggle weapons into Palestine at this crossing, hence the really long delays and confusion at the border. We didn’t have a SIM card that worked and our tour guide on the Israel side was texting the guy on the Jordan side asking what was going on and he didn’t know, saying he had gotten us to the bus. Just all part of the adventure of a world trip!