Sacred space and mythic time in the early printed maps of Jerusalem

Rehav Rubin*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

Through the ages, Jerusalem has been the subject of many treatises and works of art. Among the earlier written works were biblical exegeses, chronicles, and pilgrims’ and travelers’ itineraries, many of which included graphic images. Depictions of the holy city were presented on vellum and mosaic, on wall paintings and on small objects, in manuscripts and in print, in broadly differing contexts. The earliest known map of Jerusalem is the center part of the famous Byzantine mosaic map in Madaba in Jordan, discovered in 1890 (Avi-Yonah 1954; Piccirillo and Alliata 1999). It presents an idealistic view of Jerusalem in the sixth century, with its walls, colon- naded streets, and churches. During the period of the Crusades a series of maps of Jerusalem were drawn on vellum, and more than a dozen survive today. The majority of them present the city as a circle, although the actual shape was roughly rectangular (Levy 1991, 418-506; Levy-Rubin and Rubin 1996, 352-379). With the advent of the printing press, the number of prin- ted maps of Jerusalem grew, and there are about five hundred known maps dating from the late fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, when modern, accurate, measurement-based maps began to be made. In 1818 Franz Wil- helm Sieber, a Czech physician and naturalist, published the first map based on actual field measurements (Sieber 1818), initiating the development of the scientific and precise mapping of Jerusalem (Ben-Arieh 1974, 150-160). This process culminated in 1864-65, when two maps of Jerusalem drawn by Charles Wilson-a large map in a scale of 1:2500 and a smaller one in a scale of 1:10, 000-were published by the British Ordnance Survey (Wilson 1864-65). In this chapter, however, I will focus on early printed maps, from the fifteenth to the late eighteenth century.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationJerusalem
Subtitle of host publicationIdea and reality
PublisherTaylor and Francis
Pages123-139
Number of pages17
ISBN (Electronic)9781134102877
ISBN (Print)9780203929773
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2008

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© Editorial selection and matter, Tamar Mayer and Suleiman Ali Mourad; individual chapters, the contributors.

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