Hi,
I’m new in the forum, then sorry for a probably bad netquette.
I’m trying to make a cartographic study of the Madaba Mao.
In the fundamental work by Eugienio Alliata “The legends of the Madaba map”, for each places that are identified for the topos of the map, Alliata gives their geographical coordinate, but according to the Palestian Grid.
For example, the coordinate of Jerusalem 171, 132, of Nablus 174, 180, of Jericho 192, 140.
I wonder if it would exist an algorithm for translating those coordinates in geografical ones, in such way that I can put them into OSM or Google Earth and see the actual place identified by the archaeologists?
Thank you very much for your complete and very quick reply.
Now, I’ll try to complete my analysys.
The problem I’ve faced with is that names in Israel- Palestine are continuously changing over the time
Some archaeologists like Alliata tried to locate the names of Madaba map, he found some evidencies, but the arabic names he wrote are still difficult to locate as he translitterated in his own way.
Another question: a friend of mine told me that some israelis colonies in the Territories (Samaria) were named using the old biblic names. Is it true?
There are many West Bank settlements that are named after nearby Biblical sites. However, in most cases the modern settlement is several km distant from the original site.
Here are some settlements named after ancient sites:
אלון מורה
אפרתה
בית אל
גבע בנימין
גבעון
גלגל
מעלה אדומים
כרמל
מעון
סוסיה
עופרה
קרית ארבע
תקוע
Here are some whose names are variations of ancient sites:
ביתר עילית
הר גילה
כפר תפוח
מבוא דותן
מחולה
שבי שומרון
שדמות מחולה
If you can read Hebrew, then amudanan.co.il is an exhaustive source of information on the area’s geography and history. It includes vast numbers of obscure historical sites as well as the famous ones.