San Diego, CA (special) -- In what is today Madaba, Jordan, workers in the year 565 painstakingly assembled thousands upon thousands of colored stone cubes to form the floor of a Byzantine Church. When their work was finished, the mosaic they had produced depicted the Holy Land stretching from Lebanon to Egypt. Particular prominence was given to Jerusalem.

A rendering of the Madaba Map is the earliest view of Jerusalem in an exhibit sponsored by the Israeli government at San Diego's downtown Central Library. "Jerusalem in Old Maps and Views," featuring 22 historic -- but not necessarily accurate -- maps of Jerusalem will remain on display at the library through the end of July.

The next map in the collection, "a long and narrow parchment scroll," took a bit of detective work to date precisely. The Peutinger Map was discovered in Germany in 1507, but apparently it was drawn in the 12th or 13th century. More exciting than that, cartographers concluded that it was "an apparently exact copy of an ancient road map, now lost, which portrayed the Roman Empire in the 4th century with paved roads clearly visible." In the map, there is a notation that the city called "Hierasulam" was renamed "Helya Capitolina" by the Romans. Clearly visible on the map is the Mount of Olives.

Neal Brostoff  points to map depicting      Jerusalem as middle of the  world

Explanatory texts accompany many of the maps which are mounted along a wall of the second floor hallway near the library's newspaper and periodical room. Prof. Naftaly Kadmon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was the scholar who provided the background.

An early Islamic map shows "Falestin," modern day Palestine, as a part of greater Syria, known as Ash-sham. This prompted Kadmon to comment "The Arabs never regarded the land of Isael, which they called Falestin, as distinct geographically or politically." On the map, Jerusalem is called Bayt al-Maqdas, which is the Arabic equivalent of the Hebrew phrase Beit Ha Mikdash, a name for the Temple.

Next comes an early Crusader Map of Jerusalem, drawn approximately 1100, followed by the Psalter Map, named after a Book of Psalms in which it was included in approximately 1225.

According to the explanatory text, the map "is characteristic of medieval world maps, illustrating the writings of church fathers rather than geography. Jerusalem is indicated as the center of the map and the world, and around it appears a much enlaged Holy Land and the Dead Sea, and the rivers Jor and Dan which together form the Jordan, as well as Jericho, Ceasarea, Acco and other towns."

The Psalter Map was the favorite of Neal Brostoff, the director of cultural affairs for Israel's Consulate-General in Los Angeles, who opened the exhibit at the library on Wednesday, July 7.

Because it shows Jerusalem as the center of the world, "it reminds me of the Steinberg drawing from the New Yorker a few years ago--a New Yorker's view of the United States," Brostoff said. 

That fmous magazine cover from the 1960s by the recently-deceased cartoonist Saul Steinberg shows a large foreground of streets in Manhattan leading to the Hudson River, then a tiny strip for New Jersey, and very little of the rest of the United States, except for California. It since has been imitated by mapmakers in many other cities. A map of San Diego along the same style pictures the weather in Los Angeles "too smoggy," to the east "too hot"; "to the northeast "too cold," but in San Diego itself it is "perfect."

Continuing in the Jerusalem Map collection, there are views of the city drawn in 1250, 1321 and 1375, and then a pair of printed maps by Lucas Brandis in 1475.

 "In 1475, some 25 years after the invention of printing with movable type, Lucas Brandis published an encyclopaedic work about Christianity to which he added two maps which thus became the first printed maps, all previous maps having been manuscripts," Kadmon wrote. "One is a circular world map centered on the Holy Land; the other shown here is the map of the land of Israel with Jerusalem as its center. In common with most medieval maps it describes Bible lands not geographically but symbolically."

Eight years later, Bernhard von Breydsenbach, a deacon of the cathedral in Mainz, Germany, visited Jerusalem and published his impressions along with a map by Erhard Reuwich. Jerusalem was drawn in such minute detail that it became the basis for other maps, including an adjoining one in the collection--a view of Jerusalem drawn in 1575 by Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg.

Kadmon explains that the Braun and Hogenberg map "belongs to the genus of views of Jerusaelm which portray the Holy City not as seen personally but as a mixture of imagination and reliance on the Bible and other literary sources. Within the neatly circular and imaginary city walls some buildings such as the Dome of the Rock and Holy Sepulchre are depicted quite realistically following Breydenbach's map."

The Bunting map of 1581 portrays the Old World as a clover leaf, with the three parts of the leaf -- Africa, Asia and Europe joined at Jerusalem. 

The first Jewish map of Jerusalem included in the collection is attributed to Abraham Bar-Jacob. Appearing in 1695 in the Amsterdam Haggadah, it followed the outlines of a 1588 map (also in the collection) drawn by Christian Adrichom, but "incorporating many Jewish elements such as the route of the Exodus from Egypt to Canaan and the designation of the territories of the 12 tribes of Israel."

Kadmon commented that "in the past Hebrew geographical maps were relatively rare but they all showed the land of Israel as a separate entity stressing the sanctity and uniqueness of the country to Judaism."

A better known Jewish commentator was the Gaon of Vilna, Rabbi Eliahu ben Shlomo Zalman, to whom a map, circa 1802, is attributed. According to the exhibition notes, "the orginal was lost but the copy displayed here was 'copied from the illustrious Rabbi Eliahu of the Lithuanian capital city.' Stated below the map title is 'it is intended to serve chiefly as an instrument of religious instruction.' Typical for this clerical approach is the belief that the country was surrounded by water, whether sea or rivers." Jerusalem is represented by Mount Moriah and the acronym b'h'm'k referring to the Beit HaMikdash, or Holy Temple.

More recent maps include an 1817 version by Jacob Auspitz, an 1875 pictorial strip map by Rabbi Chaim Salomon Pinia of Zefat (Sefad) and a 1905 Mizrach (sign to indicate the East, to enable people in the Diaspora to face Jerusalem) by Moses Klier. 

About the Auspitz map, Kadmon wrote: "Already in the Middle Ages, if not before, rabbinical teachers were called upon to interpret laws related to the land of Israel. Often in letters to Jewish communities in the Diaspora, since he had no access to geographical maps, but aware that graphics are the best means of clarifying territorial relations, they devised diagrams which corrrectly represented spacial relations described verbally in the Holy Scriptures disregarding true geometrical location."

Even today, the map of Jerusalem occupies a prominent place in world thinking--as was demonstrated by U.S. First Lady Hillary Clinton who told members of the Orthodox Union in New York, where she is considering running for the U.S. Senate, that Jerusalem should remain Israel's undivided capital. 

The question was put to her in the wake of her husband, U.S. President Bill Clinton, declining to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem pending conclusion of the peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians.