RENAISSANCE OF TOURISM – FROM BIBLICAL
PILGRIMAGE TO MODERN MAPS OF ECO-HIKING
Kadmon, N.
Geography Department, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel IL-91905.
ABSTRACT
What can be regarded as the birth of tourism is the biblical injunction to the Israelites "Three times in the year [you]
shall appear before the Lord God" (Exodus 23, 17), i.e. make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. No maps have survived from
the times of the temple in Jerusalem (roughly 1000 BC to AD 70). However, since then pilgrimages continued, later
chiefly from overseas: exiled Jews went on to visit the site of their ancient temple, while Christians visited sites of the
passion of Jesus Christ. The oldest map of the Holy Land still existing in its original form is the Madaba map of ca. AD
565 in Jordan. This map is clearly directed at pilgrims intending to tour the Holy Land. Maps showing pilgrims the way
from western Europe to the Holy Land, Israel and Palestine, are known from the times of the Crusades and onwards.
The earliest known road map was the Tabula Peutingeriana from the 12/13th cent. Maps of the country useable by
tourists, mostly with religious contents, were produced already in the early Renaissance in Europe, but the first
dedicated and detailed tourist map, at a scale of 1:250,000, was made only after the State of Israel was founded. First
produced in 1968 by the national mapping authority, the "Survey of Israel" based on an academic M.Sc. project, it
included a rich legend of touristic items, and scenic roads were highlighted. A special feature was the printing of the
shaded relief in climate-based hues – olive green for Mediterranean-type regions and ochre for arid and desert areas.
Special large-scale hiking maps were introduced in the 1980s. Over a period of some 12 years a series of 20 large map
sheets at a scale of 1:50,000 was co-produced by the "Survey of Israel" and the Society for the Protection of Nature. As
topographic base served the official 1:50,000-scale aerial photography-derived series, with a vertical interval of 10 m.
The touristic/hiking content is of two kinds: a very detailed legend represents all point and areal features and objects of
interest to hikers, and on the other hand the representation of the entire net of hiking trails in Israel, extending to more
than 10,000 km over an area of some 20,000 sq km, i.e. at the very high density of 0.5 km per sq km. Trails are
identically colour-coded in nature and in the maps. Updating cycle is 2-4 years. Various publishers have cooperated by
printing books with information on accommodation facilities and different aspects of the map content. As in some other
countries, very detailed orienteering maps are also produced. The latest product of the "Survey of Israel" are the sheets
of the new 1:25,000 scale topographic series with very detailed hiking information and ecological data. The paper ends
with a detailed list of items from the map legend.
1.
PILGRIMAGES – THE BEGINNINGS OF TOURISM
The very first recorded instance of tourism in general, and internal (i.e. in-country) tourism in particular, was the
biblical injunction to the Israeli people in the 14th cent. BC, "Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before
the Lord God" (Exodus 23,17), i.e. in the Temple in Shiloh and later in what became the Holy City of Jerusalem.
Women were permitted, but not required, to take part in these pilgrimages, as told in the biblical story of Hannah,
mother of the prophet Samuel (I Samuel, 1), who accompanied her husband Elkanah to Shiloh in around 1070 BC. It
seems that these religious-touristic outings were also the occasion for picnics, as one can learn from the mention of
victuals (I Samuel 1, 9). Some 120 years later, around the year 950 BC, King Solomon of Israel erected the Temple at
Jerusalem; Jerusalem thus became the Holy City to the Jewish people, and some 1300 years later also to Christians.
Moslems recognized its holiness some 300 years later again. From the beginning it became a centre for pilgrims and
tourists, first from Israel and later from all over the world.
It should be noted that the biblical terms Holy Land, Promised Land and Israel all refer roughly to the same
geographical region, with the name Palestine designating the identical area, being the name of the 20th cent. British
Mandated Territory.
After the Romans conquered the Land of Judah and Israel in the first century BC and turned it into Provincia Judaea and
later into Provincia Palaestina, and in particular after the final destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, and the Romans
renaming it (temporarily, as it turned out) Aelia Capitolina, the Jewish population was dispersed in what became known
as the diaspora. There started now a new kind of pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which can be regarded as the beginning of
external or international tourism, the pilgrims in most cases returning to their countries of residence after their visit to
the Holy Land. However, no specific records have been found of such voyages in the first two centuries AD, neither
Proceedings of the 21st International Cartographic Conference (ICC)
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1817
verbal nor graphic. Then, after Constantine the Great decreed in the early 4th cent. that Christianity become the official
religion of the Byzantine Empire, which included Aelia Capitolina, now renamed Hierosolyma, i.e. Jerusalem, there
began a new tourism: followers of the new and youngest monotheistic religion, chiefly from Asia Minor and Europe,
began visiting sites connected with the passion of Jesus Christ as well as other places of religious importance. For them
the country now became Terra Sancta, and Jerusalem became the Holy City also for Christians. Queen Helena, mother
of Constantine the Great, visited Jerusalem in AD 326. It is interesting to note that among the early pilgrims a number
of women stand out. After Queen Helena we find Aetheria-Silvia of Aquitania who toured the Holy Land in about 385,
and the Empress Eudocia in 439. They all left their marks, which are today pointed out by tourist guides.
The first book describing a tour through the Holy Land was the Itinerarium Burdigalensis, written by an anonymous
French monk apparently some time before the year 333. It is, however, doubtful whether the author indeed visited the
country, since most of the information appears to have been copied from earlier Jewish writers. But in about 670 Arculf,
a French bishop, did visit Palestine and dictated his impressions to Adamnanus, abbot of the island of Iona in the
Hebrides off the Scottish coast.
Around the year AD 350 Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea Palaestinae, collected all place names in the Holy Land
mentioned in the Jewish Bible and the Christian New Testament, producing, under the title of "Onomasticon" (i.e. name
list) a gazetteer of 983 names together with brief descriptions of both the places and the meaning of their names. These
data served as a basis of what can be termed biblical graphic descriptions of the Holy Land, the forerunners of true
maps. Mostly produced in Europe and often in monasteries, they were usually quite fanciful and based on geographical
imagination . Yet they were a primary tool of quasi map-like quality to be used by pilgrims and other tourists.
2.
MAPS FROM ANTIQUITY
Somewhat later than Eusebius' "Onomasticon" there was produced – and all knowledge about its origins is purely
circumstantial and speculative – a map of the Roman Empire showing all paved roads, some 101,000 km of them. I
shall later return to this most important map under the name of a 12th/13th cent. copy, the Peutinger Map. Another set
of maps which survived only in copies of the original was produced even earlier, in the 2nd cent. AD, by Claudius
Ptolemaeus of Alexandria, known in English as Ptolemy. But since these maps became relatively widespread after the
invention of printing, I shall deal with them later.
The very first "real" map of the Holy Land extant today in original is the so-called Madaba Map. Executed as a colorful
stone mosaic of more than 2 million tesserae, it is an excellent and detailed cartographic representation of the country,
clearly designed for the instruction of local clerics as well as guidance for pilgrims and tourists. Judging by its
toponyms, it was apparently based on the "Onomasticon". Perhaps its most interesting feature is its being a topological
construction, with correct directions from Jerusalem but distances not geometrical but roughly proportional to the
importance of the respective sites. Produced as the 17 metre long floor of a Byzantine church in the town of Madaba
(the biblical Medeba) near Mount Nebo in Trans-Jordania, its location may have pointed to the possibility that pilgrims
visiting the Holy Land travelled overland via Turkey, Syria and what is today Lebanon, arriving at Madaba so that they
could view the Holy Land from the summit of Mount Nebo, from which Moses was permitted to see the Promised Land
west of the River Jordan, before his death east of the River (Deuteronomy 34, 1-5).
With the rapid spread of Christianity a special trade in transporting pilgrims to the Levant developed, slowly at first.
Jaffa became the port of disembarcation for the increasing flow of travellers, as illustrated beautifully in Bernhard von
Breydenbach's map described below. Sailing vessels of all sizes and degrees of comfort – or rather discomfort – plied
the sea routes from the ports of southern and south-eastern Europe to this destination on the eastern coast of the
Mediterranean Sea, the mare nostrum of the Romans (and much later of Benito Mussolini, the pretender to a new
Roman empire). The Crusades, which began near the end of the 11th century, saw a surge of travels to Terra Sancta,
chiefly overland. But the Crusaders came as a religious-military force, and although many of them returned to their
native Europe, appreciable numbers settled in Palestine. Map making also progressed, and around 1250 the English
monk Matthew Paris of St. Albans drew a map of the way from Europe to the Holy Land as well as a map of the
country itself, with details of the holdings of the various Christian sects and orders in the city of Acre (the biblical and
today's Akko). The Crusaders were finally vanquished by the Moslem Mamluks in 1287 after less than two hundred
years. Yet the 14th century again experienced an increase in the number of western visitors and, what is of importance
in the present context – the production of some of the first geometrically relatively correct maps of the country and at
least of two of its cities, namely Jerusalem and Acre. The best known of these were drawn by Pietro Vesconte for the
Italian nobleman Marino Sanuto. Vesconte/Sanuto's map of Terra Sancta even has a rectangular grid of coordinates,
which is the first example of this geometrical aid to defining and indicating location. But being drawn on vellum as a
(single-copy) manuscript, it could not have been used by numerous tourists, unless copied manually – which, of course,
was the normal (and only) method of map reproduction and distribution.
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3.
AN EARLY TOURIST GUIDEBOOK
One of the earliest "tourist guidebooks" had its origins in sin! In 1483 Bernhard von Breydenbach, a cleric of Mainz,
Germany, had to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land because of some (and apparently serious) licentiousness. But he
made the most of his penance, leading a mass-pilgrimage to the Holy Land which for many of the 150 participants was
not more than a "guided tour". One of his companions was the Flemish artist-painter Erhard Reuwich, who drew views
of cities visited during the sea voyage from Venice to Jaffa and of sites in Palestine, culminating in a large map of the
country. This latter is of particular interest: while the entire land appears as seen from west to east, the holy city of
Jerusalem is portrayed as viewed from the Mount of Olives, i.e. from east to west, because this is indeed the direction
of best aspect of the city. Seen in perspective, Reuwich's map is nearly "photographically correct", and the present
writer, on showing Jerusalem's Old City to foreign visitors from a vantage point on the Mount of Olives, takes it (or
rather its reproduction) with him in order to prove the point made above. At the end of his visit Bernhard von
Breydenbach wrote a "travelogue" under the Latin title "Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam" (Pilgrimage to the Holy
Land). Accompanied by Erhard Reuwich's views and maps, this became an "instant best-seller". We do not know
whether B. von B. gained financially from his book – but his fame certainly spread.
We do not know whether the Roman gentlefolk used to go touring on horseback or by carriage. If they did, they had at
their disposal an ingenious map – in fact, the forerunner of the modern road map – that is, if they could obtain, or make
a hand-drawn copy of, the original, produced around AD 365. This original would have been the original of the socalled Tabula Peutingeriana or Peutinger Map, called after the German humanist Conrad Peutinger who first drew
attention to it in 1507 . This was a map of the entire Roman Empire drawn apparently in the 12/13th cent. as a copy of
the Roman original. It had three "world firsts": an original projection compressing the whole Empire into an elongated
vellum scroll for easy carrying on a journey; it had a well-defined set of "conventional signs"; and it displayed the entire
net of paved Roman interurban roads, with each road sector bounded at its ends by small steps, rather like the little
"flags" in modern road maps, and annotated with its length in milia passuum, units of a thousand paces, i.e. Roman
miles. The original was probably produced for either military or commercial use, or perhaps for both, but also facilitated
overland travel to Jerusalem from all over the Roman world. No knowledge of the cartographer has survived.
4.
THE RENAISSANCE IN EUROPE
The Renaissance in Europe was characterized, among others, by the revival of Greek cartography, with the discovery of
the writings of Ptolemy of Alexandria, and in particular with the translation from Greek into Latin, and later into other
European languages, of his great work on cartography, Geographiki Yphigesis, "Guide to describing the Earth", usually
called "Ptolemy's Geography". Ptolemy's original maps of the world and of many countries appended to it have not
survived, but copies were printed and published in Italy and Germany as incunabula from the 1470s. Slowly the maps of
the Holy Land which hitherto had been truly "oriented"' i.e. directed to the east, began to be shown as in Ptolemy's
Quarta Asiae tabula,, namely to the north. Maps of Palestine proliferated and, while still displaying a biblical content
concerning the names of towns and other localities connected with the Holy Scriptures, showed them in increasingly
correct geographical correlation. The maps now became of real practical use to tourists, both religious and secular.
The 18th and especially the 19th cent. saw a gradual increase in scientific surveys of the Holy Land – geographical,
geological, climatological, botanical and in particular historical and archaeological. One can distinguish between maps
usable by tourists and dedicated tourist maps. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 served as a boost to tourism not
only from Europe to India, the Far East and Australia, but also to the Near and Middle East in general, and to Palestine
in particular. But practically no tourist maps were produced. In 1880 the first detailed topographic map of the country
was published by the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) of London under the name "Survey of Western Palestine", at a
scale of 1 inch to the mile, or 1:63,360. This map in 26 sheets served as the basis of practically all maps of the same
area, "from Dan to Beersheba" as specified in the Bible, until (and even until after) World War I. Palestine was taken
from the Turkish Ottoman Empire and was handed by the League of Nations to Great Britain as a Mandated Territory.
A special Government department was set up, the Survey of Palestine, to deal with geodetic surveys and mapping of the
country. Besides detailed topographic maps at scales of 1:20,000 and 1:100,000, special 1:500,000 scale road maps for
motorists were produced, which can be regarded as predecessors of the later dedicated tourist maps.
5.
DEDICATED TOURIST MAPS
The first of the latter genus was prepared only after the State of Israel was founded in 1948. In 1966-67 a special
research was made under an academic M.Sc. (Master of Science) project and resulted in the 1:250,000 scale Touring
Map of Israel in two sheets, published in its first edition by the national mapping authority, the Survey of Israel, in
1968. It included a full touristic legend, and an original special feature was the representation of relief by shading in
climatic-based hues – olive green for Mediterranean-type regions, and ochre for arid and desert areas.
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Special large-scale hiking maps were introduced in the 1980s. Over a period of some 12 years a series of 20 map sheets
covering the entire country at a scale of 1:50,000 was produced. This was a co-production of the Government's "Survey
of Israel" and the Society for the Protection of Nature. As topographic base served the 80 sheets of the official 1:50,000scale aerial photography-derived topographic series, with a vertical interval of 10 m. The touristic/hiking content was of
two kinds. A very detailed legend – partly based on that of the former 1:250,000-scale map – represented all point and
areal features and objects of interest to hikers. On the other hand, a special committee had signposted the entire net of
hiking trails in Israel, extending to more than 10,000 km over an area of some 20,000 sq km, i.e. at the very high density
of 0.5 km per sq km, and this included the southern Negev desert. Hiking trails are identically colour-coded in nature
and in the maps. On the verso of the maps appears detailed hiking and camping information and ecological and
conservation data, drawings of wildlife, footprints of mammals and reptiles, silhouettes of birds, views as seen from
particular observation points and other relevant data. The updating cycle, which differs from sheet to sheet according to
the degree of regional development, is between two and four years. Various publishers have cooperated by printing
books with information on accommodation facilities and different aspects of the map content. As in some other
countries, based on the initiative of the Scandinavian nations, very detailed orienteering maps are also produced.
The latest development in maps for tourists but especially for eco-hikers is the series of dedicated maps on the large
scale of 1:25,000. The sheets are GIS-derived from the national topographic database. As to date 18 60x80 cm (15x20
km) sheets have been produced. Below appears a translation of items relevant to hikers and tourists in the map legend.
Selected items from the legend of the Israeli 1:25,000 scale topographic/hiking maps
I
Boundaries (7 items)
4
Boundary of nature reserve or national park
II
Communications (12 items of road and railroad classification)
III
Buildings (4 items)
4
Agricultural structure
IV
Infrastructure (5 items)
V
Hydrography (14 items)
11
Spring
12
Well
13
Cistern
14
Water hole
VI
Vegetation and land cover (13 items)
1
Palm tree
2
Other isolated tree
3
Conspicuous bush (in arid area)
4
Woodland
5
Citrus plantation
6
Other fruit plantation
7
Olives
8
Vineyard
9
Avenue of trees
VII
Surface relief (10 items)
1
Contour lines at 10 m vertical interval
2
Triangulation point
3
Other elevation point
4
Tell (archaeological mound or hill)
5
Depression
6
Steep slope
7
Cliff
VIII
Religious sitess (12 items)
5
Jewish holy site
6
Christian holy site
7
Muslim holy site
8
Druze holy site
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IX
Other features (9 items)
6
Ancient ruin
X
Hiking and touring (38 items)
1
Hiking trails, colour-coded – suitable for motor vehicles, all-weather
2
Ditto – suitable for 4-wheel drive vehicles
3
Ditto – walking only
4
"Israel trail" *
5
Bicycle trails – easy
6
Ditto – difficult
7
Track recommended for driving
8
Driving prohibited
9
Scenic road
10
Interesting site
11
Nature site
12
Tree of special interest
13
Observation point
14
Panoramic view
15
Observation tower
16
Hostel or rural accomodation
17
Nature school
18
Youth hostel
19
Picnic place
20
Ditto, with drinking water
21
Camping site
22
"Active sport" site
23
Swimming beach
24
Spa
25
Petrol filling station
26
Museum
27
Visitors centre in nature reserve/national park
28
Prehistoric site
29
Archaeological site
30
Historical site
31
Conservation site
32
War memorial
33
Other memorial
34
Old fort
35
Police station
36
Hospital
37
First aid station
38
Closed military area
•
This is an 850 km long hiking/walking trail traversing Israel from North to South.
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RENAISSANCE OF TOURISM – FROM BIBLICAL
PILGRIMAGE TO MODERN MAPS OF ECO-HIKING
Kadmon, N.
Geography Department, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel IL-91905.
Naftali Kadmon
Emeritus Professor of Cartography and Toponymy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Born in Aachen, Germany, 1925.
B.A. (Geography), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1963.
M.Sc. (Topographic Science), University of Glasgow 1968.
Ph.D. (Computer Cartography), University of Wales, 1973
Some recent publications (English only):
N. Kadmon (ed.), United Nations glossary of terms for the standardization of geographical names. Six-language
dictionary (English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Arabic). United Nations, New York, 2002.
N. Kadmon, Toponymy – the lore, laws and language of geographical names. Vantage Press, New York, 333 pp, 2002.
N. Kadmon, "Ptolemy – the first UNGEGN toponymist. Commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the first United
Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names". ONOMA, 35, pp.123-143, 2000.
N. Kadmon, "Luxor or Al-Uqsur? Skagerak, Skagerack or Skagerrak? The United Nations and the standardization of
geographical names". ONOMA, 32, pp. 140-154, 1996.
United Nations training course in toponymy for Southern Africa, Eds. P.S. Hattingh. N. Kadmon, P.E. Raper & I.
Booysen. University of Pretoria, 372 pp.,1993.
1822