Al Maghtas
— — the river that keeps the name.
Not only on a wall.
“Bethany Beyond the Jordan, the east-bank site where John the Baptist worked the river. UNESCO listed it in 2015. The Jordan here is narrow, brown, slow, lower than almost anywhere else on earth. Tell al-Kharrar, also called Elijah's Hill, rises just east of the bank. Pilgrims have walked down to this water for nearly two thousand years; the path has been there the whole time.
Al Maghtas, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Al Maghtas sits on the east bank of the Jordan River, about nine kilometres north of the Dead Sea and roughly fifty kilometres west of Amman. The site holds two distinct areas: Tell al-Kharrar, the small hill traditionally identified with Elijah's ascent, and the riverside zone where Byzantine-era churches and baptismal pools were built between the fifth and sixth centuries. Excavated continuously since 1996 by Jordanian archaeologists, the site was inscribed by UNESCO in 2015 as Bethany Beyond the Jordan, the Baptism Site of Jesus Christ.
The Jordan at Al Maghtas runs roughly four hundred metres below sea level, the lowest river course on earth. Decades of upstream diversion have cut the flow to a fraction of its historical volume; the channel here is narrow, slow, and brown from suspended silt. The Israeli site of Qasr al-Yahud sits directly across the water, close enough to wave. Baptismal pools fed by side springs were cut into the east bank in the fourth century so pilgrims could enter clean water without entering the river itself.
The site has been a pilgrimage destination since the Byzantine era. The Madaba Map, a sixth-century mosaic in a Jordanian church floor, marks the spot. Origen, writing in the third century, identified Bethany Beyond the Jordan as the place named in the Gospel of John. After the 1967 war the area sat inside a closed military zone and was effectively sealed for almost thirty years. Excavation resumed in 1996, the visitor route opened in 2000, and Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis have each made the walk down to the water.