Mount Nebo
The height in Moab, east of the Jordan opposite Jericho, from which Moses saw the promised land before he died. A ridge near Madaba in Jordan has been shown as the place since at least the fourth century.
Deuteronomy sets Mount Nebo in the land of Moab, opposite Jericho, and names its summit Pisgah (Deuteronomy 32:49) (Deuteronomy 34:1). From it Moses was shown the land. He died there and was buried in a valley in Moab, in a grave that no one knew (Deuteronomy 34:4–6). A later Jewish tradition, recorded in 2 Maccabees, says that Jeremiah hid the tabernacle and the ark in a cave on the mountain “where Moses went up” (2 Maccabees 2:4–8).
The ridge now called Nebo rises above the north-eastern end of the Dead Sea, near Madaba in Jordan. The pilgrim Egeria climbed it in the 380s AD and found a small church on the summit, where the monks showed her the place in which, they said, Moses had been laid by angels (Egeria, Itinerary 12.1–12.2). From the church door she saw the Jordan running into the Dead Sea, and Jericho beyond it (Egeria, Itinerary 12.4–12.5). The church and the monastery that grew up around it were excavated by the Franciscans in the twentieth century (Sylvester J. Saller, The Memorial of Moses on Mount Nebo, 1941). The site matches the biblical description, but its identification rests on this tradition.
What happened here
- c. 1406 or c. 1220 BC, traditional dateThe Farewell and Death of Moses
In the plains of Moab Moses renews the covenant with the generation born in the wilderness, writes down the law and hands the leadership to Joshua. He sees the promised land from Mount Nebo and dies there without entering it.