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The Memorial Church and the Brazen Serpent

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The Memorial Church and the Brazen Serpent

Christian pilgrimage to Mount Nebo is attested from at least the fourth century CE: the pilgrim nun Egeria, writing an account of her travels through the Holy Land around 383 CE, describes visiting a church already standing on the summit, built to mark the traditional site of Moses's death and burial, and archaeological excavation since the early twentieth century has uncovered its Byzantine mosaic floors, among the finest surviving in Jordan, along with successive rebuildings through the sixth century.

The Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land has held responsibility for the site since 1933, conducting excavation and, more recently, a major restoration of the church completed in phases through the 2010s. At the overlook near the summit stands a modern bronze sculpture by the Italian artist Giovanni Fantoni, twisting a cross and a serpent together in reference to the bronze serpent Moses raised in the wilderness in the book of Numbers, a passage the Gospel of John later reads typologically as prefiguring the crucifixion.

Pope John Paul II visited Mount Nebo in March 2000 during his Jubilee Year pilgrimage to the Holy Land, an event Jordan and the Franciscan custodians have since treated as a marker of the site's standing as a place of active Catholic as well as older Christian and Jewish veneration, and it remains one of Jordan's most visited religious sites today.

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