First Maps of the World

 

MAPPI  MUNDI

"The first surviving map of the world was etched around 600 BCE into a clay tablet rediscovered at Sippar in Iraq in the late nineteenth century. It is a tiny little thing, just eight centimetres across and twelve up. The map itself is oriented to the north and it depicts the world as a disc of land centred on Babylon and surrounded by a circular sea labelled marratu: the salty or bitter river. The city of Babylon itself is a rectangle stamped across the upper part of the central island and bisected like the land itself by the Euphrates river. Around the city circles denote other regions and cities in western Asia including Assyria and Elam; most are placed in approximately correct positions in relation to Babylon."

(Josephine Quinn, 2024, How the World Made the West, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, p. 173)

"This Babylonian map is still a work of the imagination. Across the 'bitter river' extend triangular islands, originally as many as eight; the one furthest north is captioned 'place where the sun is not seen'. Notes about these 'regions' [nagu] on the back of the tablet describe one as the home of fast-moving cattle with horns, another as a place that winged birds cannot reach. Further fragmentary commentary above the map itself allude to ruined cities, ruined gods, scorpion men, serpents and dragons, all apparently associated with these lands across the river. It also includes the names of Sargon, king of Mesopotamian Akkad in the third millennium BCE, and Utnapishtim, who survived the great flood in [the legendary epic] Gilgamesh. It isn't clear how they fit in, but their presence adds to the sense of distance, across both time and space. The mapmaker puts himself ― and by implication the viewer ― at the centre of a world that gets stranger the further you roam."

(Quinn 2024, as above)

An important, scholarly contribution towards understanding this valuable artefact has been the 1988 translation and interpretation by Wayne Horowitz. His article 'The Babylonian Map of the world', published in the journal Iraq (vol. 50, pp. 147-165), provides some dating assurance for what is actually a copy of an even more ancient source. 

The legible part of line 28 on the Reverse side of the clay tablet translates as 

     [...] copied from its old exemplar and colla[ted]

The next line below (line 29) identifies the scribe responsible for this work as

     [...] the son of Issuru [the descend]ant of Ea-bel-il[i]

Horowitz reasoned that the original map, the old exemplar that the descendant of Ea-bel-ili copied from, could be no older than than the 9th century BCE. "The earliest example of murratu, 'salt-sea', occurs in a Shalmaneser III inscription (858-824) that identifies the name as a loan-word from a Chaldean dialect into Akkadian." In addition, the cities Bit-Yakin and Urartu occur for the first time in Neo-Assyrian inscriptions from that century. However, it is more likely that the prototype dates to the late eighth or early seventh century. "In the Shalmaneser III inscription only the Persian Gulf is called the murratu, while the World Map calls the entire ocean by this name. The earliest evidence for the Mediterranean being called murratu is found in a Sargon II inscription (721-705), where the king rules the marrati eliti and marrati sapliti, 'Upper and Lower Ocean'."

Horowitz also notes that the area surrounded by murratu, which he calls a continent, effectively contains features that were familiar to the mapmaker and his contemporary viewers. "The place-names include the countries of Assyria and Urartu and Susa; the cities of Babylon and Der and Bitu-Yakin and Habban. Topographic features include sadu, 'mountain', apparu, 'swamp', and bitqu, 'channel'." For example, the two parallel lines in the middle of the map, "the banks of the river Euphrates", bisect the rectangle labelled Babylon, because "in the first millennium the Euphrates flowed through the centre of this city". Similarly, "the rectangle at the mouth of the river marked apparu represents the swamps along the lower Euphrates" and bitqu represents "a waterway connecting the mouth of the Euphrates with the Persian Gulf".

In contrast, the area beyond the continent, that which is outside the concentric circles of murratu, consists of triangular shapes which are identified as nagu, 'regions', and "uncharted space". In royal inscriptions from the Late Babylonian period, the term nagu is used for distant and fairly undefined spaces (not the Neo-Assyrian use of administrative districts or provinces).

As mentioned by Quinn above, the upper section on the front or map side describes a northern nagu as "a place where the Sun is not seen". Surviving text on the reverse side of the tablet is also patchy. "Only the descriptions of the third, fifth, seventh and eighth negu are even partially intelligible ..."

The third nagu is a place that birds cannot reach, perhaps a desert or mountainous region, such as an Assurburnipal inscription states ― "a place where there are no steppe animals and the bird of heaven does not establish a nest".

The fifth nagu is either a region of wondrous trees, tall or unusual: MI.LO = melu 'height', ZI.NU = zinu 'frond'; OR a region of high rainfall and flooding: MI.LO = milu 'flood', ZI.NU, zinnu 'rain'.

The seventh nagu is described "where cattle equipped with horns ... they run fast and reach.."

The eighth nagu "may be located in the far east where the Sun rises"; "[...the pl]ace where ... dawns at its entrance".

Because Horowitz reviewed the Babylonian World Map in linguistic depth, he was in a position to come to a useful conclusion, even within the limits of missing text. The end of his article was forthrightly headlined as "The Purpose of the Babylonian Map of the World" :

     "The emphasis on distant places in the texts accompanying the map suggest the purpose of BM 92687 was to locate and describe distant regions. The map illustrates where these distant areas were located in relation to familiar locales such as Babylon, Assyria, and the Euphrates ... The ancient authors' concern with distant places reflects a general interest with distant places during the first half of the first millennium, when the Assyrian and Babylonian empires reached their greatest extent ..."

An instance of this imperial curiosity is the expedition of Shalmaneser III to the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates in the southern mountains of Turkey. "In the 15th year of my reign, I went to the source of the Tigris and the Euphrates. My royal relief I erected at their cliffs". Notwithstanding that "the map omits the Tigris altogether", the imperial expedition is a clue to why the northern limit (source?) of the Euphrates has a sadu, 'mountain', next to it.

The purpose of the map is to define the outer limits, to establish the boundaries between the known and the unknown. The penultimate lines 26 and 27, partial at best, are possibly attempts to summarise the text on the reverse of the tablet :

     [...] of the Four Quadrants of the entire [...]

     [...] : whose interior no one can kn[ow]

An intriguing question remains, however. Why, in the revised circumstances of the old Assyrian rulers being vanquished and the reign of the new Babylonian rulers being unchallenged, was it thought necessary for the son of Issiru the descendant of Ea-bel-ili to have the map copied from its old exemplar and collated (concluding lines 28 and 29)? What was the purpose of reproducing an image from the seventh or eight centuries in the sixth century, when the political and military situations had stabilised and the empire was dominant from Sea to Sea?

"I, Nebuchadnezzar ... magnificently adorned them with luxurious splendour for all mankind to behold in awe."                [Nebuchadnezzar II,  Inscription Plaque of the Ishtar Gate]

'... The motifs depicted in these reliefs are rich in symbolism ... 

     1. Striding lion from the Ishtar Gate

     2. One of the mushussu from the Ishtar Gate

     3. Bull from the Ishtar Gate

 ... On glazed mud brick with lapis lazuli shine ...

      lions, revered as symbols of strength and protection, are closely linked with the goddess Ishtar, while floral patterns and mythical creatures like the mushussu, associated with the god Marduk add a sense of mystique ... oxen motifs, symbolising fertility and abundance, pay homage to the god Adad ...'

<digitalmapsoftheancientworld.com/ancient-art/neo-babylonian-art>

<smarthistory.org/neo-babylonian>

ANAXIMANDER and HECATAEUS

Anaximander of Miletos ― c. 610-546 BCE ― is credited with having created one of the first maps of the world which was circular in form and showed the known lands of the world grouped around the Aegean Sea and Greece at the centre. The three distinctive lands were surrounded by ocean.

Hecataeus of Miletos ― c. 550-476 BCE ― is credited with a work entitled Periodas Ges ('Travels round the Earth' or 'Earth Survey') in two books each organised in the manner of a periplus (a point-to-point coastal survey). The descriptive matter was accompanied by a map, based on Anaximander's earlier map, which he corrected and enlarged.

Neither map has survived. The following models were constructed on contemporary reports.

ANAXIMANDER                                                            HECATAEUS

The ancient historian Herodotus seems to have mocked the two map makers from Miletos :

"I am amused when I see that not one of all the people who have drawn maps of the world has set it out sensibly. They show Ocean as a river flowing around the outside of the earth, which is as circular as if it had been drawn with a pair of compasses, and they make Asia and Europe the same size."           (Herodotus, Histories, 4.36.2)

Other commentators from the Greco-Roman world have been more respectful :

STRABO, Geography 1.1.1-2, (54 BCE - 24 CE) 

"They who first ventured to handle the matter ['Geography, the science'] were distinguished men, Homer, Anaximander the Milesian, and Hecataeus (his fellow citizen according to Eratosthenes) ... and after these Eratosthenes, Polybius, and Posidonius, all of them philosophers.

The two immediately succeeding Homer, according to Eratosthones, were Anaximander, the disciple and fellow-citizen of Thales, and Hecataeus the Milesian. Anaximander was the first to publish a geographical chart. Hecataeus left a work (on the same subject) which we can identify as his by the means of his other writings."

AGATHEMERUS, Geographiae 1.1-2, (3rd century?)

"Anaximander of Miletus, disciple of Thales, attempted to draw the earth on a map. After him, Hecataeus of Miletus, a widely-traveled man, improved the work marvelously ... The ancients drew the earth round, and regarded Hellas as the centre and Delphi as the centre of Hellas, since it had the navel of the earth."

DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of the Philosophers 1.1-2, (late 2nd century)

"Anaximander, the son of Praxiades, was a native of Miletus ... He held ... that the earth which is of a spherical shape, lies in the midst, occupying the place of the centre ... further, that the sun is as large as the earth and consists of purest fire ... He was the first to draw on a map the outline of land and sea, and he constructed a globe as well."

PSEUDO-PLUTARCH, Stromateis (Miscellanies or 'Patchwork') 2.1-29, 3.9-11 

"Thales and his followers say the world is one.

The natural philosophers pronounce that the forming of this world took its original from the earth, it being its centre, for the centre is the principle part of the globe ... 

Anaximander says that the sun is a circle eight and twenty times bigger than the earth and has a circumference very much like that of a chariot-wheel, which is hollow and full of fire; the fire of which appears to us through its mouth as by an aperture in a pipe; and this is the sun ...

Anaximander says that the sun itself in greatness is equal to the earth, but that the circle from whence it receives its respiration and in which it is moved is seven and twenty times larger than the earth ...

Anaximander [says] that the sun is eclipsed when the fiery mouth of it is stopped and hindered from respiration ...

Anaximander affirms that the circle of the moon is nineteen times bigger than the earth, and resembles the sun, its orb being full of fire, and it suffers an eclipse when the wheel makes a revolution ― which he describes by the diverse turnings of a chariot-wheel, in the midst of it there being a hollow nave replenished with fire which has one way of expiration ... 

Anaximander thinks that she [the moon] gives light to herself, but it is very slender and faint ...

Anaximander believes that the mouth of the wheel, about which the moon is turned, being stopped is the cause of an eclipse [of the moon] ...

Thales and his followers say there is but one earth ...

Thales, the Stoics, and their followers say that the earth is globular. Anaximander, that it resembles a smooth stony pillar [AETIUS, De Fide 3.7.1, (367 CE), "a column of stone"].

Anaximenes, that it hath the shape of a table. Demicritus, that it is like a quoit. and hollow in the middle ...

Thales and his followers say that the earth is the centre of the universe."

 

In summary, the ancient authorities considered Anaximander to be a theoretical thinker, a designer of radical models to explain how things worked, someone who imagined concepts and pushed the boundaries of Natural Philosophy. His emphasis on the big picture was bold but did not always answer to the practical requirements of map making. In other words, his map of the world might have been over-simplified and schematic, rather than useful to navigators, merchants or military planners.

Hecataeus, on the other hand, was a widely-traveled man who had improved the work marvelously. His map contained more information.

"The map can be seen as a synopsis of Hecataeus' Description of the earth (Periegesis or Periodosges). In two volumes, called 'Europe' and 'Asia, the author described the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea ― in the first part from west to east, and in the second volume from east to west, including the African coast. Sometimes, Hecataeus left the coast and went upstream along a river. The surviving fragments show that his prose was clear and unadorned, and that the author was interested in towns, distances, rivers, mountains, nations, tribes, and boundaries. The book also included the coast of the Atlantic Ocean: there was at least one reference to Melitta (modern Oualiddia) in the west of Morocco. This reference is extremely fortunate because it proves that Hecataeus had ― direct or indirect ― access to the travel log of the Carthaginian voyager Hanno who had visited this region."

(Jona Lendering, 2019, 'Hecataeus of Miletus', Livius.org)

STONE  SARCOPHAGUS

The next section of Maps of the World features the Land of Egypt and represents a return to the cosmological approach observed with the Babylonians. The question to these ancient irrigation societies seems to have been along the lines of 'Who are We?' and 'What are the limits of our identity?' Consequently these mapmakers are about establishing boundaries, rather than showing curiosity about what else might be out there. There is less science (geography) and more religion (divinity) in the maps produced at each end of the Fertile Crescent. 

In the case of this model, its scenes and texts were inscribed on an "unusually large sarcophagus ... in the northern Egyptian necropolis of Saqqara". Exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, its dimensions are massive. It is over nine feet long, four feet wide, and nearly seven feet high (with cover on). Carved from  impressive granodiorite for a priest called Wereshnefer, an eminent religious official with authority over "temples from Aswan to Koptos in Upper Egypt" ('a priest of the goddesses Mut, Nephthyus, Sekhmet, Neit, and Satis'), the sarcophagus covered with symbols and meaning that "belong to funerary literature originally composed for royalty more than a thousand years earlier". 

The map itself is found on the topmost outer surface, the upper face of the lid cover to the sarcophagus. Dated from the 30th Dynasty, approximately 350 BCE, it is considered "one of the first known representations of the world as round. It is framed by the body of Nut, goddess of the sky, who is supported by the outstretched arms of Shu, the atmosphere. At her feet lies the earth, represented by the uplifted arms on two legs, a rebus for the name of the earth god Geb. The world is shown in the centre of this frame as three concentric circles. The outermost circle is bordered on the left and the right by goddesses [very thin with slender raised arms] representing the east and the west ; before them stand the gods and peoples of the deserts that border Egypt on the east and the west. At the top (south) is a symbolic depiction of the Nile and the caverns that were believed to be its source. The ovals at the bottom (north) represent the islands and shorelands of the Mediterranean Sea. The second ring represents Egypt itself."

(Met Museum Online Catalogue, no. 14.7.1 a & b)

<https://metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/5495534.

The striking image of the goddess Nut has been neatly explained  by Silvia Zago in a 2021 article short-titled 'A Cosmography of the Unknown' (BIFAO, 121, 511-529):

"['The vault of the sky, represented in the Book of Nut by the arched body of the celestial goddess, separated the world of human experience from what lay outside, an unfathomable, dark, cold, empty, and infinite watery expanse known as Nun ...'] The focal element of the Book of Nut is the giant image of the celestial goddess Nut, who dominates the ceiling of the monuments where [she] is attested, naked and arching over the ground. Owing to the Egyptian mythological explanation of the course of the sun, according to which Nut swallows the Sun (her son) at sunset and gives birth to him again every morning, the goddess is represented while she supports herself with her arms in the west (sunset) and her legs and feet in the east (sunrise). The god Shu (her father) helps lift her up, and is therefore depicted with his arms raised to hold her weight."

The sarcophagus lid is therefore "a Late period 'map of cosmos', portraying within this frame "concentric rings or spheres symbolising the various domains composing it". It has become "the Egyptian universe, with a winged solar disc in the middle ... The next sphere contains 

the emblems of the Egyptian nomes [forty-two traditional territorial divisions or administrative regions] arranged from south (top) to north (bottom) and east (left) and west (right) ... The outer ring depicts foreign peoples, together with the tutelary gods of the deserts, and the goddesses of the East and the West, these latter marking the boundaries of the known world ... painting the territorial boundaries of Egypt."

While these mythical characteristics are unique to the Egyptian Map of the World, the concept of differentiating between what is familiar, local, 'explicable', and what is unfamiliar, foreign, 'inexplicable', is common to the Babylonian World Map as well. The anxiety is the same, and this is reinforced by the way both societies define themselves, through their own age-old 'brands' of cultural and religious understanding. Babylon, including New Babylon, reverences its Epic of Gilgamesh and the personalities of previous Sumerian societies, just as Egypt reproduces millennium old funeral custom and understanding (the Book of Nut, the Book of the Dead). 

Such an interpretation might be dismissed as 'Orientalism' ― a pro-Western bias that views ancient 'Asian' societies (e.g. Babylonia and Egypt) as despotic tyrannies exploiting passive populations, unchanging and rigid in outlook, and younger 'European' societies (e.g. Greece) as energetic democracies, with independent and innovative populations ― but the cartographic evidence is quite convincing. These Maps of the World are a small sample from only one area of technological development, but they seem to be the earliest  that have survived (or are known from the reports of others to have been produced), with Babylonian at approximately 600 BCE, Anaximander's and  Hecataeus' maps from the Greek city of Miletos at about 560 and 490 BCE, and Egyptian at roughly 350 BCE. In this case, then, Orientalism provides a good-as-any answer for the different approaches!