Babylonian Map of the World

Babylonian Map of the World, clay tablet produced between the late 8th and 6th centuries bce that depicts the oldest known map of the ancient world. Acquired by the British Museum in 1882 and translated in 1889, this tablet depicts a map of known and unknown regions of the ancient Mesopotamian world. Two cuneiform texts accompany the map, one above the map and the other on the reverse of the tablet. These give insight into Babylonian cosmology, though damage to the tablet’s surface makes it impossible for scholars to decipher it fully.

The tablet

The tablet measures 4.8 by 3.2 inches (12.2 by 8.2 cm) and is quite delicate. A piece of it broke off and was lost while the tablet was on loan to another institution. The tablet was found in a box with other objects from Hormuzd Rassam’s 1881 excavation at Tell Abū Ḥabba (ancient Sippar; roughly 25 miles [40 km] southwest of modern Baghdad), indicating that it was likely found at that site. However, it is possible that this tablet was mistakenly put in that box and that it originated in Borsippa, an ancient city located about 70 miles (115 km) south of Baghdad. This interpretation is based on the fact that an ancestor of the scribe who created the text on the reverse of the tablet was named Ea-bēl-ilī, which is the same name as a scribe in Borsippa known from other texts. An additional fragment of the tablet was found and reattached to the tablet in 1995.

Geography of the known world

The tablet depicts the world known to those in ancient Mesopotamia within a disk, which is surrounded by an outer circle. The area between these two concentric circles is labeled the “Bitter River,” meaning the salt sea or ocean. Two lines run through the middle of the disk, representing the Euphrates River. It flows from the north (top of the map) to the south (bottom of the map) and terminates where the map reads “swamp” and “outflow” in a rectangle below the river.

In the upper half of the disk the city of Babylon is depicted as a large horizontal bar that cuts across the Euphrates. The prominent place of Babylon suggests that the city was of importance in the mind of the map’s creator. Its placement also shows that Babylon straddled the river at this point in its history. The space inside the curved line above Babylon is labeled “mountain” and likely represents the Zagros Mountains, which would have been visible from the city. The smaller circles within the disk appear to be seven cities or districts. Two regions in Mesopotamia are identified by name: Assyria and Der. The nearby territory of Elam, represented by the name of its capital, Susa, appears to the south.

The map labels three other geographical areas within the disk. Bit-Yakin marks the territory of an Aramaean tribal group located above the “outflow” of the Euphrates. The independent kingdom of Urartu is placed to the north of Assyria. The homeland of a Kassite tribal group, called Habban, is incorrectly placed to the northwest of Babylon.

Beyond the outer circle, or Bitter River, of the map are five triangular regions, though the layout of the map and the inscription on the back of the tablet suggest that there were originally eight. Each of these is labeled nagû (Akkadian: “region” or “island”) inside the triangle. Next to each triangle, where legible, is the phrase “6 bēru [Akkadian: a measurement of distance of more than 6 miles, or 10 km] in between,” indicating a distance of several dozen miles between regions. The northeastern region is the exception to this rule: it is labeled “great wall” and the inscription outside the triangle reads, “where Shamash [the sun] is not seen.” This may refer to the fact that the sun never passes through the north as it rises in the east and sets in the west, or it may refer to legendary journeys undertaken by the heroes Gilgamesh and Sargon to lands of perpetual darkness. The regions beyond the Bitter River are regarded by some scholars as mythological regions and by others as real areas beyond the world known to the Mesopotamians.

Cosmology of the map

The text above the map discusses Marduk, the patron god of Babylon, and a variety of natural and supernatural creatures that he either defeated or made. These include “ruined gods” as well as a serpent, a dragon or sea serpent, a lion, a wolf, a stag, and others, all created by Marduk. The term “ruined gods” may refer to statues that fell into a state of disrepair or to creatures of Tiamat whom Marduk defeats in the epic Enuma elish. The gods appear to be in the underworld or underwater regions.

The text also lists three kings: Utnapishtim, Sargon, and Nur-Dagan. Of the three, Sargon, king of Akkad (c. 2334–2279 bce), is the only one who was certainly a historical figure. He created an empire that brought regions outside Babylonia under Akkadian control, and, in one legend, he battled Nur-Dagan, the possibly nonhistorical king of Purush-handa, a kingdom in central Anatolia. Utnapishtim is a Noah-like figure who survived a mythological great flood.

The reverse side of the tablet once described the eight nagû in further detail, though now only five of these descriptions remain. The inscription is damaged to the point that the surviving descriptions are largely unintelligible. The inscription ends with the scribe who wrote the text stating that it was copied from an older version. It is unclear whether this final note refers only to the inscription on the reverse or to the tablet as a whole.