Irving Finkel on the world’s oldest map – History

A Babylonian clay tablet from the 6th century BC in the British Museum is the oldest surviving map of the world. Discovered in Sippar (today’s southern Iraq), it mapped a world centered on the flow of the Euphrates River, with Babylon astride it. Other Mesopotamian kingdoms, cities, and geographical areas are also marked, including Assyria, Urartu, and the southern marshes at the head of the Persian Gulf. We know this is a world map rather than a local map because it is surrounded by a ring labeled the “Bitter River,” which in Babylonian cosmology was a body of water that surrounded the known world.

Above the map is a cuneiform text that tells the creation story of Babylon and describes its human, animal, monster, and divine inhabitants. However, it does not directly explain the map itself. The longer inscription on the back does solve this problem, although the damaged area of ​​the tablet leaves all text incomplete.

There are eight “nagu” (areas) outside the Kuhe Double Ring. They are triangular in shape and may represent mountains that emerged after the Great Flood receded. The reverse side of the stele is engraved with eight clearly divided paragraphs describing the eight nagu and the constellations. Cuneiform text on the reverse also states that the map is a copy of an older version. The mention of place names suggests that the original map could not have been made before the 9th century B.C.

Scholars at the British Museum have been working to decipher it since its discovery in 1882, but missing parts have made it challenging. In the 1990s, Edith Horsley was a student in Curator Dr. Irving Finkel’s evening class when she came across an interesting piece of clay while volunteering for the museum. fragments. She set it aside for Finkel to examine, and as soon as Finkel saw it, he realized that it fit exactly into a broken gap on the world map board. The fragment proved to be the keystone in figuring out important elements of the map, including the final location of the ark built by Utnapishtim (the Babylonian version of Noah).

Dr. Irving Finkel has created a very interesting video about this map, its history, its interpretation and significance. Spoiler: The description on YouTube contains the worst content warning ever.