Maps history

Achievements of Iraqs Civilizations November 25, 2023

The Oldest Known Map: The Map of Nippur
This ancient clay tablet dates to the 14th-13th century BC. It shows a map of the countryside around the Mesopotamian city of Nippur, located in the middle of the southern Mesopotamia floodplain, near the modern city of Diwaniyah, Iraq’

Nippur Temple Library

Period: Middle Babylonian Civilization Made:1400-1100 BCE Map of an area near the ancient city of Nippur. Scientific text fragment. Plan of fields.

Description

Map of an area near the ancient city of Nippur. Scientific text fragment. Plan of fields.

The Babylonian Map of the World, One of the oldest known maps

clay tablet produced between the late 8th and 6th centuries BCE that One of the oldest known maps 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

Babylon is shown in the centre (the rectangle in the top half of the circle), and Assyria, Elam and other places are also named. The central area is ringed by a circular waterway labelled ‘Salt-Sea’. The outer rim of the sea is surrounded by what were probably originally eight regions, each indicated by a triangle, labelled ‘Region’ or ‘Island’, and marked with the distance in between. The cuneiform text describes these regions, and it seems that strange and mythical beasts as well as great heroes lived there, although the text is far from complete.

Babylonian civilization Production place Iraq
605BC-562BC
Clay cuneiform tablet plan of part of Babylon this shows the Tuba area in North-West Babylon, beside a branch of the Euphrates, with two gates
Mousa Alsaibawi

Our Sources :

History Begins at Sumer (Philadelphia, 1956), Thirty­ Nine Firsts in Recorded History,  by Samuel Noah Kramer, in 404 searchable pdf pages.

Selected Writings of Samuel Noah Kramer, in 570 bookmarked and searchable pdf pages.

Green، M.W. (1981). “The Construction and Implementation of the Cuneiform Writing System

Samuel Noah Kramer University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972 – History – 130 pages

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  • Kramer, Samuel Noah (1963). The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character Samuel Noah Kramer (PDF). University of Chicago Press. 
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  • Louvre Museum
  • Vatican Museums
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  • Metropolitan Museum of Art
  • Rijksmuseum
  • Ashmolean Museum
  • Cleveland Museum of Art
  • Art Institute of Chicago
  • Field Museum of Natural History