Table of Contents
Irving Finkel, a British Museum curator, uses a replica of a small clay tablet he calls the oldest map of the world. The original is fragile and damaged. Its back is ruled cuneiform. The front has a short creation note, then a double ring called the Bitter River, the ocean Babylonians set around the known world. Inside he finds the Euphrates, an oblong for Babylon, and smaller rings for cities or tribes, life in about the sixth century BC. Triangles beyond the ring, which he reads as far mountains, mark marvels: a sunless place, a jeweled tree, birds that cannot fly. Eight were planned. Labels on the back could not be matched until volunteer Edith Horsley found a lost triangle among old scraps. It names a Great Wall reached by rowing seven leagues, and it showed the count runs anti clockwise. The word parsiktu also appears in the Babylonian ark story, so Finkel says a climber of that mountain would see the ark’s ribs against the sky. The scribe’s name is broken. His father is Issuru, meaning bird.
Key points
- Finkel presents a damaged clay tablet as the oldest surviving map of the world.
- A double ring called the Bitter River encloses Babylon, the Euphrates, and other cities or tribes.
- Outer triangles are distant mountains of marvels, eight of them in the original scheme.
- Edith Horsley found a missing triangle that named a Great Wall and fixed the anti clockwise order.
- The measure parsiktu also appears in the Babylonian ark account, which Finkel ties to one mountain.
- The scribe is unnamed, but his father Issuru means bird, a joke Finkel does not resist.
Short quotes
This is the oldest map of the world!
Irving Finkel, Finkel and the Babylonian map of the world
That is the claim he makes for the small tablet before he explains the drawing. Watch at 1:48
So you have, encapsulated in this circular diagram the whole of the known world in which people lived, flourished and died.
Irving Finkel, Finkel and the Babylonian map of the world
The circle is his picture of the inhabited world, rivers and cities included. Watch at 4:02
And then something happened one of those missing triangles came to light in the collection.
Irving Finkel, Finkel and the Babylonian map of the world
The newly found fragment is what let the museum match the back of the tablet to the map. Watch at 6:15
Video by The British Museum. Watch on YouTube.