It’s just a badly damaged, 4-inch-high clay map inscribed on both sides with cuneiform text. But it gives us a clean bird’s-eye view of the ancient Babylonians themselves. The Babylonian Map of the World shows a vast circular continent completely surrounded by a great ocean (labeled marratu, meaning “salt sea”). Beyond the ocean are eight uncharted regions, depicted as triangles. Prominently at the center of the world is Babylon,which is represented as a large rectangle. The map also shows Assyria, as a much smaller circle, and several cities, such as Susa. The Euphrates River, depicted as a pair of […]
