Old World Maps. Tartarian Empire. Strange Seas and Earth Mysteries Explore your music.

History’s earliest known world map was scratched on clay tablets in the ancient city of Babylon sometime around 600 B.C. The star-shaped map measures just five-by-three inches and shows the world as a flat disc surrounded by an ocean, or “bitter river.” Babylon and the Euphrates River are depicted in the center as a pair of rectangles, while the neighboring cities of Assyria and Susa are shown as small, circular blobs. Outside of the disc sit a collection of triangular wedges, which depict far-off islands with mysterious labels such as “beyond the flight of birds” and “a place where the sun cannot be seen.” The accompanying cuneiform text describes these unknown lands as being populated by mythological beasts, which suggests that the map shows both real geographical features and elements of Babylonian cosmology.