Our Deep History Our Deep History A museum of unexplained ancient sites and relics
Iraq rooms

Probably Sippar; the tablet is in the British Museum, Iraq

The Babylonian Map of the World

About the 6th century BC (by the script, not by a survey date)

The Babylonian map of the world, British Museum 92687, the number inked on the clay above the circle. The world is drawn as a disk inside a ring of water, with writing where a coastline would be. Gary Todd, CC0. Shown unedited.

A circle of ocean, a channel, and Babylon near the middle, with the unmapped world written in words beyond the line.

Why this is extraordinary

Someone in Babylonia drew the world on clay and wrote around the drawing. The signs are cuneiform, wedge-shaped writing. A double circle is the ocean, called in the text the bitter river, and that ring is the edge of the inhabited world as the scribe drew it. Inside it, a channel crosses the disk, small rings and rectangles stand for regions, and Babylon is marked near the middle. Above the circle, and in the broken paragraphs around it, the writing describes lands and, beyond the ocean, regions that include beings of story and distances in round numbers. The tablet carries the museum numbers 92687 and 82-7-14,509. It was acquired in 1882 and is said to be from Sippar, Abu Habba. The usual placement is the 6th century BC, by the script. Some captions stretch the same piece across about 700 to 500 BC.

The drawing is a diagram. It is not a paced survey, and it is not a page of Enuma Elish or of the flood poems. It does show how a scribe was willing to picture the inhabited world: a disk, a ring of water, named lands he knew, and an outside full of marvels. Sippar is also one of the five cities the king list places before the flood. The map does not say it is a picture of that flood.

If the ring of water remembers a drowned outer world, the memory is a 1st-millennium diagram with regions of story in the text, not a chart of the Younger Dryas shore. If it is a teaching piece, it is still evidence of a Babylonian geography with Babylon at the centre. The poems are the Ancient Texts rooms. The city on the disk is Babylon.

The arrangement of the drawing. Names follow the published reading. The clay is broken, and this is not a tracing of every sign. Diagram: Our Deep History.

Why it matters

The tablet is the oldest surviving map that tries to draw the whole world. What it includes, and what it fills with story, is the part you have to weigh.

Sippar is named in the king list among the cities before the flood. The flood poems are Atrahasis, the Eridu Genesis and Gilgamesh Tablet XI. The creation in which Marduk splits the sea is Enuma Elish. This object is later than those literary copies and does a different job. It draws.

Photo tour

4 photographs, unedited. On a phone, swipe the row. Choose one to look closely.

The Babylonian map of the world, British Museum 92687, the number inked on the clay above the circle. The world is drawn as a disk inside a ring of water, with writing where a coastline would be. Gary Todd, CC0
The tablet flat, with both museum numbers visible at the upper left. The writing is as large a part of the object as the circle. A map that needs a paragraph is not only a picture.Unknown author, Public domain
The circle up close. The double line, the channel and the small rings are cut into the clay, and the right side is missing. The geometry is deliberate, and the breaks eat the labels a reader most wants.Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0
The tablet on its mount in the British Museum, thick in the side view. A world map that can stand on a shelf was a clay document, the same material as a contract.Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0

See the evidence at the source

These pictures are not openly licensed, so they are not copied onto this page. Each link opens in a new tab.

What is still unexplained

These sit beside the consensus account, with the same visual weight. None of them is marked solved.

Observed on the clay A disk and a ring The circle is drawn twice. Inside it the channel, the rings and the rectangles are incised, and a hole pierces the middle of the disk. The number 92687 is inked on the upper left of the face in the photographs. The clay is broken. Several labels sit in the gaps. The published reading treats the double line as the ocean and the small marks as regions. This room does not pretend the broken signs are sharp in the photograph. The diagram below is that reading, not a tracing that invents letters.
Observed in the published reading Real lands, and regions of story Babylon, the Euphrates, Assyria, and other names a scribe of that century could have visited or heard of, sit with the drawing. The paragraphs beyond the circle describe further regions, some with strange beings and with distances. A teaching diagram can hold both a true river and a marvel. The marvel does not cancel the river. The river does not make the marvel a survey station.
Open Not a flood chart A ring of water around the world is also the shape of the flood poems and of the creation in which the sea is split. A reader can ask whether the ring remembers a time when water bounded a smaller land. The tablet's date is the 6th century BC by the usual placement. It names no year in the Ice Age. It does not name Ziusudra, Atrahasis or Utnapishtim. The king list's Sippar is a tradition about the findspot's city. It is not a caption written on this clay.

Location and dating

Location
The tablet is British Museum 92687, registration 1882,0714.509. It is probably from Sippar, Abu Habba, in modern Iraq. The acquisition is 1882. A dug context inside a building at Sippar is not part of the surviving record used here.
Period label
Current consensus — open to revision The working date is open to revision. The tablet is Late Babylonian, usually the 6th century BC, by the script. The wider label 700 to 500 BC appears on museum captions of the same object.
How this dating was done
The tablet is dated by typology, which places a piece from the style of its script, and by the Late Babylonian hand. Sippar is the reported findspot, not a stratum published with the purchase. Nothing on the clay is a radiocarbon sample, organic material dated by the carbon left in it.
What could change it
A tablet of this drawing from a dated building would fix the century. A label that named a lost shoreline in words a geologist could test would move the flood-chart reading. The broken paragraphs describe regions and beings. They do not give that shoreline.
Published ranges, drawn as bars. A bar is a claim about a span, not a point.
Usual placement
Wider caption rangeContested
700 BCE600 BCE500 BCE
  • Usual placement. Sixth century BC, by the script.
  • Wider caption range. Some captions of this same tablet.

What is actually there

Open questions

Question Status
Which of the small rings are cities, and which are regions? Debated where the clay is broken
Are the outer regions a sailor's report, a marvel-list, or both? Open
Does the ocean ring remember a flood, or draw a cosmology? Open

The current narrative

Where publication stands today. It is the best-supported reading, and it is open to revision. It is not a verdict.

The current narrative — open to revision

A teaching diagram of a round world

The tablet is a Late Babylonian schematic. Babylon sits near the centre, real regions are named, and the text beyond the ocean adds marvels. It teaches a cosmology. It does not survey a coast.

What supports this

  • The circle is geometric, the hole is in the middle, and the distances in the outer text are round.
  • Named lands include places a scribe could know, Babylon among them.
  • The outer paragraphs include beings of story, which a paced chart would not need.

What pushes back

  • Some inner labels are real geography. A pure cosmology would not need the Euphrates.
  • The broken signs leave room for a more practical reading of particular rings.

What would settle it

Best reading. A diagram can be useful and still be a diagram. The marvels keep it from being a nautical chart.

Emerging narratives

Other published readings. Each may be right. None is adopted here unless the evidence carries it.

An emerging narrative

A memory of lands beyond a flood

The ocean ring and the outer regions remember a world reduced by water, and the map is a late drawing of that memory.

What supports this

  • The bitter river encircles the inhabited disk, which is the shape a flood story gives the world.
  • The outer text is interested in what lies beyond the water, at distances.
  • Sippar, the reported findspot, is one of the king list's cities from before the flood.

What pushes back

  • The usual date is the 6th century BC. The flood poems are older and are different objects.
  • The outer regions include beings of story. That is marvel literature beside geography.
  • No label names an Ice Age shore, a year, or the heroes of the flood tablets.

What would settle it

A ring of water is the tablet's cosmology and the poems' cosmology. A drowned Ice Age map is a further claim. The clay does not date it.

Should the current view be reevaluated?

Consensus holds well

The object is a real Late Babylonian world diagram with a known museum history. The open part is how practical the broken inner labels were. The flood-chart reading is not required.

What drives this

  • The drawing and the numbers on the clay
  • A published reading that mixes known lands and marvels
  • A date in the 6th century BC by the script

This is the museum’s own weighing of the evidence. It is not a visitor vote, and it is separate from the slider.

Weigh it yourself

Anonymous. Nothing here is stored except on this browser. Your lean does not change the assessment beside it.

A teaching diagram of a round world Unsure A memory of lands beyond a flood

If the contested reading is right

What would follow if a reading that is not the consensus turned out to be true, and what could settle it. This explains the stakes. It does not adopt the reading.

The outer regions record a real drowned margin

A school tablet would also be a geographical memory, and the broken paragraphs would be the part to read against a reconstructed coast of the first millennium, not against the end of the Ice Age unless a line says so.

Why it is still worth a test

A joined reading of the outer regions that names a place a survey can find, published against the broken signs.

Sources

  1. The Babylonian map of the world, 92687 The British Museum
  2. Babylonian Map of the World Wikipedia
  3. Sippar Wikipedia

Image credits

← Iraq World map