Weird Maps From The Middle Ages

Many medieval world maps shared a general style.The T-O map.These maps showed three known continents.The maps showed three known continents.The map shows them in a T-shape, ringed by an O of water—like the Trivial Pursuit wedge of the world. This map simplifies the world's shape using its lines.

Asia sits at the top. Europe and Africa sit below. The Mediterranean, the Nile, and the River Don form the water separating the continents.

This map style ignored accuracy. Mapmakers wanted to show the balance between continents. Jerusalem sat in the center. Mapmakers often added religious items, like Noah’s Ark or the Earthly Paradise.

If the map's religious nature is unclear, the Psalter Map, made in 1260s, makes it clear. This map places a giant image of Jesus on top.This small map measures.This map measures.It stands only 6.6 inches high.This map was painted in a 13th-century copy of the Book of Psalms. Jesus holds court over the world. The Psalter Map places a large bull's-eye over Jerusalem at the center.

Mythical monsters live on the map's right side. The Red Sea is painted red. These monsters come from classical texts like Pliny the Elder’s Natural History.Pliny claimed.Pliny claimed a North African tribe had no heads; their mouths and eyes were in their breasts. Pliny’s classical stories mix with biblical knowledge on this map.

The.The Tabula Peutingeriana.The Tabula Peutingeriana, an itinerary map, reproduces a Roman map. It shows Roman highways from England to Sri Lanka. It does not use scale; it warps space to show the road system. Pictured are stopping places, towns, and mountain ranges.

The Tabula Peutingeriana measures 22 feet long. That size makes it useless for a road trip.Yet, with 555 cities and 3,500 place names, it chronicles Rome’s reach.With 555 cities and 3,500 place names, the Tabula Peutingeriana chronicles Rome’s reach.

The map’s geographic data dates back to before 79 AD.The map’s geographic data dates back to before 79 AD.You can spot Pompeii. The original map is lost. A monk copied it onto 11 scrolls in 1265.

The Anglo-Saxon map, made in Canterbury between 1025 and 1050, shows the earliest known realistic depiction of the British Isles. It looks unrecognizable as a world map because it ignores many T-O style map rules. Like the Tabula Peutingeriana, it uses Roman names for provinces.

The British Isles sit in the bottom left corner. Jerusalem is near the center, showing religion’s influence on mapmaking. The top is east. Before the 1500s, no rule existed about placing north at the top of maps.Before the 1500s, there was no convention about putting north at the top of maps.Europeans placed many places east at the top because they believed the biblical Earthly Paradise lay in the Far East.

This is the first look at this medieval itinerary map.Matthew Paris’s medieval itinerary map doesn't look like a map. It shows a line of castles and buildings crossed by red text and blue waves. The map charts a route from London to the Holy Land, marking all the sights along the way. The mapmaker included rivers, hills, alternate routes, and spots for a religious pilgrimage.Matthew Paris’s itinerary map doesn't look like a map. It shows a line of castles and buildings crossed by red text and blue waves. The map charts a route from London to the Holy Land, highlighting sights. The mapmaker included rivers, hills, alternate routes, and places for a religious pilgrimage.

Matthew Paris drew London on the bottom left of the map. A thick city wall surrounds a blue church.

Like many medieval maps, this one was not meant to travel. It was an expensive piece of art, perhaps used for a religious pilgrimage.This was for an imagined pilgrimage.This pilgrimage meant the pilgrim never had to leave England.

Several versions exist of the Beatus map.The Beatus map.This map was originally included in an 8th-century Commentary on the Apocalypse.Commentary on the Apocalypse.Beatus of Liébana created this. Like the Psalter Map, versions of the Beatus map appeared in religious texts to help study religion.

The Earthly Paradise appears at the top, showing Adam, Eve, and the serpent. The map also has interesting decorations. The world's waters feature fish and boats, and palaces dot the land.

The Hereford mappa mundi.The Hereford mappa mundi.This map shows the simplified T-O structure with more geographic detail. Made around 1300, this map has been in England’s Hereford Cathedral for 700 years. It captures a medieval view of the world. The map mixes medieval and biblical history, showing over 500 illustrations of people, animals, cities, and towns, 15 biblical events, and many strange creatures, odd people, and myths.

The variety in the Hereford mappa mundi shows its purpose: It is a visual record of knowledge, mixing time and space to impress viewers with the world's scope. The Hereford mappa mundi is in a cathedral, so it is also a religious object.It is a religious object.It was meant to teach Christians about their place in the world.

The Ebstorf Map is the king of medieval religious maps.It was made in the 1230s.People found this map 600 years later during the 19th century. It was found in a convent in Ebstorf, a small German town. The map uses the standard T-O format: Asia sits on top, and Europe and Africa are below. This map is the biggest medieval map known, measuring nearlyThe map measures nearly 12 feet across.The map is so large it was drawn on 30 goatskins.

Besides its size, the map's most startling feature is the strange image at the top, sides, and bottom. Look closely: hands and feet stick out of the Earth, and a head sits on top of the map. Jesus is the figure; the mapmaker claimed the world is literally the body of Christ.

The time, money, and effort put into creating this medieval map were all erased.The time, money, and effort put into creating this medieval map were all erased.A WWII air raid in 1943 hit Hanover, ending the original map's existence.

Medieval mapmakers in China produced the Da Ming Hunyi Tualso known as theComposite Map of the Ming EmpireThis map, a full 15 feet wide, showed the world as the Ming knew in 1389. People painted it on silk during China's upheaval.Mongol Yuanrulers had just been kicked out. In the late 1300s, China balanced an international view, promoted by Mongol rulers, against a focus on internal matters from conservative factions.

Much of the Da Ming Hunyi Tu's knowledge came from China's contacts with Muslim cartographers and thinkers. Place names on the map's western edges use Arabic names.

China sent the voyagerZheng Heto explore the world for almost thirty years in the early 1400s. After he died, Ming emperors stopped exploration voyages and focused on China. As they argued, “barbarian” nations offered little benefit to China’s success.

This map is very worldly. The Tabula Rogeriana—Latin for the Book of Roger—was made around 1154 by a Muslim scholar named Al-Idrisi. Al-Idrisi was born in North Africa. He studied in Islamic Spain, traveled the known world, and worked for Roger II, the Christian king of Sicily. In the 12th century, Sicily had strong influences from Byzantine, Catholic, Muslim, and Viking traditions. The Normans, former Vikings who settled in France, conquered the island’s Arab rulers and took it for themselves. Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, and Normans all claimed Sicily.

Al-Idrisi created one of the most accurate, complete maps of the known world. Al-Idrisi drew on interviewswith dozens of travelers, plus official texts.

However, the Tabula Rogeriana reflects its time. The best reminder is the map places south at the top. For Al-Idrisi, the world he knew best—the Muslim territories of North Africa—was south, so placing it at the top made sense.

Some medieval maps look like they still exist today. Africa might look odd on the Medici-Laurentian Atlasmap from 1351, but Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East show high accuracy. The anonymous maker of this map, likely from Genoa, learned to make portolan charts.

Portolan chartsSailors used portolan charts to steer in the Mediterranean and Black Seas. These charts needed exact geographic knowledge so ships avoided getting lost. Although this expensive, painted map stayed ashore, it uses knowledge from portolan charts. It shows that religious medieval maps weren't made because mapmakers lacked geographic skill; they made them for a specific reason.

In the late 1300s, a family of Catalonian Jews made the most famous maps in Europe. King Charles V of France ordered the creation of this map.Catalan AtlasThis map shows the world's most current geography as of 1375. The artwork merges portolan chart knowledge with hundreds of illustrations.

The world map shows Europeans on the Silk Road to China. You spot a warrior elephant with sharpened tusks. Various territory flags appear. Strange birds, animals, and people fill the map. The map colors islands like Corsica and Sardinia gold. Mapmakers made many maps because islands fascinated people during the late medieval and Renaissance periods.Isolariosbooks of islands" which simply hold maps of different islands. Sea charts showed islands as obstacles for travel. However, islands also connected to the idea of a territorial state.