World maps & models
Babylonian Map of the World
Historical recordDisc and surrounding cosmic waters; ancient worldview, not an Antarctic survey.
What this record establishes
Institutional record documented; does not authenticate interpretations.
Record details
- Artifact date
- c. 6th century BCE
- Creator
- Unknown Babylonian scribe
- Holding institution
- British Museum
- Classification
- Cosmological geography
Antarctica connection
Contextual visual history; not direct evidence about Antarctica
Relevance and caution
Disc and surrounding cosmic waters; ancient worldview, not an Antarctic survey.
Catalog context
Curatorial navigation label; original categories and source identity retained.

The original Babylonian Map of the World tablet, British Museum ME 92687, photographed independently by Mike Peel in 2010. The museum dates the tablet to the sixth century BCE. This ancient Mesopotamian cosmographical artifact is not a surveyed map of Antarctica.
Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net), 27 June 2010, CC BY-SA 4.0. British Museum, ME 92687.
Image source record · Reuse terms
Image rights and evidence limits
Independent photographer Mike Peel own-work image, CC BY-SA 4.0. Credit and license link required, modifications disclosed, derivatives under same license. This does not clear British Museum institutional image 471361001 or all museum photography.
Image existence does not prove a linked claim. Consult image-specific captions and reuse conditions.
Sources and what they support
Links document the record, the claim’s circulation, an assessment, or reuse terms as labeled. A source link is not automatically corroboration.
- image reproduction provenance; not proof of a linked interpretationhttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_world.jpg
- image reuse conditionshttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
- institutional or documentary recordhttps://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/image/471361001
Explore the same topic
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Abizaid’s flat, stationary-Earth map
John George Abizaid’s map with English and Arabic text.
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Al-Idrisi’s world map — a sixteenth-century copy
Orientation is a cartographic convention, not inversion of the physical Earth.
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Bertelli’s map of the known world
Southern land and fantastic fauna are speculative; do not label them surveyed ice-free Antarctica.
- Historical record
Cosmas’s ancient world model — nineteenth-century tracing
Kohl’s nineteenth-century tracing of a Cosmas reconstruction.
