First clay tablet map

Archaeologists have discovered maps inscribed on clay tablets at Nuzi in present-day northern Iraq—these predate by nearly two millennia the first Chinese map, which was engraved on a brass plate. Excavated in the 1920s, these clay representations from approximately 2300 BC lack the sophistication of those earliest Chinese maps, but they depict hills, streams and rivers, including the Euphrates, as well as various settlements. This period is considered the Age of Sargon, named for the ruler who conquered Mesopotamia. The “maps” are in the collections of the British Museum and the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An even earlier “map”—if it can really be called that, is a clay tablet from Babylon made sometime in the 6th Century BC. This can be considered the “earliest extant world map” as Earth is represented as a flat circle surrounded by oceans and even “mythical islands.” However, the “world,” as it were, is limited to the city of Babylon, with the Chaldeans to the southwest and the Assyrians plotted to the east--which was, indeed, the world as the Babylonians knew it—but hardly global or a refined example of cartographic art.