Located in the Hereford Cathedral, England is the Hereford Mappa Mundi (“mappa mundi” literal translation: map of the known world), an ancient map depicting the world and humanity from the perspective of 1300’s Christian Europe. It was drawn on a single sheet of calf skin (vellum) with dimensions 1.59 x 1.34 meters (5’2” x 4’4”) in the style of a T and O map.
Archeological scholars believe the map to have been transported to the Hereford Cathedral from eastern England, in either Yorkshire or Lincolnshire. It is the largest existing mappa mundi, with the previous record holder being the Ebstorf map. Christopher de Hamel, an expert on medieval manuscripts believes that the map’s historical significance cannot be overstated: “… it is without parallel the most important and most celebrated medieval map in any form, the most remarkable illustrated English manuscript of any kind, and certainly the greatest extant thirteenth-century pictorial manuscript.”
The Hereford Cathedral has scanned and released an online version of the map to the broader public where 32 aspects of the map have been cataloged and explained. They were split into 6 groups: Myths and Legends (4), Bible Stories (5), Beasts of the World (4), Strange Peoples of the World (4), Towns and Cities (4), and the skin canvas features (11). Due to these depictions, we can see that it was created for navigation, but as an intricate work of art regarding history and mythology.
The map is interactive and very intuitive to navigate, with 3 view modes: the original map, a color-enhanced version, and a 3D rendition of the vellum. The map’s aspects are marked with white-bordered, big orange circles which greatly stands out against their surroundings. Still, it is not an open-source project to prevent undesired modifications to the online model of a priceless medieval artifact.
After admiring the map, a thought that arose in my mind was how the modern world can be represented on such a map, since the amount of historical advancements and cultural diversity means a lot of information would need to be packed onto it. Furthermore, this Christian map designated Jerusalem as the center of the world, but that wouldn’t be accepted by many religions in today’s time.
2 thoughts on “Mapping the World Map”
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I also really liked the mappa mundi’s presentation, and appreciated the ease with which one can use all of the implemented functionality. Your question about how the modern world could be represented on this kind of map is very interesting. There is a lot of connection being made between location and meaning here. As interesting as a modern attempt to capture that connection would be, I’m just not sure that we see the world around us in the same way that this cartographer did.
This is such a cool project about such a cool artifact. I really appreciate that I am able to see and interact with an important piece of history even though it physically exists “across the pond.” You make a really interesting point about how knowledge of the world at the time and now differ so much. I can definitely imagine that trying to create a similar map today would prove too difficult. But, perhaps that shows us that the mappa mundi doesn’t represent a definitive list of what was known at the time, but rather what was deemed important then and there.