Medium Aevum • The Hereford Mappa Mundi is the largest intact...

The Hereford Mappa Mundi is the largest intact Medieval wall map in the world and its ambition is breathtaking – to picture all of human knowledge in a single image. The work of a team of artists, the world it portrays is overflowing with life, featuring Classical and Biblical history, contemporary buildings and events, animals and plants from across the globe, and the infamous ‘monstrous races’ which were believed to inhabit the remotest corners of the Earth.

0 - At the center of the map: Jerusalem, above it: the crucifix.
1 - The Paradise, surrounded by a wall and a ring of fire.
2 - The Ganges and its delta.
3 - The fabulous Island of Taphana, sometimes (possibly mis-)interpreted as Sri Lanka or Sumatra.
4 - Rivers Indus and Tigris.
5 - The Caspian Sea, and the land of Gog and Magog
6 - Babylon and the Euphrat.
7 - The Persian Gulf.
8 - The Red Sea (painted in Red).
9 - Noah’s Ark.
10 - The Dead Sea, Sodom and Gomorrha, with River Jordan, coming from Sea of Galiliee; above: Lot’s wife.
11 - Egypt with the River Nile.
12 - River Nile [?], or possibly an allusion to the equatorial Ocean; far outside: a land of freaks, possibly the Antipodes.
13 - The Azov Sea with Rivers Don and Dnjepr; above: the Golden Fleece.
14 - Constantinoples; left of it the Danube’s delta.
15 - The Aegean Sea.
16 - Oversized delta of the Nile with Alexandria’s Lighthouse.
17 - A person skiing.
18 - Greece with Mt. Olymp, Athens and Corinth
19 - Misplaced Crete with Minotaur’s circular labyrinth.
20 - The Adriatic Sea; Italy with Rome, honored by a popular heptameter: Roma caput mundi tenet orbis frena rotundi [Rome, the head, holds the reins of the world].
21 - Sicily, and Carthage, opposing Rome, right of it.
22 - Scotland.
23 - England.
24 - Ireland.
25 - The Baleares.
26 - The Strait of Gibraltar (the Pillars of Hercules).