Ancient map reveals secrets hidden for 3,000 years
More than three millennia ago, one of the world’s oldest city maps was carved into clay — and only recently has it become clear that it matches perfectly with the excavated ruins of the ancient city of Nippur.
The secrets of the ancient map, created 3,300 years ago in Mesopotamia between 1500 and 1300 BC and carved into a clay tablet, have only just come to light, National Geographic reports.
The tablet was discovered back in 1899, when archaeologists working in what is now Iraq came across a peculiar, palm-sized clay piece. The lines and markings on its surface immediately suggested that it might be some kind of ancient map, but what exactly it depicted has been fiercely debated for more than a century.
Nippur, the mysterious holy city
Based on the proportions seen on the tablet, it appears to depict the Mesopotamian city of Nippur, which served as an important religious centre for much of the Bronze Age.
Its temples were restored by the Kassite Babylonian rulers in the mid–2nd millennium BC. The tablet covered roughly half a square mile of the city and marked out its walls as well as the distances between its gates.
For a long time, however, the ancient map puzzled researchers: some archaeologists could not reconcile the buildings shown on the clay tablet with the excavated remains of the city, leading many to believe that the map was inaccurate.
The major breakthrough
The turning point came in the 1970s, when McGuire Gibson, an archaeologist at the University of Chicago, discovered — by analysing aerial photographs — that the walls and angles shown on the tablet actually matched perfectly with Nippur’s former southern fortifications and their surviving traces.
Once excavations began at that precise location, archaeologists indeed found the wall remains corresponding to the tablet’s markings.
According to Gibson, when correctly oriented, the ancient map aligns extremely well with the excavated ruins and is surprisingly accurate, showing a margin of error of only about 10 per cent.
How could it be so accurate?
The precision with which the tablet’s creators depicted the city’s layout still amazes researchers today. Although we do not know exactly what methods they used, Mesopotamians were known to be excellent surveyors, and other surviving clay tablets show that similar drawings were made of land plots and residential areas.
The Nippur tablet, however, covers a much larger area, meaning its makers must have carried out long and meticulous measurements. To determine angles, they likely used knotted ropes and measuring rods, and possibly even simple trigonometric principles.
An ancient map and blueprint in one?
An important historical context may reveal the purpose of the map: in the centuries before the tablet was made, Nippur had become almost entirely abandoned, but when the Kassites came to power, they began rebuilding the city.
Mesopotamian rulers considered construction their duty, and researchers believe the tablet may not have been just a map — but a kind of urban planning blueprint.
Several similar tablets have been found
Among the ancient tablets surviving from Mesopotamia, there are others that may offer similarly fascinating insights. According to neokohn.hu, in 1882 Hormuzd Rassam and his research team discovered a nearly 3,000-year-old tablet among the ruins of the Babylonian city of Sippar. It may shed light on the beliefs of the people who lived there.
Both sides of the tablet bear cuneiform inscriptions, and beside them an ancient map depicting the territory of the Babylonian Empire. Among the inscriptions, Urartu — or Ararat — also appears, and the accompanying description states that anyone who travels there will encounter a great vessel, a ship, which many believe to be a reference to Noah’s Ark.