How the Oldest Map of the World Was Restored

British Museum curator Dr. Irving Finkel held up a cuneiform tablet and said that this piece of clay contained the oldest map of the world. In marveling over this piece, he recalled how one of his students located a missing piece, which was crucial in restoring the map to whole. This was a lucky break as it was traced back to ancient Mesopotamia and contains information of biblical proportions.

The Babylonian map of the world is the oldest map of the world, in the world. Written and inscribed on clay in Mesopotamia around 2,900-years-ago, it is, like so many cuneiform tablets, incomplete. However, Irving Finkel and a particularly gifted student of his – Edith Horsley – managed to locate a missing piece of the map, slot it back into the cuneiform tablet, and from there set us all on journey through the somewhat mythical landscape of Mesopotamia to find the final resting place of the ark.