Topographic map and city plan
Mapa topográfico y plano urbano
- Date
- c. 2300 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Gasur (Nuzi, Yorghan Tepe), Iraq; Nippur, Iraq
- Credited to
- Akkadian scribes of Gasur and of Nippur
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
The Gasur tablet (c. 2300 BCE), depicting rivers, mountains and an estate with cardinal orientation, and the Nippur city plan (c. 1500 BCE), to scale with walls, canals and temples. They are the earliest known maps and scale plans.
The Bedolina map (Italy) and the 'city' of Çatalhöyük are much-debated earlier candidates; the Turin Papyrus (c. 1150 BCE) is the first geological and mining map.
What it led to
- Cadastral surveys and graphic property records for taxation and litigation
- Planning of public works and military strategy based on graphic representation
- The concept of scale and overhead spatial representation, the basis of cartography
Built on
Made possible
- Turin Papyrus: map of the gold mines and the bekhen quarryc. 1150 BCE
- Babylonian world map (Imago Mundi)c. century VI a.C. (copia de un original posiblemente anterior)
- Fangmatan wooden mapsc. 239 BCE
- Babylonian map of the world
- Greek cartography
- Architect's plan