Mind-Benders of Mesopotamian History
The oldest known map of the world is a Babylonian clay tablet
The earliest surviving attempt to draw the whole world is a small Babylonian clay tablet called the Imago Mundi. It shows Babylon on the Euphrates ringed by a circular "bitter river," with distant regions depicted as wedge-shaped triangular sections — called nagu — beyond the edge of the known world.
How we know
Babylonian Map of the World (Imago Mundi), British Museum tablet BM 92687, found at Sippar, dated to the 7th–6th century BCE (scholars favor a late 8th or 7th century BCE date for the physical tablet; the map copies an older original no earlier than the 9th century BCE); widely described as the oldest known world map.
One of many fact-checked wonders across eight traditions at The Spring of Wisdom.