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The Hereford mappa mundi, a map of the world with Jerusalem at its centre. The Hereford Mappa Mundi (Latin: mappa mundi) is the largest medieval map still known to exist, depicting the known world. It is a religious rather than literal depiction, featuring heaven, hell and the path to salvation.
The zonal maps should be viewed as a kind of teaching aid – easily reproduced and designed to reinforce the idea of the Earth's sphericity and climate zones. T-O maps were designed to schematically illustrate the three land masses of the world as it was known to the Romans and their medieval European heirs.
The Map was a greatly elaborated version of the medieval tripartite or T and O map; it was centred on Jerusalem with east at the top of the map. It represented Rome in the shape of a lion, and had an evident interest in the distribution of bishoprics. [ 30 ]
A T and O map or O–T or T–O map (orbis terrarum, orb or circle of the lands; with the letter T inside an O), also known as an Isidoran map, is a type of early world map that represents world geography as first described by the 7th-century scholar Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) in his De Natura Rerum and later his Etymologiae (c. 625) [1]
Traditionally, western European medieval mappaemundi, or world maps, have been divided into two categories: T–O maps and zonal maps. T–O maps are named as such because of their tripartite structure – a T rests inside an O, dividing the world into the three known continents.
In European history, "post-classical" is synonymous with the medieval time or Middle Ages, the period of history from around the 5th century to the 15th century. It began with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery .
Psalter world map, ca. 1260. Jerusalem is at the centre of the map; the Red Sea can be seen coloured red at upper right of the globe. The Psalter World Map or the Map Psalter is a small mappa mundi from the 13th century, now in the British Library, found in a psalter. No other records of psalters found from the Middle Ages have a mappa mundi. [1]
In classical antiquity, Europe was assumed to cover the quarter of the globe north of the Mediterranean, an arrangement that was adhered to in medieval T and O maps. Ptolemy's world map of the 2nd century already had a reasonably precise description of southern and western Europe, but was unaware of particulars of northern and eastern Europe.