T and O map

File:T and O map Guntherus Ziner 1472.jpg

This T and O map, from the first printed version of Isidore's Etymologiae, identifies the three known continents as populated by descendants of Sem (Shem), Iafeth (Japheth) and Cham (Ham).

File:Hereford Mappa Mundi 1300.jpg

The Hereford Mappa Mundi, ca. AD 1300, Hereford Cathedral, England. A classic "T-O" map with Jerusalem at center, east toward the top, Europe at bottom left and Africa on the right.

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 the Afro-Eurasian landmass as a circle (= O) divided into three parts by a T-shaped combination of the Mediterranean sea, the river Tanais (Don) and the Nile.<ref>David Woodward, "Medieval Mappaemundi", in The History of Cartography, Vol. 1: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. J. B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 296.</ref> The origins of this diagram are contested, with some scholars hypothesizing an origin in Roman or late antiquity, while others consider it to have originated in 7th or early-8th century Spain.<ref>For an overview of the different scholarly positions on the origins of the diagrammatic form, see Christoph Mauntel, "The T-O Diagram and its Religious Connotations – a Circumstantial Case", in Geography and Religious Knowledge in the Medieval World, ed. Christoph Mauntel (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021), 60-65.</ref>

The earliest surviving example of a T-O map is found in a late-7th or early-8th century copy of Isidore of Seville's (c. 560–636) De natura rerum, which alongside his Etymologiae (c. 625) are two of the most common texts to be accompanied by such a diagram in the Middle Ages.<ref>El Escorial, Real Biblioteca, R.II.18, fol. 24v; see also Mauntel, "The T-O Diagram and its Religious Connotations", 61 and Woodward, "Medieval Mappaemundi", 301.</ref> A later manuscript added the names of Noah's sons (Sem, Iafeth and Cham) for each of the three continents (see Biblical terminology for race).<ref name=Williams13>Template:Harvnb: "...the Isidoran tradition, as it was known from peninsular examples, including the earliest of the ubiquitous T-O maps. This emblematic figure appears twice at the foot of folio 24v in a copy of Isidore's De Natura Rerum, now Escorial R.II.18. [...] When, in the ninth century, the Escorial manuscript fell into the hands of Eulogius and was supplemented, this precise text (Etymologiae XIV, 2, 3) was placed on the page, folio 25r, facing the primitive map and was introduced another small T-O map. To this later T-O diagram, however, were added the names of Noah's sons- Shem, Japheth and Ham, for Asia, Europe and Africa, respectively-outside the circle of the globe. This apportionment is only implicit in the Bible (Genesis 9: 18-19). Josephus (d. c.100 AD) is more explicit as was Hippolytus of Rome, whose chronicle of 234 in its Latin translation disseminated the Noachid distribution in the West. Isidore's Etymologiae, however, the distribution of Noah's sons is not highlighted, but only incidentally reported with the description of the location of cities in Book IX. It seems clear, if we accept the evidence of Escorial R.II.18, that the Shem-Japheth-Ham distribution was not in the primitive Isidoran diagram. This means that Isidore's use of the T-O diagram was not informed by any overt religious content."</ref> A later variation with more detail is the Beatus map drawn by Beatus of Liébana, an 8th-century Spanish monk, in the prologue to his Commentary on the Apocalypse.

Relevant textual descriptions of the worldEdit

The earliest T-O maps are closely associated with two sections of the work of Isidore of Seville:

De Natura Rerum 48.2-3 (drawn verbatim from Hyginus' De astronomia 1.9(8) and Augustine of Hippo's City of God 16.17<ref>Isidore of Seville: On the Nature of Things, trans. Calvin B. Kendall and Faith Wallis (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016), 175.</ref>):

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Etymologiae 14.2.1:

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History and descriptionEdit

Spherical Earth conceptEdit

Although Isidore taught in the Etymologiae that the Earth was "round", his meaning was ambiguous and some writers think he referred to a disc-shaped Earth. However, other writings by Isidore make it clear that he considered the Earth to be spherical.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Woodward">Woodward, David. "Reality, Symbolism, Time, and Space in Medieval World Maps", Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 1985, p. 517-519.</ref> Indeed, the spherical Earth had been the prevailing scholarly assumption since at least Aristotle, who had delineated a frigid clime at the poles, a torrid clime near the equator, and a habitable temperate clime in between.

File:Radkarte MKL1888 edited (T and O style, east-up).png

Ideal reconstruction of medieval world maps (from Meyers Konversationslexikon, 1895)

File:Orthographic T&O.png

A "T-O" map made with modern cartography

The T and O map represents only half of the spherical Earth,<ref name=livingston>Michael Livingston, Modern Medieval Map Myths: The Flat World, Ancient Sea-Kings, and Dragons Template:Webarchive, 2002.</ref> presumably a convenient projection of the known northern temperate region. It was believed that no one could cross the torrid equatorial clime and reach the unknown lands to the south, the antipodes.<ref name=livingston/><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Boundaries, center and orientationEdit

The T is the Mediterranean, the Nile, and the Don (formerly called the Tanais) dividing the three continents, Asia, Europe and Africa, and the O is the encircling ocean.<ref>Woodward, "Medieval Mappaemundi", 296.</ref> In line with Isidore's description, Asia is normally depicted as equal in size to Africa and Europe combined.<ref>Mauntel, "The T-O Diagram and its Religious Connotations", 59. A small number of T-O maps instead depict Africa as taking up half the circle as opposed to Asia (Woodward, "Medieval Mappaemundi", 343.) and a smaller number still depict Europe in this way (e.g. Ingrid Baumgärtner, "Die Wahrnehmung Jerusalems auf mittelalterlichen Weltkarten", in Jerusalem: im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter: Konflikte und Konfliktbewältigung - Vorstellungen und Vergegenwärtigungen, ed. Dieter R. Bauer, Klaus Herbers and Nikolas Jaspert (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2001), 271-73).</ref> The majority T-O maps are oriented to the east, though examples of north, south and westward orientation can also be found.<ref> Non-eastern orientations are associated above all with T-O maps that accompany Sallust's Jugurthine War, on which see Woodward, "Medieval Mappaemundi", 343-4, where examples of all four orientations are also provided. There is no consensus on the origins of the predominantly eastern orientation, some like Mauntel, "The T-O Diagram and its Religious Connotations", 65-9 argue that it is a specifically Christian development, while others like Patrick Gautier Dalché, "L'héritage antique de la cartographie médiévale: Les problèmes et les acquis", in Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Fresh Perspectives, New Methods, ed. Richard J. A. Talbert and Richard W. Unger (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 55-6 are more circumspect about the specifically Christian significance of this orientation.</ref>

The idea that Jerusalem was generally represented in the center of the map as the navel of the world, the umbilicus mundi, is a false generalisation from a relatively small number of very famous 13th-century mappae mundi.<ref>Woodward, "Medieval Mappaemundi", 340 and Baumgärtner, "Die Wahrnehmung Jerusalems", 304.</ref> The earliest T-O maps marked no particular geographic center and while some early mappae mundi were specifically centered on classical sites like Delos or the Cyclades, most simply had the Mediterranean or Aegean Sea in the middle.<ref> Baumgärtner, "Die Wahrnehmung Jerusalems", 275-94.</ref> It was only after the First Crusade that Jerusalem began to be represented as the center of the world on medieval maps, a trend which rose to prominence from the mid-12th century through the early-14th century, but was never universally observed.<ref>Woodward, "Medieval Mappaemundi", 341-2 and Baumgärtner, "Die Wahrnehmung Jerusalems", 294-310.</ref>

The location of Paradise (the Garden of Eden) in the east of Asia is based upon the Septuagint translation of Genesis 2:8, which describes the garden of Eden being planted in the east. This is a longstanding feature of Christian textual geographies, and while not present on the earliest T-O maps, it is a prominent feature of many early mappae mundi, especially the Beatus maps.<ref>Mauntel, "The T-O Diagram and its Religious Connotations", 67-9.</ref> These depictions are often combined with a depiction of the four rivers of Paradise: the Tigris, Euphrates, Pishon and Gihon, the latter two of which were sometimes understood by medieval cartographers as the Ganges and Nile (or Geon) respectively. These were either depicted as flowing within/out from paradise and/or as four major rivers on the map.<ref>Woodward, "Medieval Mappaemundi", 328.</ref>

Additional detailsEdit

This qualitative and conceptual type of medieval cartography could yield extremely detailed maps in addition to simple representations. The earliest maps had only a few cities and the most important bodies of water noted.{{ safesubst:#invoke:Unsubst||date=__DATE__ |$B= Template:Fix }}Template:Cn

Different cartographic material, which represented more useful tools for the traveler, were the itinerarium, which listed in order the names of towns between two points, and the periplus that did the same for harbors and landmarks along a seacoast.Template:Cn

Later maps of the T-and-O conceptual format featured many rivers and cities of Eastern as well as Western Europe, and other features encountered during the Crusades. Decorative illustrations were also added in addition to the new geographic features. The most important cities would be represented by sketches of fortifications and towers in addition to their names, and the empty spaces would be filled with mythical creatures.Template:Cn

GalleryEdit

Beatus map.jpg

The world map from the Saint-Sever Beatus, dating to ca. AD 1050.
Diagrammatic T-O world map - 12th c.jpg

From a 12th c. copy of Etymologiae.
World map intermediate between T-O and mappa mundi.jpg

Map centred on Delos according to Greek tradition, from a French manuscript of Henry of Huntingdon, late 13th century
T-O Mappa mundi.jpg

Mappa Mundi in La Fleur des Histoires, 1459–1463.
1581 Bunting clover leaf map.jpg

The Bünting cloverleaf map. A 1581 woodcut, Magdeburg. Jerusalem is in the center, surrounded by Europe, Asia and Africa.
Unknown, Mer Des Hystoires World Map, 1491, Persuasive Cartography PJModeCollection, CUL, ID 1001.01.jpg

Unknown, Mer des hystoires world map, 1491, following the model of the T-O map, centered on Jerusalem with East (the biblical location of Paradise) at the top.
Bergomensis T-O World Map 1503 Cornell CUL PJM 1003 01.jpg

On the left part of the sheet is a zonal or climatic map, communicating geographical information. On the right is a "T-O" map. By Jacobus Philippus Bergomensis.
Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 524, fol. 74v maps.png

T and O map accompanied by a V-in-square map, from a copy of the Etymologiae (Template:Circa).
Noachide map from the Abbey library of Saint Gall (oldest map naming Europe), Isidore-Codex 236.png

Map from the Saint Gall Isidore manuscript.
Bodleian Libraries, Basic TO map and a schematic map.jpg

T and O map from the Flemish manuscript of Brunetto Latini, Le Livre dou Tresor, early 14th century.

ReferencesEdit

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