The mystery surrounding the world’s oldest map, a 3,000-year-old tablet, has finally been solved.
The ancient tablet, which has been understood after centuries, reveals what the Babylonians believed about the known world at the time.
The Imago Mundi map, dating back to the 6th century BCE, depicts an aerial view of Mesopotamia and has puzzled researchers for centuries.
The cuneiform tablet was discovered in the Middle East and acquired by the British Museum in 1882.
Experts have finally succeeded in decoding it after locating the missing parts.
The tablet contains a series of paragraphs where the author describes the creation of the earth and the beliefs about what lay beyond it.
The map shows ancient Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), surrounded by a double-ringed “bitter river” which marks the boundaries of the known world at that time.