Mapping Asia

The Sawley Map(left) drew on the Imago Mundi (1190) by Honorius Augustodunensis.  It represents Asia as half of the known world, similarly to the more schematized T-O maps. This map of Asia includes many notable Christian images such as paradise (at the top), a Red Sea divided to show the path of the Israelites from the Book of Exodus (top right), and Gog and Magog. Jerusalem is prominently displayed above the Mediterranean Sea at the center, and the ocean surrounds the whole world.

While Christian imagery is the most prevalent feature of this map, classical myths such as Sylla and Charybdis appear, emphasizing the role of the map as a record of stories. The map shows little geographical detail in Asia, focusing instead on information from the Bible and Greek/Alexandrian tales. At this point in time, information about territories and countries was limited, so land is mostly marked by cities and events, rather than political possession. 

Ptolemy’s world map (right) was created in about 1295 by a group of Byzantine monks who used Ptolemy’s Geography to construct a world map. The Geography was a repository of the geographic knowledge of the Roman world and attempted to use lines of latitude and longitude to locate and describe geography. While the map contains a very limited depiction of Africa, Asia is much more recognizable to a modern viewer. Features such as the Indian Ocean and the Ganges and Indus rivers outline India clearly. These early Ptolemaic maps, however, do not include Japan or most of Southeast Asia, and have a limited expression of mountains such as the Himalayas.

The Tavola della oriental regione dell' Asia, created by Sebastian Münster in 1559 in his Cosmographia, is an improvement on early ptolemaic representations of Asia. While it is mostly based on Ptolomey’s Geography, Münster incorporated new Portuguese knowledge of the region into his map. Southeast Asia is starting to be represented on this map, as well as region territory names, such as the Portuguese outposts Goa and Calicut. Other topographical features are also present, such as the Himalayas and a few waterways. Japan is not represented on this map, however it shows up in maps of the Americas elsewhere in Münster’s work.

Finally, we have the representation of Asia by Abraham Ortelius in 1570, in his atlas Theatrvm orbis terrarvm. The most recognizable map yet, Ortelius’s work is a collection of cartography knowledge from the 16th century. The map includes a representation of Japan in the east, a good attempt at illustration the islands of Southeastern Asia, and a hugely expanded showing of cities and territories that existed at the time.The continent  is surrounded by the Arctic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans and the waterways and topography of the continent are extremely detailed.