This map is the very first to enter print. Known as a T-O type, it is organized around a biblical conception of the world. The map’s alignment (quite literally, its orientation, with the East at top) is a function of humanity’s origins in Eden, which is accounted for simply as being ‘in the East.’ The division of land into three continents follows the story of the Flood and the dispersal of Noah’s sons, Shem (Sem), Ham (Cham) and Japheth (Iafeth). The continents are divided by the ‘Great Sea’ (the Black Sea) and the Mediterranean and are surrounded by the undifferentiated ‘Oceanic Sea.’
The map first appeared in the Etymologarium, a compilation of early Christian teachings and classical fragments assembled by St. Isidore, Bishop of Seville (c.560–636). Following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the Catholic Church had become the only centrally organized institution to survive. Though heavily Romanized, the Visigoth successors to imperial rule lacked the capacity for higher administration—particularly the ability to educate new generations of administrators. The task was taken up by the Church, and the Etymologarium was assembled accordingly. When the printing press developed some eight centuries later, the fame of this work made it one of the first to be typeset.