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IMC 2017: Sessions

Session 1012: Mappings, I: The Peutinger Map's World

Wednesday 5 July 2017, 09.00-10.30

Organisers:Daniel Syrbe, Research Project 'Constraints & Traditions: Roman Power in Changing Societies', Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
Dan Terkla, Department of English, Illinois Wesleyan University
Moderator/Chair:Felicitas Schmieder, Historisches Institut, FernUniversität Hagen
Paper 1012-aThe Peutinger Map: Pagan Topography within Christian Geography?
(Language: English)
Monika Schuol, Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin / Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Mentalities, Political Thought
Paper 1012-bBeyond the Roman Frontier: Eastern Lands on the Peutinger Map
(Language: English)
Emily Albu, Department of Classics, University of California, Davis
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Mentalities, Political Thought
Paper 1012-cDepicting 'Civilisation' on the Peutinger Map?
(Language: English)
Daniel Syrbe, Research Project 'Constraints & Traditions: Roman Power in Changing Societies', Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Mentalities, Political Thought
Abstract

This session looks for fresh approaches to the 'Peutinger Map', a map at the core of debate about pre-modern cartography. The first paper traces the influence of Christianity on the depiction of the world on this map. It will argue, that the giant hydrographic net with Babylonia at its centre, a special eye-catcher in the eastern part of the map's oikumene, may be identified as a depiction of the Rivers of Paradise flowing out of Eden as described in the account of creation (Gen 2, 4-3, 24) and that the mapmaker tried to harmonise traditional pagan geographical knowledge adopted into a late antique or medieval educational canon with a Christian view of the world. The second paper surveys the depiction of the far eastern world on the Peutinger Map, taking India as an example for the way of presenting 'otherness' in a medieval western, Swabian/Roman context. The third paper will ask, how the medieval mapmaker, who has drawn the surviving version of the map, presented the world on his map. It will be argued that the mapmaker varied the density of vignettes symbolising cities and towns aiming to create areas of civilisation and culture on the map.