In this piece of art, you can see a Babylonian clay tablet written in the Akkadian language. The tablet describes the oldest known depiction of the known world. When looking at this map, it is centered on the Euphrates, flowing from the north (top) to the south (bottom). The city of Babylon is shown on the Euphrates, in the northern half of the map. It is not clear whether all three parts should be read as a single whole. Systematic differences between the texts suggest that the tablet may have been compiled from three separate documents.
I think that this piece of art is important to the history of graphic design because it shows how information design was understood and practiced before printing and how Asians in this clay tablet have impacted how visual communications work. This was a new way of representing maps and what a map is. they use lines, shapes, scripts, and symbols to represent location. This was a piece to lay the foundation of the information that was understood back then and how the elements that they used are used now. They were also influencing how graphic designers work and how to be problem solvers through creating and designing solutions, which is what we do as designers today.
Date: 700-500 BC
