The Magic Of A Map

One last UK trip over the English border to Hereford for the very first night of Rhod Gilbert & The Giant Grapefruit tour, a tour that is still on as at time of writing.

What to do in Hereford for an afternoon? The Hereford Mappa Mundi of course, dur!

The Hereford Mappa Mundi (Latin: mappa mundi) is the largest medieval map still known to exist, depicting the known world. It is a religious rather than literal depiction, featuring heaven, hell and the path to salvation. Dating from ca. AD 1300, the map is drawn in a form deriving from the T and O pattern.

Since my early teens and learning of the Hereford Mappa Mundi's and having it so close to my home town I have been enamoured with it.

It feels like a drop of history that, through magic, has been transported through time and preserved in amber. Or perhaps an actual wizards scroll of the First Age from The Lord Of The Rings. All this just up the road from me.

Enjoy the full photo album after checking out the centaur with a snake.

Between the Sphinx and the Nile there is a picture of a centaur grasping what looks like a serpent, with the superscription, fauni • semi=caballi homines, fauns and centaurs were originally distinct mythological beings, but in later times they came to be associated, and thus the term faun is used here for a centaur, which formerly it could not have been.

Source: Mediæval Geography: An Essay in Illustration of the Hereford Mappa Mundi, by the Rev. W. L. Bevan, M.A. and the Rev. H. W. Phillott, M.A. (1873)