Where be Dragons?
While decorating my new apartment, one piece of décor I want is a wall tapestry of an antique map, especially one that would have sea monsters around the oceans with the phrase “Here Be Dragons”. Whatever language it was in would be great, just going for an antique cartography vibe in my living room. I began my search and I couldn’t find anything that I liked enough with that phrase, at least not a real map (only for fantasy worlds). But, there's a reason for that. They hardly existed.
The few examples of interesting pieces are eclipsed by the multitude of “here be dragons” from fiction while, in reality, there are only two surviving maps that actually carry this phrase (Borneman, 2022). [Although this could also mean that other examples of cartographic usage of the phrase were known about, just lost or destroyed through intervening time.] The two examples are The Hunt-Lenox Globe, created around the year 1510CE and its prototype, made ca. 1504 CE, bearing the world engraved into an ostrich egg, both made by some unknown person (New York Public Library 2011, Borneman 2022; Meyer 2013; Dempsey 2022). The small inscription ‘Hic Sunt Dracones’ (‘here be dragons’ in Latin) is engraved off the coast of eastern Asia. A sea creature is seen swimming in the waters of both hemispheres (Meyer 2013).
Even though those globes were the only two pieces that had that particular phrase, there were often monsters or other dangerous animals depicted on maps in ancient times, which many academics believe was meant to symbolize unknown and/or dangerous areas (Dempsey 2022; Waters 2013; Van Duzer 2013).
Earliest Monsters
The earliest “maps” weren’t on paper, they were inscribed on bone and stone, dating as far back (so far) to 25,000 BCE on bone in the modern-day Czech Republic and 20,000 BCE in Australia on stone (Wolodtschenko & Forner 2007; Schøyen Collection n.d.). But these did not depict animals, let alone monstrous creatures. They depicted landscapes and sometimes the night sky’s constellations (Thompson 2007; BBC News 2000).
The first “world” map, at least the religiously important part of the world to the people there, was Babylonian, known as the Imago Mundi is dated to the 6th century BCE (Horowitz 1988; Raaflaub & Talbert 2009: 147; Smith 1996: 209-211). The Babylonians didn’t include the whole world they knew, as they didn’t include Persia or Egypt, both countries with which they interacted. While this example doesn’t have artistic depictions of animals there are text descriptions about the outlying regions of the map, two of the seven that survived have regular animals mentioned. The third region is where "the winged bird ends not his flight," [i.e., cannot reach] and the sixth region is "where a horned bull dwells and attacks the newcomer" (Finkel 1995: 26-27).
Maps would appear to be creature-less until Ptolemy's world map, based on descriptions from Ptolemy's Geographia, a compilation of all the knowledge about geography the Roman Empire had in the 2nd century (Quist 2011). It was either first composed in c. 150 CE or based on the then surviving manuscripts credited to Agathodaemon of Alexandria also in the 2nd century CE (U.A. 1300 Codex: 60).
Ptolemy’s Geographica, translated by Emanuel Chrysoloras and Jacobus AngelusHarley 7182 ff. 58v-59, 3rd quarter of the 15th century, British Library. <https://www.geographyrealm.com/ptolemys-geographia/>
On the right side, creatures have been drawn on, but it is hard to tell if they were original, or sketches added to the margin during a redrawing and reprinting by monks through the centuries.
Ptolemy's atlas in Geographia (originally 2nd century, taken up again in the 15th century) warns of elephants, hippos and cannibals.
The Tabula Peutingeriana (a medieval copy of a Roman map from the 5th century) has "in his locis elephanti nascuntur", "in his locis scorpiones nascuntur" and "hic cenocephali nascuntur" ("in these places, elephants are born, in these places, scorpions are born, here Cynocephali are born"). Cotton MS. Tiberius B.V. fol. 56v (10th century), British Library Manuscript Collection, has "hic abundant leones" ("here lions abound"), along with a picture of a lion, near the east coast of Asia (at the top of the map towards the left); this map also has a text-only serpent reference in southernmost Africa (bottom left of the map): "Zugis regio ipsa est et Affrica. est enim fertilis. sed ulterior bestiis et serpentibus plena" ("This region of Zugis is in Africa; it is rather fertile, but on the other hand it is full of beasts and serpents.") <https://www.worldhistory.org/image/14128/detail-of-the-tabula-peutingeriana/>
Mappa Mundi
This is generally agreed to be where and when the tradition of Mappa Mundi begins, meaning any world map made during the medieval era in Europe. According to medieval scholar David Woodward mappaemundi [in Latin mappa means a tablecloth or napkin and mundus meaning world] was less about attempting to properly record various locations or to act as navigational tools and more about recording relative locations of the events of religious history (1987: 286-288). Christian maps were the most common but there are also examples recording medieval Arabic cultures and cosmographies of South and East Asia in the same period (Woodward 1987: 286). The term wasn’t used in the classic Latin or Roman eras during which the preference was forma, figura, orbis pictus, or orbis terram descriptio (Woodward 1987: 287). These names covered more than just maps and often included long written descriptions and scientific illustrations (Woodward 1987: 287).
The Psalter world map ( 1250 AD) has dragons, as symbols of sin, in a lower "frame" below the world, balancing Jesus and angels on the top, but the dragons do not appear on the map itself. <https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/psalter-world-map>
The Hereford Mappa Mundi c. 1300. <https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/The-Hereford-Mappa-Mundi/>
The Ebstorf map (13th century) has a dragon in the extreme southeastern part of Africa, together with an asp and a basilisk. <chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://hgss.copernicus.org/articles/5/155/2014/hgss-5-155-2014.pdf>
The Borgia map (c. 1430), also known as the Mappamondo Borgiano, was made by an anonymous person in the 15th century and was acquired by Cardinal Stefano Borgia in 1794 for the city of Velletri. It is now housed in the Vatican Library. The Borgia world map. Africa is at the top of the map, with Europe at the bottom right. On the map it states, over a dragon-like figure in Asia (in the upper left quadrant of the map), "Hic etiam homines magna cornua habentes longitudine quatuor pedum, et sunt etiam serpentes tante magnitudinis, ut unum bovem comedant integrum". ("Here there are even men who have large four-foot horns, and there are even serpents so large that they could eat an ox whole.") <https://joyofmuseums.com/museums/europe/italy-museums/rome-museums/vatican-library/borgia-map/>
Giovanni Leardo's map (1442) has, in southernmost Africa, "Dixerto dexabitado p. chaldo e p. serpent". https://www.loc.gov/item/2021668432/
The Fra Mauro Map (c. 1450) shows the "Island of Dragons" (Italian: Isola de' dragoni), an imaginary island in the Atlantic Ocean. It includes over 3000 inscriptions as well as hundreds of toponyms and images of cities, temples, roads, etc. In an inscription near Herat in modern-day Afghanistan, Fra Mauro, the monk, stated that in the mountains nearby "there are a number of dragons, in whose forehead is a stone that cures many infirmities", and describes the locals' way of hunting those dragons to get the stones. This is thought to be based on Albertus Magnus's treatise De mineralibus. In an inscription elsewhere on the map, the cartographer expresses his scepticism regarding "serpents, dragons and basilisks" mentioned by "some historiographers". <https://mostre.museogalileo.it/framauro/en>
Martin Waldseemüller's Carta marina navigatoria (1516) has "an elephant-like creature in northernmost Norway, accompanied by a legend explaining that this 'morsus' with two long and quadrangular teeth congregated there", i.e. a walrus, which could have seemed monstrous at the time. <https://acm5.blogs.rice.edu/figure-7-2/>
Waldseemüller's Carta marina navigatoria (1522), revised by Laurentius Fries, has the morsus moved to the Davis Strait.
Bishop Olaus Magnus's Carta Marina map of Scandinavia (1539), also known as the Map of the Sea, has many monsters depicted in the northern sea, as well as a winged, bipedal, predatory land animal resembling a dragon in northern Lapland. <https://www.loc.gov/item/2021668418/>
An 1855 Japanese map, the Jishin-no-ben, in the shape of an ouroboros, depicts a dragon associated with causing earthquakes. The yellow-colored section is where reports of large earthquakes that occurred in 1854 and the blue section was hit by a tidal wave earlier in 1855 (Dempsey 2022). <https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/tokugawa/items/1.0216568>
What’s interesting to see, is what is not seen in this case. In the time of the earliest maps, not much of the world is known. Most often, area maps were drawn and described but without much embellishment. Perhaps it took so long to make the single map that they would have written more and attempted to be more true to reality because only people travelling to the areas would have these maps. Survival was difficult enough before adding exaggerated claims to where one could reasonably go for a safe passage. The European “dark ages” would be the most likely cultural traditional era in that monstrous creatures would appear on their maps.
Instead, most areas that were not mapped would have been labelled Terra incognita "unknown land" in Latin, or the other option ancient Roman and Medieval cartographers used was the phrase HIC SVNT LEONES, “Here are lions” when pointing out unknown territories (Van Duzer 2014).
The Hunt-Lenox globe, as photographed by Robert Kato, Copper, ca. 1508, housed in the Rare Book Division of the NewYork Public Library. <https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/galleries/explorations/item/4095>
The only known maps that depict the Latin phrase for “here be dragons” are both the prototype for the Hunt-Lenox Globe around 1504 and its final version circa 1510. The prototype was made from the halves of the lower portion of two ostrich eggs joined together, the “Ostrich Egg Globe” and was the first known globe to show the New World. The conjoined eggs are engraved with Latin text and show North America as two islands. According to the NYPL’s website, the globe, which is about 5″ in diameter, is a copper engraving by an unknown creator and is the earliest such surviving engraving from the period right after the discovery of the New World. Near the coast of eastern Asia, the map bears the phrase “HC SVNT DRACONES” (here are dragons), as shown in the image above. (Dempsey, 2022).
Another academic line of thinking turns to “Horror Vacui” as an explanation for why cartographers would take the time to artistically render the strange creatures that are seen on so many medieval maps. For starters, the idea of Horror Vacui stems from the Latin broad meaning “fear of empty space” or kenophobia from the Greek for “feature of the empty” (Dempsey 2020).
The 1562 map of the Western Hemisphere by Diego Gutiérrez is extremely detailed in its artworks and leaves no space unadorned. The original map name is: Americae sive qvartae orbis partis nova et exactissima descriptio, 1562, Library of Congress.
One particular cartographic historian Van Duzer has only found an example, one of Dutch cartographer Petrus Plancius's world maps, in which he acknowledges that he placed a celestial map of the southern sky in the Southern Hemisphere to fill empty space (Bludeville, f. 271). As Plancius explained, “Least the South part of this Hemisphere or halfe Globe, should remaine voide and emptie” (as quoted in Miller 2017). However, the modern interpretation of the explanations behind this action varies from hiding a lack of knowledge to embellishing based on upping the market value for their wealthy patrons through lavish decoration (Dempsey 2020; Miller 2017).
Three examples of Plancius's maps:
Orbis Terrarum 1594
Nova Francia. Terra Nova 1592
Insulae Moluccae 1592
A few further examples of maps that took this practice and ran, way too far, with it are:
Caspar Vopel’s 1558 map of the world. A giant swordfish-like creature looks to be on a collision course with a ship, while a walrus with frighteningly large tusks emerges from the water, and a king carrying a flag rides the waves on a hog-faced beast (Miller 2017).
Pieter van den Keere made a world map in 1611, the interior of North America had yet to be thoroughly mapped. Instead of leaving it blank, van den Keere filled the space with an elaborate cartouche, a decorative oval shape surrounded by alligators, birds, and foliage. At the top of the cartouche, explorers Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan and Amerigo Vespucci pore over a map. The interior of Africa was not well mapped either at the time, but there were texts available that described it in detail—albeit speculative and unreliable detail—and van den Keere likely relied on these to fill in the interior of that continent, Van Duzer says. According to the map, for example, the Niger River flows underground for 60 miles and then re-emerges in a lake, while in reality, it doesn’t.
In 1640, the Italian cartographer Giovanni Battista Cavallini’s colourful nautical chart of the Mediterranean Sea (above). The surrounding land is filled with city pop art(circled), mountains (boxed), and several sets of scale bars and compass roses (circled) (Miller 2017 on National Geographic).
But, more than just a fear of wasting the empty real estate, at least in the early maps, Hic Sunt Drancones, the more common Hic Sunt Leones, and terra incognita pointed out areas that were unknown. And what is greater than a reaction to the unknown? That can cause us to have so many different reactions, two of the most powerful are that you can either fear and shut it out, or you can feel fascination and face it head-on (whether you ever truly felt afraid in the first place).
Sailors, and sometimes the accompanying cartographers, were the first to venture into the distant, unknown, and dangerous waters, so very far from anything they knew. They created boundaries which were then pushed to have a fuller view of the world we live in. As they were sailors, it was a clique that they would embellish their stories, and just use any words they had to describe what they had seen. Through the fog, with a mirage of light on the sea, seeing a giant shadow pass under their ship, or seeing an explosion of water spurt from a huge creature lurking just under the surface. Yes, many sailors would have the experience to know ‘that’s just a whale, it’s not going to hurt us’, but even the word “whale” in Old English was hwæl, with a similar version in Proto-Germanic hwalaz, from Proto-Indo-European (s)kwal-o- (Online Etymology Dictionary, Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary). In Middle Dutch [around 1100 to 1500 CE] this was wal or walvisc. The Latin origin of this word was “squalus”, which meant “a large fish of the sea”, which is already not scientifically accurate. Especially for first-timers. And we all know urban legends, the weirdest ones stand the test of time the best after all.
By the mid-18th century this practice had largely fallen out of favour, only leaving decoration to the margins and keeping the map more scientific (Van Duzer quoted in Miller 2017). It is also possible, in my opinion, that in the later Age of Exploration, cartographers may have been getting more cynical/clinical. As the world was being explored it was becoming ever more mundane. Maybe because they thought they knew all of what organisms existed in the world, all that was left was empty space.
Update: I still haven't bought a tapestry.
Work Cited
Blake, Erin C. (1999). "Where Be "Here be Dragons"?". MapHist Discussion Group.
Bulletin of the New York Public Library. New York: New York Public Library. January 1904. pp. 415.
Dempsey, Caitlin. (7 May 2020). “What is “Horror Vacui” in Cartography?” GeographyRealm.com. Available at: https://www.geographyrealm.com/what-is-horror-vacui-in-cartography/.
Dempsey, Caitlin. (12 August 2022). "The Map Myth of Here Be Dragons" GISLounge.com. Available at: https://www.gislounge.com/here-be-dragons/.
Finkel, I. L. (1995). A join to the Map of the World: a notable discovery. British Museum Magazine: The Journal of the British Museum Friends, 23, 26-27.
Horowitz, W. (1988). The Babylonian map of the world. Iraq, 50, 147-165.
"The Hunt–Lenox Globe, Treasures of the New York Public Library"(22 January 2011). New York Public Library.
"Ice Age star map discovered". BBC News. 9 August 2000. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/871930.stm.
Kim, Meeri (19 Aug. 2013). "Oldest globe to depict the New World may have been discovered". The Washington Post.
Meyer, Robinson (12 Dec. 2013). “No Old Maps Actually Say ‘Here Be Dragons’. The Atlantic. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/no-old-maps-actually-say-here-be-dragons/282267.
Miller, Greg. (21 Nov. 2017). “Why Ancient Mapmakers Were Terrified of Blank Spaces” National Geographic. Available at: https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisation/2017/11/why-ancient-mapmakers-were-terrified-of-blank-spaces.
Quist, Rachel. (30 Nov. 2011). “Ptolemy's Geographia”. Geography Realm. Available at: https://www.geographyrealm.com/ptolemys-geographia/.
Raaflaub, Kurt A. and Talbert, Richard J.A. (2009), Geography and Ethnography: Perceptions of the World in Pre-Modern Societies, John Wiley & Sons, p. 147.
Smith, Catherine Delano (1996). "Imago Mundi's Logo the Babylonian Map of the World". Imago Mundi. 48: 209–211.
Unknown author. (c. 1300). Codex Vaticanus Urbinas Graecus 82, page 60
Van Duzer, Chet (2013). Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps. British Library Publishing.
Van Duzer, Chet (4 June 2014). "Bring on the Monsters and Marvels: Non-Ptolemaic Legends on Manuscript Maps of Ptolemy's Geography". Viator. 45 (2): 303–334.
Waters, Hannah (2013-10-15). "The Enchanting Sea Monsters on Medieval Maps". Smithsonian Institution.
Wolodtschenko, A., & Forner, T. (2007). Prehistoric and early historic maps in Europe: Conception of cd-atlas. E-Perimetron, 2(2), 114-116.
Woodward, David (1987). "Medieval Mappaemundi" (PDF). In Harley, J. B. (ed.). The History of Cartography. Vol. One: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.