Images to celebrate Christmas from the Map Department in the Bodleian. The first two come from a book, Baedeker’s Guide to Palestine and Syria, published in 1898. These are the earliest maps held in the Bodleian for Bethlehem

Bethlehem, from Baedeker’s Guide to Palestine and Syria, 20606 f.7

At the time the guide was published Bethlehem was predominately a Christian community. Numerous churches and monasteries existed in the town but the most important of all was the church first built in the 330’s over the cave of the nativity, now called the Church of the Nativity but on the plan called the Church of St Mary. The Church was, and still is, an important place of pilgrimage and the guide gives a number of pages to its description, with text and plans, including this one of the crypt, with ‘d’ representing the site of the nativity. The guide is full of fascinating plans and descriptions of the Holy sites; Christian, Muslim and Jewish, throughout the area, and the Library holds a large number of Baedeker’s of many countries and regions throughout the world.

The second set of images comes from a facsimile of a celebrated atlas of the Heavens, the Harmonia Macrocosmica, by Andreas Cellarius,  first published in Amsterdam in 1660. Cellarius was a Dutch mathematician and cartographer, and as with similar atlases of the time Cellarius’s work is a mixture of the classical and the modern. Classical with the inclusion of maps of the zodiac and the layout of the planets according to Ptolemy, modern with the inclusion of maps showing the theories of the solar system by astronomers such as Nicolaus Copernicus and Tycho Brahe and planetary motion around the earth, the phases of the moon and the sun’s journey in the sky.  This image is of the second of the Biblical star charts

with the Holy Manger in the top left, representing the constellation Lyra. The first of the Biblical star charts has the Three Kings, which here represent the constellation Hercules

These images are from a facsimile of Andreas Cellarius’s Atlas Coelestis seu Harmonia Macrocosmica held on the open shelves in the map section of the Rare Books Reading Room in the Weston Library. G1 A1.2

Finally a puzzle. This map is one of a set of 12 covering an island which at first glance doesn’t seem to exist. The names do not appear on any gazetteer or atlas index. Created by the Canadian Military for planning purposes during the Second World War the maps have for a long

time been held in the Imaginary lands section of the map collection, a collection which includes maps of fictional places such as Middle Earth, Sodor, Ambridge and Emmerdale. It was only recently when going through this group of maps for an exhibition that staff looked at these 12 maps more closely and became convinced that the topography was real, but the names given weren’t. The defences, in purple, were too accurate, with notes saying ‘Third gun reported, but position unknown’, and then the note to the top, ‘This map is unreliable. It has been produced by enlargement from One inch to One miles maps…’. Of course this could have all been part of the deception, but there was enough there to make staff wonder. We’ve worked out where it is, can you? Email maps@bodleian.ox.ac.uk with an answer, no prizes, just the satisfaction of being right. Happy Christmas.

No upper class young man worth his salt in the eighteenth century could hold his head up if he hadn’t traversed Europe on a Grand Tour. However, for the less fortunate help was at hand in the form of a cartographic race game. Wallis’s Tour of Europe. A New Geographical Pastime was published by John Wallis, a cartographer and map seller in 1794. “Two or three persons may amuse themselves with this agreeable pastime, and if a double set of Counters and Pyramids, six may play at it”. Players use a spinning a ‘teetotum’, a sort of gambling spinning top counting up to 8, to progress as dice were considered gambling instruments thus inappropriate in Christian households.

All the players start at Harwich and the race moves across Europe along the numbered route.  They journey from Amsterdam through Germany, Sweden, Norway, even Lapland, Russia, Turkey in Europe, France Italy, Spain and Portugal returning to England through Portsmouth then taking in Scotland and Ireland the winner finally finishing in London after 102 stops. Unlike the real thing the route takes in such places as Wordhuys (Vardo) in Finnmark, Norway, Woronets (Voronezh), Adrianople (Edirne) and Johny Groat’s House in Scotland along with the traditional Athens, Florence and Rome.

The panels on either side of the map detail not only the rules but also lists each stop with a brief description so players could ‘experience’ Europe though text. The players can become well-travelled without the need for a gap year and a fortune.  Games like these were very popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth century in the parlours of middle class households to keep people entertained in the long evenings.

The map itself is a fairly simple hand coloured map with political boundaries and the mountain ranges drawn in pictorially. It is mounted and linen so can be folded neatly and put away when not in use.

Wallis’s Tour of Europe. A new geographical pastime. London, 1794  (E) C1 (999)