Monde connu des anciens

This original antique French map with a decorative cartouche translated as "The World as known to the Ancients" portrays the explored part of the ancient world. Filled with plenty of interesting historical geographical names, nowadays known only from history books, like f.e. Lutecia (Lutetia) - a latin name of a city which later became Paris, or Londinium - an ancient capital of Roman Britain, or of Byzantium - an ancient city located in todays Istanbul, the map also shows one interesting "technical" feature - although the outlines of continents are coloured by hand, the most famous ancient places' names like Babylon, Persepolis, Thebae (Thebes) and others are printed in red colour, which has been far from standard in 1860's. The blank spaces in the top corners of the map are decorated with eight- and twelve-directional wind roses with latin names for each wind direction.