Carte de la Situation du Paradis Terrestre

Determining the location of heaven on Earth.

This map was first issued in 1700 as part of Pierre-Daniel Huet’s “A Treatise of the Situation of the Terrestrial Paradise.” It was engraved by Pieter Mortier, father of Cornelius, who would go on to establish the renowned published firm of Covens & Mortier in 1721 with his partner Johannes Covens. Huet, a bishop and devout Christian, dedicated much of his life to research and meticulous scholarship on the location of Paradise, and believed it lay within the larger context of Eden, found in the area known today as the Middle East (Iraq, in particular).

Rather than focus on specific geographic details, the map instead presents illustrated representations of Old and New Testament stories in generalized locations between the Mediterranean Sea, Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea. The Exodus, Sermon on the Mount, and the Tower of Babel are just a few examples represented within the image. The Lion and the Lamb, along with the tempting Serpent, can be found in the title cartouche and add to the Biblical theme. According to the PJ Mode Collection at Cornell University;

“From the Middle Ages to our own time, the land of Eden – the site of biblical Paradise – has been a continuing subject of study, theological and geographical. The pendulum has repeatedly swung from a symbolic reading of the biblical Paradise to a literal one and back again. “Mapping paradise [is] one of the most powerful expressions of the fundamental tension between the locative and utopian tendencies in Christianity.”

The Age of Discovery led in the 17th century to persistent pressure for Christian theology to identify the precise location of Paradise in order to validate the text of Genesis. As Thomas Gale wrote in 1694: “Atheists and scoffers, whom the psalmist call Pests, usually demand, What’s become of paradise? Shew us the place in the Maps? And if this be not done for them (they are generally lazy) with all exactness, butted and bounded by Longitude and Latitude hedged in with Degrees, and Minute Measures attested also by Strabo and Ptolemy they will slide into a disbelief first of Genesis, then of the whole bible, and lastly of all revealed religion.” (quoted in Scafi, 284).”

Source: Cornell University