The cuneiform tablet from the 6th century BC shows an aerial view map of Mesopotamia — roughly modern-day Iraq — and what the Babylonians believed lay beyond the known world at the time.

Researchers found thousands of ancient irrigation canals up to 5.6 miles (9 kilometers) long carved into the landscape near Basra in Iraq, which at the time was the Eridu region of Mesopotamia.

It describes Mesopotamia, the "land between the rivers" of the Tigris and Euphrates, which was the heart of the known world for Babylonians. In addition to geographical features, the map contains ...