On the track of cartography from the middle ages: the Ebstorf Mappa Mundi as a cultural object

This text is a study of maps as cultural objects, aiming to understand its internal dynamics, created by many different symbolic and ideological relations of the world in which these maps take part historically and socially, as ideological symbols that dialectically produce ethical, aesthetical, political and cognitive relations. We chose the medieval period of cartography as our viewpoint, analyzing specifically the Ebstorf mappa mundi and its historical interweaving, based on three sets of narratives that it is made of: travel accounts, ancient legends and the Holy Scripts. In our readings, we seek to understand the map as a cultural object, understanding how it was produced and what relation it sustained with medieval culture. We argue that as an object of culture, the map turns into a bearer of the rationality that has created it, this way being a powerful cultural tool that amplifies the modes of seeing the world that it carries.