By the early 17th Century metaphors about maps were so easily recognized that poets such as John Donne and William Shakespeare were quoting them in their works, in their prose and their plays.  North America had been ‘discovered’ and was often times referred to as a female persona throughout Europe.  The world globe had been mapped and many people were carrying around atlas’s in their pockets.

During this time, a road map was more than a map about the physical, it was the beginning of the concept that was used to explore and to make sense of the inner and the outer worlds as well as the world of science.  The people of the seventeenth century had one hundred years of world travel and exploration behind them, and they knew exactly was was meant in the references made by Donne and Shakespeare.

The world map collection known now as the “atlas” was first published by Ortelius, but the name was not coined by him.  Gerard Mercator was the first person to use the term.  He used this term not in reference to the Titan of the same name, mythologically reported to have to support on his head, the heavens, but it was a reference to a King of Libya.  He was the scientist, the astronomer and the philosopher who is reported to have made the first globe representing the world.

His atlas was a piece of work that he had devoted twenty-five of his life to completing, and had not finished it by the time of his death.  There were two sections to the atlas, one that was published in 1585 and the second part in 1589.  His son, Rumold, completed the atlas for him in 1595.  This was a time not only of scientific exploration, but of the surrounding realms as well.  The lower world, the heavens, and the map of the human spirit.  It was a time of wonder and discovery, one that carries through to modern times…when we are still searching for scientific knowledge as well as the knowledge of our human souls.

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