This month’s Artifact of the Month features a map of ancient Asia Minor made by the  W. & A.K. Johnston firm in the mid to late 1800s. The map shows the historical regions of Armenia Maior, Mesopotamia, and Babylonia, among others. There is a note in pencil along the edge of the sheet indicating 1897 as a possible date of publication, but further research has yielded another date of 1877 based on the atlas published by the firm in that year as well as the fact that the cartographer, Keith Johnston, passed away before 1897.

This month’s Artifact of the Month is a Mexican road and railway map made in 1945. The Mapa de Carreteras y Ferrocarriles (Map of Highways and Railroads) is a tall, brown folded booklet with black text on the cover that unfolds into a blue map. The cover and the map itself are in Spanish with English translations. While road and town names are printed in white, the color coding of roads was done by hand, so the brushstrokes of red, yellow, green, and white paint are visible.