This summer, Karen Pinto was invited by the Turkish government to Ankara, Turkey, to participate in a documentary on the work of the famous Ottoman admiral, Piri Reis.
Pinto also gave a talk on her discovery of what could be the earliest extant painting of the moon in an early 7th century bath-house in the Jordanian desert at the 2018 Symposium of the International Society for the History of the Map (ISHM), June 21-23. The symposium was sponsored by the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education at the University of Southern Maine in Portland.
Titled “Fit for an Umayyad Prince: The Earliest Extant Map of the Eastern World or Earliest Painting of the Moon?” this discovery potentially moves the date for the earliest known depiction of the moon back by seven centuries. Pinto’s article on this important image is due to be published in the fall.
