Its inclusion seems connected more to the cosmographer’s commitment
to biblical legacies than to geographical fact. Mu ̈nster’s choice of location for
Arzareth—in northeast Asia—is more interesting.
The “idea of north,” to borrow a phrase from another context, is crucial
here.^48 Against the backdrop of a known world that “was rapidly increasing in
size and complexity,” one could no longer place Arzareth in its traditional Central
Asian location. Southeast Asia and the Indian coast, other putative locations of
the ten tribes, are represented rather accurately on Mu ̈nster’s map. European
knowledge of the geography of Central Asia, centuries after the Mongols and in
the wake of numerous Turkic migrations westward, was sufficient to determine
that no ten tribes lived in that region of the world. European knowledge of the
geography of China and far eastern Asia had also increased significantly. Thus,
northeast Asia, still a century before the beginning of the Russian advent to that
region and before the rise of the Manchu Empire, was the only location where the
tribes could still “travel.” The unexplored and unknown north was simply the
only remaining option. Indeed, as late as 1596 , the Fleming cartographer Jodocus
Hondius ( 1563 – 1612 ) declared: “The northern area of Asia is indeed uncertain.”^49
Northern Asia had become, in its turn, the new edge of the world. Other
mysteries, among them Gog and Magog, underwent a similar relocation. The
great Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator ( 1512 – 1594 ) placed them in
northeastern Asia in his famous 1569 weltkart,an endpoint in a gradual north-
ward migration produced by the northward expansion of European knowledge of
“Tartary” and the Tartars.^50
Another important clue hinting that the nordification of Arzareth on
Mu ̈nster’s map was not a mere capricious notation is the movement northward
also of the Scythian Sea. Originally, the Scythian Sea was one of the names of
the Black Sea, which is situated far south of the Arctic Circle. The Black Sea
was in ancient times understood to be on the northern “edge of the world.”^51 It
was, in a way, the world’s “first north.” It was known in Roman times as an
“inhospitable place of exile,” an image adopted by Byzantine authors.^52 In its
earlier incarnations, the Black/Scythian Sea was imbued “with the same
fantastic qualities that defined all the outer limits of [the] world.”^53 The
nordification of Arzareth is also its mystification—relocated to the north, in a
region of the world conceived as home to the fantastic. Just as the Black Sea, a
former northern edge of the world, traveled north to a new edge, so did the ten
tribes. Their nordification was the result of a cartographic necessity, but also
came about because of the invention of the north as the new site where
“treasures and marvels” were located, the seat of “all virtues” and “all evil.”^54
The linkage between the Scythians and the ten tribes—most probably made
here for the first time—is significant. The Scythians were the root for numer-
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