Here be dragons

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Here be dragons" is a phrase used to denote dangerous or unexplored territories, in imitation of the infrequent medieval practice of putting sea serpents and other mythological creatures in blank areas of maps.

The only known use of this phrase in an actual medieval map was in the Latin form "HC SVNT DRACONES" (i.e. hic sunt dracones) on the Lenox Globe ^[1] (ca. 1503-07). The term appeared on the east coast of Asia. Many other maps contain a variety of references to mythical and real creatures, but the Lenox Globe is the only one which bears this phrase.

In another context, software programmers sometimes use it to indicate especially difficult or obscure sections of code in a program so that others do not tamper with them.^[2]

The title of a short science fiction story by Ray Bradbury, "Here There Be Tygers" is an allusion to this expression.

1 Dragons on maps
2 Other creatures on maps
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Dragons on maps

Dragons do appear on other non-fictional maps.

A dragon (associated with causing earthquakes) appears on the nineteenth-century Japanese map Jishin-no-ben in the library of the University of British Columbia
"Here There Be Dragons" was used in a paper submitted to the planetary science journal Icarus by Michael Gaffey of Rensselaer Polytechnic in reference to the north polar region, labelled "Terra Incognita", of the asteroid Vesta. ^[3]
The Psalter map (ca. 1250) has dragons in the bottom "frame", below the world (but no text), balancing Jesus and angels at top; verso has a T-O map with Christ standing on dragons; i.e. related to victorious ruler trampling enemies (the calcatio motif) where the dragon stands for the devil or death
The Borgia Map (ca. 1430), Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, has text above a dragon-like figure in Asia (the upper left quadrant of the map) which reads "Hic etiam homines magna cornua habentes longitudine quatuor pedum, et sunt etiam serpentes tante magnitudinis, ut unum bovem comedant integrum" ("Here also are men having large horns four feet long, and there are even serpents of such magnitude that they can eat an ox whole")

[edit] Other creatures on maps

Ptolemy's Atlas (originally 2nd century, taken up again in the 15th century) warns of elephants, hippos and cannibals.
Tabula Peutingeriana (medieval copy of Roman map) has "in his locis elephanti nascuntur", "in his locis scorpiones nascuntur" and "in his locis cenocephali nascuntur" ("in these places elephants are produced, in these places scorpions are produced, here dog-headed beings are produced").
Cotton MS. Tiberius B.V. fol. 58v (10th century), British Library Manuscript Collection, has "hic abundant leones" ("here lions abound"), along with a picture of a lion, near the east coast of Asia (at the top of the map towards the left); this map also has a text-only serpent reference in southernmost Africa (bottom left of the map): "Zugis regio ipsa est et Affrica. est enim fertilis. sed ulterior bestiis et serpentibus plena" ("The region of Zugis is also in Africa, for it is fertile, but it is also full of beasts and serpents.")
The Ebstorf map (13th c.) has a dragon in the extreme south-eastern part of Africa, together with an asp and a basilisk.
Giovanni Leardo's map (1442) has, in southernmost Africa, "Dixerto dexabitado p. chaldo e p. serpent".
Waldseemüller's Carta marina navigatoria (1516) has "an elephant-like creature in northernmost Norway, accompanied by a legend explaining that this 'morsus' with two long and quadrangular teeth congregated there", i.e. a walrus, which would have seemed monstrous at the time.
Waldseemüller's Carta marina navigatoria (1522), revised by Laurentius Fries, has the morsus moved to the Davis Strait
Bishop Olaus Magnus's Carta Marina map of Scandinavia (1539) has many monsters in the northern sea.