This is my explanation of this map's features:
First is the river or ocean that encircles the Babylonian world.
Second after reading several interpretations of this map I have come to the conclusion that it is the Euphrates River that runs down the middle. You can also see a tributary of the river. Babylon, the yellow bar shape, did cross the river just as this map indicates. The tributary which is a prominent feature of this map may be the Tigris River. Although not cartographically accurate it would place all the elements of the Babylonian world on one map.
At the top is Assyria and not the northern mountains as others have suggested. The capital of Assyria, Nineveh, was on the eastern bank of the Tigris and would be located as this map shows (but not on the Euphrates but to the east).
The blue bar shape at the bottom represents the marshes.
The yellow circles are the other cities and the very bottom could be Eridu or Ur. I like to think it is Eridu the world's first city as the Sumerians believed.
In the very middle is a marker for the axis mundi the center of the world.
There are triangular shapes ringing this map although the bottom ones are missing. These have been called islands which does not fit at all with Babylonian cosmology. What does make sense is that these are the mountains that surround the world and upon which the firmament rests.
Welcome to the
Mesopotamian world view of 600 BC.
The
Anunnaki