Communication of the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea with the Red Sea

This black-and-white copperplate engraving presents a stylized map of the Eastern Mediterranean, featuring a large, central body of water labeled 'Mare Mediterraneum'. A hatched line labeled 'Canalis Subterraneus' traces a theoretical underground path from the Mediterranean near Egypt, through the desert, and connecting into the Red Sea ('Mare Rubrum') and the Dead Sea ('Mare mortuum Asphalticum'). The map includes topographical details such as Mount Lebanon, Mount Carmel, the Jordan River, and the Nile Delta, with small architectural icons representing cities like Jerusalem, Tripoli, Alexandria, and Suez.

This print appears in Athanasius Kircher's 'Mundus Subterraneus' (1665), a foundational work of early modern natural philosophy that proposed a unified, interconnected system of subterranean channels, fires, and winds beneath the Earth's surface.