Abstract
Though Ancient Near Eastern Studies has increasingly paid attention to language contact and areal linguistics in recent years, there have so far been but few systematic attempts at placing the relevant languages on a map. The essay provides a survey of maps of the languages of the Ancient Near East from the first areal maps in the 19th century to the artefact maps in recent publications. The different visual grammars used in the cartography of these ancient languages also imply widely varying narratives of linguistic geography. The recent move towards artefact mapping shifts the discussion away from static interpretations of language as a strong correlate of ethnicity towards an interpretation of language as a public expression of linguistic identity within the landscapes of Mesopotamia.