1993 Briggs / Player City Plan of Ankh-Morpork, Discworld

An intricate and imaginative 1993 map of the city of Ankh-Morpork, a city-state that features prominently in Terry Pratchett's fantasy series Discworld, conceived by Stephen Briggs and drawn by Stephen Player. It includes numerous references to characters and settings in the novels, including the Unseen University.

A Closer Look

Borrowing inspiration from several European and American cities, especially Tallinn and Prague, and including many fantastical and satirical elements, Ankh-Morpork is 'devised' based on descriptions throughout the Discworld series. The River Ankh, notoriously polluted in the novels, divides the city in half, with Ankh at left here and the more impoverished Morpork to the right. Comical and perplexing street names are noted, along with notable buildings and institutions, including the city's guilds, whose coats of arms appear at bottom with their amusing Latin mottos. Illustrations of columns and gargoyles surround the map, along with Death, who is portrayed by Pratchett as relatively congenial, as in his love of cats and curry.

Near the guilds at top-center is the Unseen University, displayed at smaller scale in an inset at left. The school's name is a pun on the 'Invisible College,' an informal group of scholars who met in London beginning in the 17th century. Though devoted to wizardry, the Unseen University is in many respects reminiscent of Oxford and Cambridge.

Another World

Discworld is a comic fantasy series of forty-one novels, along with short stories, television series, and other works, by Terry Pratchett. The Discworld universe also includes derivative works with Pratchett's input, such as those by Stephen Briggs, including three 'mapps' depicting the fantasy world. Both the novels and the world in which they take place are sprawling, allowing for Pratchett to take on many philosophical and social topics and draw parallels to the contemporary world of his readers. The stories are strongly influenced by fairy tales, earlier science fiction and fantasy novels, mythology, and folklore. For example, the disc referred to in the series title is the (flat) world in which the stories are set; this disc sits upon the back of four elephants, who themselves are standing on the back of a massive turtle named Great A'Tuin, a clear adaptation of the Hindu myth of Akūpāra.

Publication History and Census

This map was designed by Stephen Briggs and drawn by Stephen Player in 1993, based on Terry Pratchett's Discworld fantasy novels. It is the first of three Discworld 'mapps' which Briggs arranged, the latter two being A Tourist Guide to Lancre (1998) and Death's Domain (1999).