ABSTRACT
Modern exploration and mapping of the Transjordan region began in the early nineteenth century. The first modern European traveller to leave a record of his journey in these parts was Ulrich Jasper Seetzen, who had studied medicine and natural sciences at Gottingen. But under the influence of his teacher J. F. Blumenbach and his contemporary Alexander von Humboldt, Seetzen began to interest himself in geography and exploration, at first intending exploration in Africa. The eighteenth-century gentlemen-travellers found worthy successors in the more determined explorers of the nineteenth century. The map accompanying J. L. Burckhardt's book does not do full justice to his account, but there is no doubt that Burckhardt's journey and his account of it made all the difference to subsequent mapping of the Transjordan. Burckhardt's work identified a number of places, especially in Edom, whose location was previously a matter of guesswork.
