ABSTRACT
Over time, the maps of Europe have borne their own marks of anxiety-
shifts in power imprinted in expanding and contracting lines, meta-
morphoses in contour and border, sudden appearances and erasures of
named space. But the figure of Europa seems to stand, irrespective of
the map’s vicissitudes. What it stands for is far less graspable than these
ruined maps make it out to be. The figure itself harks back to Greek
mythology. According to some, she is one of Zeus’s many lovers; for
others, she is one of his many rape victims, abducted from Tyro and
transported west across the Mediterranean to Crete. But the origin or
reason for the modern appellation is murky: it is unclear when and who
named the continent of Europe after Europa, or whether this Europa
originally referred to the Phoenician princess or the river nymph (the
daughter of Oceanus and the sister of Asia and Libya). Herodotus calls
attention to the ambiguity behind this act of naming: in Histories (4.45)
he asks why the Ancient world is divided into three equal yet uncharted
continents each named after a mythological woman-Europe, Asia and
kr is
s ra
ve tt
obi
ag io
li
Libya (Africa?). Just as the political, social, and cultural reasons for divid-
ing these continents from each other are uncertain, so are the territorial
and cultural boundaries of Europe. Herodotus continues, noting that
Europa “evidently belongs to Asia and did not come to this land which is
now called by the Hellenes Europe.”
