Portolan Map Possibilities

[Linda]

One thing I would like to add, is that the Greek word "metropolis", which means "city", is composed of "metro/meter" which means mother, and "polis" which means town.

Therefore your idea that the women standing in the containers represent cities, like in the portolan map of Catalan where there are container looking cities, suddenly makes a lot of sense. It would make a great way of encoding the information that it is in fact a map with cities.

Thank you for your post! While I do use city names, the areas represented by the figures seem to be more like provinces in some cases, (many of them today share the names of those cities) and in that way, also covers the areas between each city named. 

Those circular walled items in the Catalan map remind me of the containers in the Zodiac section of the vms. I guess they are Cresques Abraham's thing, as I don't think they occur in the Majorcan tradition before him. 

The Naples Chart is thought to be one of his, and includes these icons as well