Tolkien's Map of Middle Earth

The Guardian reports that a copy of a map of Middle Earth, annotated by Tolkien himself, has turned up and is on sale for 60,000 pounds: Tolkien's annotated map of Middle-earth discovered inside copy of Lord of the Rings. The map was found loose inside a copy of The Lord of the Rings owned by illustrator Pauline Baynes who had produced a color map of Middle Earth for a 1970 Allen & Unwin reprint.

The annotations by Tolkien, in black and green ink, show that he was obsessed with the details of the map. It includes extra place names, corrections of others, suggestions about flora and fauna, and details of the latitude of various places.

Hobbiton ... “ is assumed to be approx at latitude of Oxford”

 The map also makes reference to Belgrade, Cyprus, and Jerusalem, and indicates that

the city of Ravenna is the inspiration behind Minas Tirith.