With plain HTML you could have done this, though?

  <div class="image-map">
    <img src="funnycats.jpg">
    <a
      href="cats.html"
      style="position:absolute; background: transparent; left: 8.5%; top: 12.5%; width: 59%; height: 87%;"
    ></a>
  </div>

But only square hit targets then (until clip paths much later). Image maps supported polygons and circles. And position absolute is still a few years after image maps.