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Geography (Ptolemy)

A 2nd-century gazetteer and atlas foundational to later cartography.

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The work is a gazetteer, atlas, and treatise on cartography compiling geographical knowledge of the 2nd-century Roman Empire.[1] No Greek manuscript survives from earlier than the 13th century, though fragmentary papyri like Rylands Library GP 522 date to the early 3rd century.[2] Around 150 AD, in Alexandria, Claudius Ptolemy wrote the Geography, which updated a lost atlas by Marinus of Tyre, incorporating data from Roman and Persian gazetteers.[1]

What happened

Ptolemy's Geography is spread over 8 books, with books 2-7 listing some 8000 toponyms of the 2nd-century Oikumene.[3] The Byzantine monk Maximus Planudes searched for a manuscript in 1295 and assembled one of the earliest surviving texts.[2] The first Latin translation was made by Jacobus Angelus in Florence around 1406.[4] The first part of the work, Book 1, is a theoretical discussion where Ptolemy explains map projections and gives guidance for constructing a world map.[5]

In the gazetteer portion, every location is assigned a latitude (measured in degrees from the equator) and a longitude.[6] Ptolemy set his Prime Meridian (0° longitude) at the Fortunate Isles, and his maps extended 180° eastward from there, reaching as far as China.[6] By the 9th century, Muslim mapmakers were using copies of Ptolemy's Geography; for instance, al-Khwārizmī created a work listing coordinates for 545 cities.[7]

What the cited sources add

The Thayer account notes that Ptolemy worked in Alexandria between AD 127 and 148, based on his astronomical observations.[8] Thayer states that Ptolemy's maps have disappeared and nothing remains but his index.[8] The Casale account explains that a version of Ptolemy's geography was brought from Constantinople to Florence by Palla Strozzi in 1400.[9] Casale reports that by the mid-1480s thousands of copies of Ptolemy's maps were printed and diffused throughout Europe.[9]

The Defaux account states that Ptolemy's most important innovation was his use of geographical coordinates to create maps.[10]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Geography (Ptolemy)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Berggren 2000 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Geography (Ptolemy)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Dilke 1987b, p. 267–268; Defaux, "Le Papyrus Rylands 522/523 et les tables de Ptolémée", Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 2020-01-01; Defaux, "The Iberian Peninsula in Ptolemy's Geography. Origins of the Coordinates and Textual History", Edition Topoi, 2017, p. 124; Dilke 1987b, p. 267–268; Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana [The Apostolic Vatican Library]. Vat. Gr. 177. Late 13th century; Baigent, "The Rediscovery of Ptolemy's Geography (End of the Thirteenth to End of the Fifteenth Century)", Imago Mundi, 200 en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Geography (Ptolemy)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Stückelberger, "Klaudios Ptolemaios. Handbuch der Geographie: 1. Teilband: Einleitung und Buch 1-4 & 2. Teilband: Buch 5-8 und Indices", Schwabe Verlag (Basel), 2017-07-21, p. 146–7 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Geography (Ptolemy)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Clemens 2008, p. 244; Edson, "The World Map, 1300-1492: The Persistence of Tradition and Transformation", JHU Press, 2007-05-30 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Geography (Ptolemy)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Ptolemaeus, "Ptolemy's geography: an annotated translation of the theoretical chapters", Princeton Univ. Press, 2002 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Geography (Ptolemy)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Talbert, "Roman Portable Sundials: The Empire in Your Hand", Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 119–123; Wright 1923; de Grijs, "Time and Time Again Determination of longitude at sea in the 17th Century", IOP Publishing, 2017 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Geography (Ptolemy)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Edson 2004, p. 61–62; Rapoport 2008, p. 128; Rapoport 2008, p. 128; Rapoport 2008, p. 128; Rapoport 2008, p. 128; Nallino 1939; Rapoport 2008, p. 128; al-Masʿūdī 1894, p. 33; Rapoport 2008, p. 128 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Thayer, "Ptolemy: the Geography", Lacus Curtius. facts only, no text reused. penelope.uchicago.edu
  9. Casale, "The Ottoman 'Discovery' of the Indian Ocean in the Sixteenth Century: The Age of Exploration from an Islamic Perspective", 2003. facts only, no text reused. webdoc.sub.gwdg.de
  10. Defaux, "The Iberian Peninsula in Ptolemy's Geography. Origins of the Coordinates and Textual History", Edition Topoi, 2017, p. 124. facts only, no text reused. topoi.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Geography (Ptolemy) (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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