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Claudius
Ptolemy (c.85165)
Cosmographia 1478
Chigi.S.171
© Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
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Ptolemy's
Cosmographia
1478
Geographer,
astronomer and mathematician, Claudius Ptolemy
lived in the second century CE. Although he was
of Greek origin, he spent much of his life at
Alexandria in Egypt. His works on astronomy and
geography had far-reaching impact and influenced
the structure of European cartography for over
1000 years.
The
oldest known manuscript copies of the Cosmographia
(or Geographia) date from the thirteenth
or fourteenth centuries. Different versions of
the manuscripts have been preserved. Those which
include maps have been divided by scholars into
groups A and B. Those in group A contain 26 regional
maps (Europe and Asia) and a world map. At the
beginning of the fifteenth century, with the collapse
of the Byzantine Empire, the Greek manuscripts
of Group A were brought to Italy by refugees.
It is not certain how much of Ptolemy's own work
survived in the Geographia in the form
it took in Western Europe. There is no mention
of what became of Group B. The Geographia
was translated into Latin in 1409, and its name
altered to Cosmographia. This 1478 edition
of the Cosmographia contains 27 copper-engraved
maps, including one world map.
Ptolemy
provided a basic description of the earth and
of cartography at that time, and gave a guide
to preparing a map. He also developed his concept
of four systems of map projection and his table
of coordinates (leading to the current expression
of latitude and longitude). He summarised the
knowledge of the physical features of the earth
at that time, and knew that the earth was not
flat, but a sphere.
His
world view, including the exaggerated size of
Asia, persisted until after the discovery of America.
Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) never accepted
that he had discovered a new continent in 1492,
but insisted that he had reached the (West) Indies
and Cathay (China). Another notion depicted in
Ptolemy's maps is that the Indian Ocean was an
enclosed body of water. This was disproved in
1497 by Bartholomeu Dias of Portugal, when he
successfully rounded the Cape of Good Hope.
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