National Library of Australia - Home page
Treasures From The Worlds Great Libraries
Ptolemy's Cosmographia Cook's Endeavour Journal View of Rotterdam Harbour Panorama of the Rhine Matthew Flinders' Letter Map of Taiwan Rerum per Octennium
PEOPLE & POLITICS EXPLORATION SCIENCE & INVENTIONS MUSIC LITERATURE & ART RELIGION WORDS & LANGUAGE
click to enlarge

click to zoomClaudius Ptolemy (c.85–165)
Cosmographia  1478
Chigi.S.171
© Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

click to visit Library
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
Vatican City, Italy

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.