Creator Ptolemy

Date 1482

A map of the ancient world as known to Hellenistic society in the 2nd century, this version based on the description contained in Ptolemy's book 'The Geography', written circa 150., and redrawn by Byzantine monks working from inscriptions in the earliest surviving Ptolemy manuscripts, which were translated from Greek into Arabic in the 9th century. Ptolemy's map of the ancient work revolutionized European geographical thought and established the mathematical basis of cartography...The present form of the map was reconstructed from Ptolemy's coordinates by the monks shortly after 1295. It is a product of the classical world, as known to the Greeks and Romans. Silk roads cross Asia, and maritime trading ports are dotted round the Arabian and Indian Peninsulas through to the East Indies. The fabled southland, 'Terra Incognita', first emerges as a cartographical proposition in Ptolemy's era. ..This version was printed for the 1482 edition of Ptolemy's Cosmographia, considered one of the most important atlases of the 15th century: 'Insculptum est per Iohane Schnitzer de Armszheim'..In 2007 this priceless map became the subject of a major map theft. The national libraries of Australia and Spain joined forces in a 6 month global criminal investigation that resulted in its recovery.

Source: National Library of Australia