The Geographia or Geography is Ptolemy's main work besides the Almagest. Claudius Ptolemaeus ( Greek: Klaúdios Ptolemaîos; after 83 &ndash ca Almagest is the Latin form of the Arabic name ( الكتاب المجسطي, al-kitabu-l-mijisti, i It is a compilation of what was known about the world's geography in the Roman Empire of the 2nd century. Geography (from Greek γεωγραφία - geografia) is the study of the Earth and its lands features inhabitants and phenomena The Roman Empire was the post-Republican phase of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial The 2nd century is the period from 101 to 200 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian / Common Era. Ptolemy relied mainly on the work of an earlier geographer, Marinos of Tyre, and on gazetteers of the Roman and ancient Persian empire, but most of his sources beyond the perimeter of the Empire were unreliable. Marinus of Tyre, (ca 70 - 130 AD Greek Μαρίνος ο Τύριος also rendered as Marinos of Tyre) was a Phoenician {Fact|date=April A gazetteer is a geographical Dictionary or directory, an important reference for information about places and place names (see Toponomy) used in conjunction The Persian Empire was a series of Iranian empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau, the original Persian homeland and beyond in Western Asia
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The books
The Geographia comprises two parts: Book 1, a discussion of the data and of the methods used; and Books 2–5, an atlas. The original work included maps, but due to the difficulties involved in copying them by hand, they have fallen out of the manuscript transmission. The work has been discovered and used through the ages by several noted people around the world. Arabic writer al-Mas'udi, while writing around 956, mentioned a colored map of the Geography which had 4530 cities and over 200 mountains. TemplateInfobox Muslim scholars --> Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn íbn Ali al-Mas'udi (transl) (born c This article is about the year For information on the car see Porsche 956 Events Births Deaths April 8 — Gilbert Byzantine monk Maximus Planudes found a copy of the Geography in 1295, and since there were no maps in his copy, he drew his own based on the coordinates found in the text. Maximus Planudes (c 1260 &ndash 1330 was a Byzantine Greek Grammarian and theologian who lived and worked during the reigns of Michael VIII Palaeologus In 1397 a copy was given to Palla Strozzi in Florence by Emanuel Chrysoloras. Palla di Onorio Strozzi ( 1372 - May 8, 1462) was an Italian banker politician writer philosopher and philologist Florence ( Italian: Firenze Florentia and Fiorenza) is the Capital City of the Italian region of Tuscany The first Latin translation – Geographia Claudii Ptolemaei – was made in 1406 by Florentine Giacomo da Scarperia (latinsed name Jacobus Angelus), and since this, various translations in other languages have been made available to people all over the world. Giacomo d'Angelo da Scarperia or Scarparia ( Jacobus Angelus) was a Renaissance humanist, born in Florence.
As with the model of the solar system in the Almagest, Ptolemy put all this information into a grand scheme. He assigned coordinates to all the places and geographic features he knew, in a grid that spanned the globe. In Mathematics and its applications a coordinate system is a system for assigning an n - Tuple of Numbers or scalars to each point Latitude was measured from the equator, as it is today, but Ptolemy preferred to express it as the length of the longest day rather than degrees of arc (the length of the midsummer day increases from 12h to 24h as you go from the equator to the polar circle). Latitude, usually denoted symbolically by the Greek letter phi ( Φ) gives the location of a place on Earth (or other planetary body north or south of the The equator (sometimes referred to colloquially as "the Line") is the intersection of the Earth 's surface with the plane perpendicular to the This article describes the unit of angle For other meanings see Degree. Midsummer may simply refer to the period of time centered upon the summer solstice, but more often refers to specific European celebrations that accompany the actual solstice A polar circle is either the Arctic Circle or the Antarctic Circle. He put the meridian of 0 longitude at the most western land he knew, the Canary Islands. This article is about the geographical concept For other uses of the word see Meridian. Longitude (ˈlɒndʒɪˌtjuːd or ˈlɒŋgɪˌtjuːd symbolized by the Greek character Lambda (λ is the east-west Geographic coordinate measurement The Canary Islands ( English pronunciation kəˈnæriː ˈaɪləndz Spanish: Islas Canarias, ˈizlas kaˈnarjas are a Spanish
Principles of mapping
Ptolemy also devised and provided instructions on how to create maps both of the whole inhabited world (oikoumenè) and of the Roman provinces. Ecumene (also spelled œcumene or oikoumene) a term originally used in the Greco-Roman world to refer to the inhabited earth (or at least the known In the second part of the Geographia he provided the necessary topographic lists, and captions for the maps. Topography ( topo-, "place" and graphia, "writing" is the study of Earth 's Surface features or those of Planets His oikoumenè spanned 180 degrees of longitude from the Canary islands in the Atlantic Ocean to China, and about 80 degrees of latitude from the Arctic to the East Indies and deep into Africa; Ptolemy was well aware that he knew about only a quarter of the globe. China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National The Indies or East Indies (or East India) is a term often used to refer to the islands of SE Asia, especially the Malay Archipelago
Maps based on scientific principles had been made since the time of Eratosthenes (3rd century BC), but Ptolemy improved projections. A map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, Regions, and Themes Eratosthenes of Cyrene ( Greek; 276 BC - 194 BC was a Greek Mathematician, Poet, athlete, Geographer and The 3rd century BC started the first day of 300 BC and ended the last day of 201 BC A map projection is any method of representing the Surface of a sphere or other shape on a plane. It is known that a world map based on the Geographia was on display in Autun, Gaul in late Roman times. Autun is a commune in the Saône-et-Loire department in Burgundy in eastern France. This article is about the country For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic France topics.
Reception in the Renaissance
Ptolemy's text reached Italy from Byzantium about 1400. This article is about the city See also Byzantine Empire. Byzantium ( Greek: Βυζάντιον Latin: la BYZANTIVM The first printed edition, probably in 1477 in Bologna, was also the first printed book with engraved illustrations. Bologna (boloɲa from Latin Bononia, Bulåggna in Bolognese dialect is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it Many editions followed (more often using woodcut in the early days), some following traditional versions of the maps, and others updating them. For the origins of the technique and non-artistic use see Woodblock printing; for the related technique invented in the 18th century see Wood engraving [1] An edition printed at Ulm in 1482 was the first one printed north of the Alps. Ulm (ˈʊlm is a City in the German Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the River Danube. Also in 1482, Francesco Berlinghieri printed the first edition in vernacular Italian. Francesco Berlinghieri (1440 &ndash 1501 was an Italian scholar and humanist who lived during the fifteenth century Italian ( or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people as a First language, primarily in Italy. The maps look distorted as compared to modern maps, because Ptolemy's data was inaccurate. One reason is that Ptolemy estimated the size of the Earth as too small: while Eratosthenes found 700 stadia for a degree on the globe, in the Geographia Ptolemy uses 500 stadia. Eratosthenes of Cyrene ( Greek; 276 BC - 194 BC was a Greek Mathematician, Poet, athlete, Geographer and It is not certain if these geographers used the same stadion, but if we assume that they both stuck to the traditional Attic stadion of about 185 meters, then the older estimate is 1/6 too large, and Ptolemy's value is 1/6 too small. Because Ptolemy derived most of his topographic coordinates by converting measured distances to angles, his maps get distorted. So his values for the latitude were in error by up to 2 degrees. For longitude this was even worse, because there was no reliable method to determine geographic longitude; Ptolemy was well aware of this. It remained a problem in geography until the invention of marine chronometers at the end of the 18th century. A marine chronometer is a timekeeper precise enough to be used as a portable Time standard; it can therefore be used to determine Longitude by means of Celestial The 18th century lasted from 1701 to 1800 in the Gregorian calendar, in accordance with the Anno Domini / Common Era numbering system It must be added that his original topographic list cannot be reconstructed: the long tables with numbers were transmitted to posterity through copies containing many scribal errors, and people have always been adding or improving the topographic data: this is a testimony to the persistent popularity of this influential work in the history of cartography. Cartography or mapmaking (in Greek chartis = map and graphein = write has been an integral part of the human story for a long time (maybe 8000 years
References
- ^ David Landau & Peter Parshall, The Renaissance Print, pp 241-2, Yale, 1996, ISBN 0300068832
- Berggren, J. Lennart and Jones, Alexander. 2000. Ptolemy's Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical Chapters. Princeton University Press. Princeton and Oxford. ISBN 0-691-01042-0.
- Cosgrove, Dennis. 2003. Apollo's Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination. Johns Hopkins University Press. Baltimore and London.
- Stevenson, Edward Luther. Trans. and ed. 1932. Claudius Ptolemy: The Geography. New York Public Library. Reprint: Dover, 1991. This is the only complete English translation of Ptolemy's most famous work. Unfortunately, it is marred by numerous mistakes (see Diller) and the place names are given in Latinised forms, rather than in the original Greek.
- Diller, Aubrey (February 1935). Review of Stevenson's translation. Isis 22 (2): 533–539.
Also see
External links
Primary sources
- Ptolemy's Geography at LacusCurtius (English translation, incomplete)
- Extracts of Ptolemy on the country of the Seres (China) (English translation)
- 1st critical edition of Geography Book 8, by Aubrey Diller
Secondary material
- Ptolemy the Geographer
- Alexander Jones, "Ptolemy and his Geography"
- Ptolemy's Geography of Asia - Selected problems of Ptolemy's Geography of Asia (in German)
- Ptolemy's Geography of Northwestern Europe (in German)
- History of Cartography including a discussion of the Geographia
- Dennis Rawlins, Investigations of the Geographical Directory 1979-2007
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