The Ptolemy world map is a map of the

world In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...

known to Greco-Roman societies in the 2nd century. It is based on the description contained in

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importance ...

's book ''

Geography Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, an ...

'', written . Based on an inscription in several of the earliest surviving manuscripts, it is traditionally credited to Agathodaemon of Alexandria. Notable features of Ptolemy's map is the first use of longitudinal and latitudinal lines as well as specifying terrestrial locations by celestial observations. The ''Geography'' was translated from

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

into

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

in the 9th century and played a role in the work of al-Khwārizmī before lapsing into obscurity. The idea of a global coordinate system revolutionized European geographical thought, however, and inspired more mathematical treatment of cartography. Ptolemy's work probably originally came with maps, but none have been discovered. Instead, the present form of the map was reconstructed from Ptolemy's coordinates by

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

monks A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedica ...

under the direction of Maximus Planudes shortly after 1295. It probably was not that of the original text, as it uses the ''less'' favored of the two alternate projections offered by Ptolemy.

Continents

The continents are given as

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

, and

Libya Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Suda ...

(

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

). The

World Ocean The ocean (also the sea or the world ocean) is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of the surface of Earth and contains 97% of Earth's water. An ocean can also refer to any of the large bodies of water into which the worl ...

is only seen to the west. The map distinguishes two large enclosed seas: the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western Europe, Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa ...

and the

Indian Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...

(''Indicum Pelagus''). Due to Marinus and Ptolemy's mistaken measure of the circumference of the earth, the former is made to extend much too far in terms of degrees of arc; due to their reliance on

Hipparchus Hipparchus (; el, Ἵππαρχος, ''Hipparkhos''; BC) was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. He is considered the founder of trigonometry, but is most famous for his incidental discovery of the precession of the equi ...

, they mistakenly enclose the latter with an eastern and southern shore of unknown lands, which prevents the map from identifying the western coast of the World Ocean.

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

is bound by the Indus and

Ganges The Ganges ( ) (in India: Ganga ( ); in Bangladesh: Padma ( )). "The Ganges Basin, known in India as the Ganga and in Bangladesh as the Padma, is an international river to which India, Bangladesh, Nepal and China are the riparian states." is ...

rivers, but its peninsula is much shortened. Instead, Sri Lanka ('' Taprobane'') is greatly enlarged. The Malay Peninsula is given as the Golden Chersonese instead of the earlier "Golden Island", which derived from Indian accounts of the mines on Sumatra. Beyond the Golden Chersonese, the

Great Gulf The Great Gulf is a glacial cirque, or amphitheater-like valley head formed from a glacier by erosion, located in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The cirque's walls are formed, from south to north, by the mountainsides of Mount Washington ( ...

(''Magnus Sinus'') forms a combination of the Gulf of Thailand and

South China Sea The South China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean. It is bounded in the north by the shores of South China (hence the name), in the west by the Indochinese Peninsula, in the east by the islands of Taiwan and northwestern Phi ...

which is bound by the unknown lands thought to enclose the Indian Sea. China is divided into two realms—the Qin (''Sinae'') and the Land of Silk (''Serica'')—owing to the different accounts received from the overland and maritime Silk Roads. The ''Geography'' and the map derived from it probably played an important role in the expansion of the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post- Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediter ...

to the East. Trade throughout the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by t ...

was extensive from the 2nd century, and many Roman trading ports have been identified in

. From these ports, Roman embassies to China are recorded in Chinese historical sources from around 166. The Danish historian Gudmund Schütte attempted to reconstruct the Danish part of Ptolemy's world map. It includes several place- and

tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to confli ...

-names, some of which Schütte assigned a contemporary equivalent. The most prominent feature of the map is the peninsula

Jutland Jutland ( da, Jylland ; german: Jütland ; ang, Ēota land ), known anciently as the Cimbric or Cimbrian Peninsula ( la, Cimbricus Chersonesus; da, den Kimbriske Halvø, links=no or ; german: Kimbrische Halbinsel, links=no), is a peninsula of ...

placed north of the river ''

Albis The Albis is a chain of hills in the Canton of Zürich, Switzerland, stretching for some 19 km from Sihlbrugg in the south to Waldegg near Zürich in the north. The chain forms, among others, the border between the Affoltern and Horgen di ...

Trêva'', west of the ''Saxonôn'' Nesôi (

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Arc ...

), east of the ''Skandiai'' Nêsoi, which itself lies west of a larger island ''Skandia''. ''Skandia'' is home to the '' Goutai'' in the center, and the '' Phiraisoi'' in the east. North of Jutland lies a third archipelago ''Alokiai'' Nêsoi. South of the ''Albis'' live the '' Lakkobardoi'' and to its north the '' Saxones''. The west coast of Jutland is home to the ''Sigulônes'', the ''Sabaliggio'', the '' Kobandoi'', the ''Eundusioi'' and the northernmost ''Kimbroi'' (possibly

Cimbri The Cimbri (Greek Κίμβροι, ''Kímbroi''; Latin ''Cimbri'') were an ancient tribe in Europe. Ancient authors described them variously as a Celtic people (or Gaulish), Germanic people, or even Cimmerian. Several ancient sources indicate that ...

). North and east is home to the ''Kimbrikê'' (possibly

), the ''Chersonêsos'' and the ''

Charudes The Charudes or Harudes were a Germanic group first mentioned by Julius Caesar as one of the tribes who had followed Ariovistus across the Rhine. While Tacitus' ''Germania'' makes no mention of them, Ptolemy's ''Geographia'' locates the Charu ...

''.

References

External links

Ptolemaic images
at the European Library

the first to use Ptolemy's 2nd projection, at the University of Minnesota

at Columbia University
Richard Donohue's presentation of Ptolemy's projection with modern geographic knowledge

GIS Analysis and Digital Reconstruction of Ptolemy's India beyond the Ganges, Serike and Sinae

Iterative Reconstruction of Ptolemy’s West Africa Using Modern GIS Analysis

Visualization and GIS Analysis of Ptolemy’s One-Sided Globe in the Old and Modern Contexts
{{cartography topics

World map A world map is a map of most or all of the surface of Earth. World maps, because of their scale, must deal with the problem of projection. Maps rendered in two dimensions by necessity distort the display of the three-dimensional surface of th ...

Historic maps of the world Foreign relations of ancient Rome 2nd-century works