Agathodaemon of Alexandria (, ''Agathodaímōn Alexandreùs'') was a

Greek Greek may refer to: 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 of all kno ...

or Hellenized Egyptian

cartographer Cartography (; from , 'papyrus, sheet of paper, map'; and , 'write') is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an imagined reality) can ...

, presumably from

Alexandria Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile ...

Roman Egypt Roman Egypt was an imperial province of the Roman Empire from 30 BC to AD 642. The province encompassed most of modern-day Egypt except for the Sinai. It was bordered by the provinces of Crete and Cyrenaica to the west and Judaea, ...

, during

late Antiquity Late antiquity marks the period that comes after the end of classical antiquity and stretches into the onset of the Early Middle Ages. Late antiquity as a period was popularized by Peter Brown (historian), Peter Brown in 1971, and this periodiza ...

, likely in the 2nd century AD. Agathodaemon is mentioned in some of the earliest manuscripts of

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

's ''Geography'': __NOTOC__

"From the eight books of geography of
Claudius Ptolemaeus Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine, Islamic, and ...
the whole habitable world Agathodaemon of
Alexandria Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile ...
delineated."

The line appears in the running text of the ''Geography'', not as a caption on the maps themselves. Since the inscriptions are the only surviving references to him and these manuscripts only survive from the very late 13th century, the most that can be conclusively stated is that he lived sometime between AD 150 and 1300, although his classical name and epithet—"the Alexandrian"—likely place him before the fall of Alexandria to the

Caliphate A caliphate ( ) is an institution or public office under the leadership of an Islamic steward with Khalifa, the title of caliph (; , ), a person considered a political–religious successor to the Islamic prophet Muhammad and a leader of ...

in 641, rather than being contemporary with

Maximus Planudes Maximus Planudes (, ''Máximos Planoúdēs''; ) was a Byzantine Greek monk, scholar, anthologist, translator, mathematician, grammarian and theologian at Constantinople. Through his translations from Latin into Greek and from Greek into Latin, ...

's reconstruction of the Ptolemaic atlas after 1295. In the ''Geography'', Ptolemy displays his familiarity with existing maps, criticizing inaccuracies introduced by other cartographers into

Marinus of Tyre Marinus of Tyre (, ''Marînos ho Týrios''; 70–130) was a List of Graeco-Roman geographers, geographer, Cartography, cartographer and mathematician, who founded mathematical geography and provided the underpinnings of Claudius Ptolemy's i ...

's work due to improper data. Ptolemy attempted to remedy these errors by providing proper sample captions in his own books VII and VIII. In those sections, he explicitly mentions that his text was to be accompanied by maps constructed according to his principles.

Heeren Heeren is a village and a former municipality in the district of Stendal, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Since 1 January 2010, it is part of the town Stendal,Dinse suggested he was the transcriber of the original

papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, ''Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'' or ''papyruses'') can a ...

scroll A scroll (from the Old French ''escroe'' or ''escroue''), also known as a roll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing. Structure A scroll is usually partitioned into pages, which are sometimes separate sheets of papyru ...

s into

codices The codex (: codices ) was the historical ancestor format of the modern book. Technically, the vast majority of modern books use the codex format of a stack of pages bound at one edge, along the side of the text. But the term ''codex'' is now r ...

Fischer Fischer is a German occupational surname, meaning fisherman. The name Fischer is the fourth most common German surname. The English version is Fisher. People with the surname A * Abraham Fischer (1850–1913) South African public official * ...

proposed that Agathodaemon drafted only the world map but not the regional maps, based on differences in early manuscripts. A major point of contention is that Ptolemy's regional maps use Marinus's

cylindrical projection In cartography, a map projection is any of a broad set of transformations employed to represent the curved two-dimensional surface of a globe on a plane. In a map projection, coordinates, often expressed as latitude and longitude, of locations ...

, which Ptolemy criticized, instead of either of Ptolemy's preferred projections. The world map, however, uses Ptolemy's less-favored projection. Agathodaemon is sometimes conflated with two other figures: the 3rd-century

alchemist Alchemy (from the Arabic word , ) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first ...

Agathodaemon Agathos Daimon (, , ) originally was a lesser deity (''daemon'') of classical ancient Greek religion and Graeco-Egyptian religion. In his original Greek form, he served as a household god, to whom, along with Zeus Soter, libations were made aft ...

and the 5th-century

grammarian Grammarian may refer to: * Alexandrine grammarians, philologists and textual scholars in Hellenistic Alexandria in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE * Biblical grammarians, scholars who study the Bible and the Hebrew language * Grammarian (Greco-Roman ...

, who corresponded with

Isidore Isidore ( ; also spelled Isador, Isadore and Isidor) is a masculine given name. The name is derived from the Greek name ''Isídōros'' (Ἰσίδωρος, latinized ''Isidorus'') and can literally be translated to 'gift of Isis'. The name has survi ...

Pelusium Pelusium (Ancient Egyptian: ; /, romanized: , or , romanized: ; ; ; ; ) was an important city in the eastern extremes of Egypt's Nile Delta, to the southeast of the modern Port Said. It became a Roman provincial capital and Metropolitan arc ...

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* . * . * . * . * . * . * . * . {{authority control Ptolemy Roman-era Alexandrians Ancient Greek cartographers

See also

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