The Ptolemy world map is a map of the

world The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that Existence, exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk ...

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

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 book ''

Geography Geography (from Ancient Greek ; combining 'Earth' and 'write', literally 'Earth writing') is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding o ...

'', 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: 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 ...

into

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

in the 9th century and played a role in the work of

al-Khwārizmī Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi , or simply al-Khwarizmi, was a mathematician active during the Islamic Golden Age, who produced Arabic-language works in mathematics, astronomy, and geography. Around 820, he worked at the House of Wisdom in B ...

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 known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

monks A monk (; from , ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a man who is a member of a religious order and lives in a monastery. A monk usually lives his life in prayer and contemplation. The concept is ancient and can be seen in many reli ...

under the direction of

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, ...

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 continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

, and

Libya Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya border, the east, Sudan to Libya–Sudan border, the southeast, Chad to Chad–L ...

(

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

). The

World Ocean The ocean is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of Earth. The ocean is conventionally divided into large bodies of water, which are also referred to as ''oceans'' (the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Antarctic/Southern, and ...

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 east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern ...

and the Indian (''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 (; , ; BC) was a Ancient Greek astronomy, 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 equinoxes. Hippar ...

, 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, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

is bound by the

Indus The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans- Himalayan river of South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in the Western Tibet region of China, flows northwest through the dis ...

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 which goes through India, Bangladesh, Nepal and China." is a trans-boundary rive ...

rivers, but its peninsula is much shortened. Instead,

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

('' Taprobane'') is greatly enlarged. The

Malay Peninsula The Malay Peninsula is located in Mainland Southeast Asia. The landmass runs approximately north–south, and at its terminus, it is the southernmost point of the Asian continental mainland. The area contains Peninsular Malaysia, Southern Tha ...

is given as the

Golden Chersonese The Golden Chersonese or Golden Khersonese (, ''Chrysḗ Chersónēsos''; ), meaning the Golden Peninsula, was the name used for the Malay Peninsula by Greek and Roman geographers in classical antiquity, most famously in Claudius Ptolemy's 2nd-c ...

instead of the earlier "Golden Island", which derived from Indian accounts of the mines on

Sumatra Sumatra () is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the list of islands by area, sixth-largest island in the world at 482,286.55 km2 (182,812 mi. ...

. Beyond the Golden Chersonese, the

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

(''Magnus Sinus'') forms a combination of the

Gulf of Thailand The Gulf of Thailand (), historically known as the Gulf of Siam (), is a shallow inlet adjacent to the southwestern South China Sea, bounded between the southwestern shores of the Indochinese Peninsula and the northern half of the Malay Peninsula. ...

and

South China Sea The South China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean. It is bounded in the north by South China, in the west by the Indochinese Peninsula, in the east by the islands of Taiwan island, Taiwan and northwestern Philippines (mainly Luz ...

which is bound by the unknown lands thought to enclose the Indian Sea.

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

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 Road The Silk Road was a network of Asian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over , it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the ...

s. The ''Geography'' and the map derived from it probably played an important role in the expansion of the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

to the East. Trade throughout the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or approximately 20% of the water area of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia (continent), ...

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 Gudmund Schütte (17 January 1872– 12 July 1958) was a Danish philologist, historian and writer who specialized in Germanic studies. Biography Gudmund Schütte was born at Eskjær, Salling, Denmark on 17 January 1872, the son of landowner T ...

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 use of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. The definition is contested, in part due to conflict ...

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

peninsula A peninsula is a landform that extends from a mainland and is only connected to land on one side. Peninsulas exist on each continent. The largest peninsula in the world is the Arabian Peninsula. Etymology The word ''peninsula'' derives , . T ...

Jutland Jutland (; , ''Jyske Halvø'' or ''Cimbriske Halvø''; , ''Kimbrische Halbinsel'' or ''Jütische Halbinsel'') is a peninsula of Northern Europe that forms the continental portion of Denmark and part of northern Germany (Schleswig-Holstein). It ...

placed north of the river '' Albis 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. An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water. Example archipelagos include the Aegean Islands (the o ...

), 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 (, ; ) were an ancient tribe in Europe. Ancient authors described them variously as a Celtic, Gaulish, Germanic, or even Cimmerian people. Several ancient sources indicate that they lived in Jutland, which in some classical texts was ...

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

), the ''Chersonêsos'' and the '' Charudes''.

References

External links

Nicholas the German's Florentine edition
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

Claudius Ptolemy’s East Africa Georeferenced and Visualized e-Perimetron
Vol. 18, No 4, 2023 {{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 t ...

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