After the dissolution of the Roman empire, the ‘

’ was lost to Western Europe but was fortunately preserved by Arabic scholars who edited and revised its contents. The earliest extant manuscript version of the ‘

’ is in Arabic and probably dates from the twelfth century. Subsequently, the text was translated into Greek and circulated through the Byzantine world. Several manuscript versions from the 1300s, which include coloured maps, testify to its influence at the time. It was translated into Latin in 1407 by Emanuel Chryslaras and Jacobus Angelus in Florence, initiating a wave of modern editions in Western Europe. A highly influential set of Ptolemaic maps in manuscript form was created by Donnus Nicolaus Germanus, a German cartographer who was active in Italy from about 1460 to 1480. His work formed the basis for ensuing publications of Claudius Ptolemy’s maps in Italy and beyond.

The 1478 ‘

’ is an important work for both the history of cartography and the history of printing. The edition was first planned by Conrad Sweynheym, an apprentice of Johannes Gutenberg, who fled to Italy after the raid of Mainz in 1462. Several years later he established the first printing press in Italy at the Benedictine monastery of Subiaco with another German émigré, Arnold Pannartz. In 1473 or 1474 they started creating the first printed illustrated edition of Ptolemy’s ‘

’. Both men died before the project could be realized, and it was acquired in 1478 by Arnold Buckinck a printer from Cologne who employed Domitius Calderinus of Verona to edit the text. 

The atlas originally contains twenty-seven maps: the world map, ten maps of Europe, four maps of Africa and twelve maps of Asia. An estimated 500 copies of the 1478 edition were printed. A census of 1952 located thirty-nine of these remaining copies. The Rome Ptolemy was certainly a greater commercial success than its predecessors and was reissued using the same copperplates, without change, in 1490, 1507, and 1508. Watermarks of crossed arrows in this map differentiate it from these later editions. 

This map shows the world as it was understood by Greco-Roman geographers, extending from Great Britain in the northwest, the Canary Islands in the west, mid-China in the east, and northern Africa in the south; the Indian Ocean features a large island, Taprobana (Sri Lanka), lettered in Roman capitals. The decorative wind heads and co-ordinate lines present in the earlier Bologna Ptolemy edition are omitted, and place names are given more frequently.

The map is notable as the first to use a punch-lettering printing technique. The development of this semi-mechanical alternative to manual engraving marks a little-known point of contact between the histories of printing and cartography. The technique was developed because of the map’s dense toponymy which requires the time-consuming (and expensive) skills of an experienced engraver. Punching was utilized here as a labour-saving alternative. Punch lettering also allowed much greater uniformity and infused a unique aesthetic different from engraved maps. In another unusual choice, the map was printed on two separate sheets, which later were joined. 

’ was intended as a supplement to Claudius Ptolemy’s earlier astronomical work, the ‘Almagest’, showing how to put the principles outlined in the first work into practice and providing tables of coordinates of important places throughout the world. What began as a simple list became a synthesis of classical geographical knowledge from the millennium. Ptolemy collated and compared every available text, and the ‘

’ eventually ran to eight books. The first was concerned with the practice of geography and cartography; the middle six were filled with tables of coordinates; and the final book suggested a method of dividing the Oikoumene (‘known world’) into twenty-six regional maps: ten of Europe, four of Africa, and twelve of Asia, preceded by one of the world, for which he offers three projections. This format would be retained in atlases for centuries. 

Ptolemy’s world map is essentially a map of the Roman Empire, centred on the Mediterranean Sea, and encompassing Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia. However, the use of a cone-shaped projection admits to an understanding of a wider world, which is spherical and unrecorded. Although the ‘

’ gives instructions for the construction of maps, it is unclear whether the original manuscript versions of the text contained any. Regardless, later copyists reconstructed maps from the coordinates given in the text, rather than existing maps. 

Ptolemy did not, of course, make any mention of the Americas, which were unknown to the Greeks and Romans. He perpetuated the idea of a large southern continent, ‘Terra Australis’, which counterbalanced the landmasses in the northern hemisphere and landlocked the Indian Ocean. It was not until the publication of 

’ ‘Theatrum Orbis Terrarum’ that an atlas would use maps of the modern world as a basis, rather than ones constructed in the Ptolemaic tradition.

Finely engraved on copper, this is the second Ptolemaic map ever printed, adopting the features and methodology described by the Greek geographer Claudius Ptolemy. The map shows the world as it was understood in the Greco-Roman age. It reaches from Great Britain in the north to the Canary Islands in the south, west through Europe to the Islands of Fortune, and east across the Indian Ocean, Taprobana (modern-day Sri Lanka) and China.

Preceded by only the 'Bologna Ptolomy' printed in 1477, the Rome Ptolemy was engraved using an innovative semi-mechanical technique. Its refined level of detail differentiates it from the Bologna version while subsequent editions published into the sixteenth century attest to its geographic accuracy and commercial success.

During Claudius Ptolemy’s lifetime, Alexandria was an intellectual centre of the ancient world. It was also a vital point on trade routes between the Far East and Europe, giving Ptolemy access to the knowledge of travellers from all over the empire. While other Greco-Roman geographers distrusted contemporary accounts of sailors and merchants, Ptolemy eagerly consulted their first-hand knowledge. This is likely why his description of many features of the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal are surprisingly accurate. A Greek sailor named Alexandros was a particularly key source in Ptolemy’s account of the Golden Chersonese (Malay Peninsula) and the Magnus Sinus (Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea).

’, the first atlas to be printed in Rome and the second atlas ever printed, preceded only by the 1477 Bologna edition of  Claudius Ptolemy’s ‘

’, known in only a few copies. Its pioneering, semi-mechanical engraving technique is important to both the history of cartography and the history of printing. 

 engraved Ptolemaic map of the world on two half-sheets, joined, each sheet watermarked with two crossed arrows in each sheet (Briquet 6277, listed as “Rome 1474”).

An Important Early Ptolemaic World Map