There was one further edition in 1602 before the plates were acquired by Jodocus Hondius (1563–1612) in 1604, probably bought at Leiden at the auction of 

’s library then in the possession of his grandson, 

 II. Hondius built a successful publishing career from his own Mercator-Hondius atlas, as ‘Gerardi Mercatoris 

 Sive Cosmographicae’ in 1606, as here. 

Twelve named windheads surround Mercator’s Ptolemaic world map in an elaborate strapwork border. Of note is that this map includes a very large Taprobana (modern day Sri Lanka) in the Indian Ocean. The Indian subcontinent is also severely truncated and the Indian Ocean appears to be land locked. Only the northern part of Africa is shown with the Nile originating in the twin lakes south of the Equator in the 'Mountains of the Moon'.

The Sunderland Collection

This richly-coloured map on a Ptolemaic projection was engraved onto a copperplate by Gerard Mercator himself. It was published in his very first 'Atlas', which was published alongside an edition of Claudius Ptolemy's 'Geographia', printed in 1578 and 1602.

Two years later, in 1604, the printing plates for Mercator's atlas were acquired by Jodocus Hondius, most likely at the auction of Mercator’s library. Hondius became a very successful mapmaker and publisher in his own right, and in 1606, released his own 'Mercator-Hondius' atlas, from which this map originates.

Mercator's admiration for Ptolemy is evident in the map's classical design. An intricate strapwork border, featuring billowing clouds and twelve labelled windheads, encircles the world.

This Ptolemaic map is one of twenty-eight included in Mercator’s first 'Atlas' (1578), some of the most beautiful that he ever produced. While this map presents the world in Ptolemy’s traditional projection, Mercator’s own projection was one of the great intellectual inventions of the sixteenth century that solved the ancient problem of how to map the spherical Earth onto a flat sheet of paper, while preserving the bearings of the compass as straight lines.

Mercator's three-volume collection of maps was the first to use the word ‘Atlas’, chosen to, as he wrote, ‘honour the Titan, Atlas, King of Mauritania, a learned philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer’. Mercator's sons and grandsons were all cartographers and made their contributions in various ways to the great 'Atlas'. His son Rumold Mercator, in particular, was responsible for the complete edition of 1595.

Mercator’s Ptolemaic Map of the World