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'.

Double-page copperplate engraved Ptolemaic map of the world, with contemporary hand-colour in full.

This richly-coloured map on a Ptolemy projection was engraved by 

 himself on a copperplate. It was published in Mercator’s first '

' with an edition of Claudius Ptolemy's '

' printed in 1578 and in 1602. 

Two years later, the 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. He released his own 'Mercator-Hondius' atlas in 1606, from which this world map comes.

The map is a wonderful homage to Ptolemy, whom Mercator greatly admired. The world is surrounded by an elaborate strapwork border, with twelve named windheads and billowing clouds.

This Ptolemaic map is one of twenty-eight included in Mercator’s first '

' (1578), some of the most beautiful that he ever produced. While this map represents Ptolemy’s projection scheme, 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. His three-volume collection of maps was the first to use the word ‘

’, chosen to, as he wrote, ‘honor the Titan, 

, 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 '

'. His son Rumold Mercator, in particular, was responsible for the complete edition of 1595.

Mercator’s Ptolemaic Map of the World