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1400Medieval Caesarean
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1400Illegal English Bible
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1400Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
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1407Monsters in hell
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1407Ptolemy's World Map
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1410Medieval woman poet
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1415Old Hall manuscript
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1423Bedford Hours
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1425Medicinal plants
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1430Chess playing
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1435Medical Treatise by John Aderne
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1440Recipe for 'custarde'
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1455Gutenberg Bible
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1455The Temptation of Eve
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1457Pregnancy
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1469The Legend of King Arthur
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1470Caxton's Chaucer
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1477Valentine's day love letter
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1486Medieval zodiac chart
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1487Heretics burned at the stake
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1490Royal feast
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1490Courtly love
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1492Columbus in America
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Intro
Ptolemy (c.100-178) was a hugely important geographer and astronomer working in Ancient Rome. This map takes valuable information from his famous book Geographia. His work informed mapmakers on the size of the Earth, and the co-ordinates for the positions of all the places and features indicated on the map.
Until a copy of Geographia was translated from Greek into Latin in 1407, all knowledge of these co-ordinates had been lost in the West. The book created a sensation, as it challenged the very basis of medieval mapmaking – mapmakers before this had based the proportions of countries, not on mathematical calculations, but on the importance of different places - the more important a country was, the bigger it appeared on the map. In fact, many of Ptolemy’s calculations were later proved to be incorrect. However, the introduction of mathematics and the idea of accurate measurement were to change the nature of European mapmaking forever. This copy of Ptolemy's World Map was produced slightly later, in 1482.
Shelfmark: IC. 9304
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