Altera Generalis Tab. Secundum Ptol.

Early woodcut map of the world according to Ptolemy by the German cartographer Sebastian Munster, depicting Europe, North Africa and Asia shown joined to a great southern continent named ‘Terra Incognita Secundum Protemeum’. Surrounding the map are decorative clouds and personified depictions of the twelve winds of the wind-system proposed by Aristotle with their names appearing in banners. A Professor of Hebrew at Basel University and an eminent mathematician and geographer, Munster first issued his edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia in 1540, adding a number of new maps to the collection.

The concepts of Terra Australis Incognita and a landlocked Indian Ocean were first proposed by Ptolemy in his Geographia and remained influential until Bartolomew Dias’s discovery of the sea route around the Cape of Good Hope in 1487. This new route provided the Portuguese with direct access to trade with Asia, allowing them to avoid the Venetian-controlled spice trade into Europe via the Middle East and Adriatic Sea.

Sri Lanka, named Taprobana, is shown as a very large island incorrectly placed to the west of a truncated Indian subcontinent. As the largest and possibly only exporter of cinnamon in the world and as a source of ivory, the island was an essential stop on trade routes through the Indian Ocean. Cinnamon was one of the most prized spices available and its exact source was closely guarded by the Arab spice traders. European merchants knew that the cinnamon was transported via the Red Sea to the Egyptian port of Alexandria but its prior origins were unknown and there were many theories as to the where and how the spice was grown. In 1248, Sieur de Joinville, returning from a crusade to Egypt, recounted a story that cinnamon had been fished from the source of the Nile which was believed to lay at the edge of the world. This map incorrectly depicts the source of the Nile as being several lakes south of the equator. The exact location of the Nile would remain a mystery until well into the nineteenth century.

Other important inland details include the Himalayas in northern India, the Euphrates River in the Middle East and the Swiss Alps in Europe.

This map was first published in 1541 and subsequently issued unchanged in 1542, 1545 and 1552. It can be identified by the title, the Latin text on the verso and by the fine vertical line on the right-hand side of the map from a crack in the printing block.

From Munster’s Geographia Universalis vetus et Nova…Claudii Ptolemaei., Basle.

References:

Burden p.15, Moreland p.82, 302, Norwich p.290, Shirley p.76.