New Griechenland so ieczunt …[Greece]

Mapmaker:

Sebastian Münster (1488-1552) 

Münster was an important German cartographer, cosmographer and Hebrew scholar who is best known for his 1540 Latin translation and publication of Ptolemy’s ‘Cosmographia’. Prior to the introduction of the printing for books, works such as Ptolemy’s groundbreaking Cosmographia could only be copied by scribes, consequently this slow process inhibited the dessemination of geographic knowledge to a wide audience. As information became available especially of the new world, Munster found that Ptolemy’s theories were contradicted by new discoveries that were related to him by ships captains and explorers. One such theory was a ‘land locked Indian Ocean’ which Ptolemy had shown in his Cosmographia and which was being disproved by the trading ships returning from China and the Spice Islands with their precious cargoes.

As a result Münster began to add his own new maps to the Geographica that reflected these new discoveries and made available to a wide audience this changing knowledge of the world.