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Famous c.16th woodcut map by the German cartographer Sebastian Munster depicting the world according to Ptolemy from the 1578 edition of Munster’s, Cosmographey.
This edition is identified by the spelling of the word “begreiffende” in the title which is spelt with two ‘ff’ whereas in most other German editions it is spelt with a sing ‘f’. Additionally in 1588, Munster replaced the Ptolemaic world map found in earlier editions with an updated version of this map. The updated map included the naming of the Tropic of Capricorn and Cancer, and the word Climata which was added to the table on the right. The wind-heads were also changed, and the banners for each were made smaller in size.
On the verso is a panel of complex woodcut pictures showing Life as a moral maze based on the Theban Tabula Cebetis.
The map displays a Ptolemaic representation of the world, with the continents of Africa and Asia joined to a southern landmass called, Terra Incognita Secundum Protemeum. Surrounding the map are decorative clouds and personified depictions of the twelve winds proposed by Aristotle, each with a banner displaying its name. Ptolemy proposed the concept of Terra Australis Incognita and a landlocked Indian Ocean in his Geographia, which influenced all mapmakers until Bartholomew Dias discovered the sea route around the Cape of Good Hope in 1487 thus dispelling the concept of a landlocked Indian Ocean. This new route allowed the Portuguese to access the rich Asian trade directly, bypassing the Venetian-controlled spice trade into Europe via the Middle East and Adriatic Sea.
The map shows Sri Lanka as Taprobana, a large island placed incorrectly to the west of a truncated Indian subcontinent. The source of the Nile is depicted as several lakes south of the equator, and other important inland details include the Himalayas, the Euphrates River, and the Swiss Alps.
From Münster’s Cosmographey Oder Beschreibung Aller Länder, herschaffen und fürnemesten Stetten des gantzen Erdbodems … Basle 1578
Sebastian Munster (1488 - 1552)
Sebastian Munster (1488-1552) was an important German cartographer, cosmographer and Hebrew scholar who is best known for his 1540 Latin translation and publication of Ptolemy's Geography titled, Cosmographia. Prior to the introduction of printing for books, of works such as Ptolemy's groundbreaking Geography, they could only be copied individually by scribes, consequently this slow process inhibited the dissemination 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 these 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 Geography and which was being disproved by the trading ships returning from China and the Spice Islands with their precious cargos. As a result Munster began to add new maps to his own Cosmographia that reflected these new discoveries and made available to a wider audience this changing knowledge of the world.
$A 875
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