The oldest rectangular map of the world is contained in a most valuable
work written by Cosmas, an Alexandrian monk, surnamed Indicopleustes,
after returning from a voyage to India (535 A.D.), and entitled
_Christian Topography_. According to Cosmas (fig. 6) the inhabited earth
has the shape of an oblong rectangle surrounded by an ocean which breaks
in in four great gulfs--the Roman or Mediterranean, the Arabian, Persian
and Caspian Sea. Beyond this ocean lies another world, which was
occupied by man before the Deluge, and within which Cosmas placed the
Terrestrial Paradise. Above this rise the walls of the heavens like unto
the tent of the Tabernacle. Far more simple is a small map of the world
of the 8th century found in a codex in the library of Albi, an
archiepiscopal seat in the department of Tarn. Its scanty nomenclature
is almost wholly derived from the "Historiae adversum paganos" of Paulus
Orosius (418). Far greater interest attaches to the so-called
Anglo-Saxon Map of the World in the British Museum (Cotton MSS.), where
it is bound up in a codex which also contains a copy of the _Periegesis_
of Priscianus. Map and Periegesis are copies by the same hand, but no
other connexion exists between them. More than half the nomenclature of
the map is derived from Orosius, an annotated Anglo-Saxon version of
which had been produced by King Alfred (871-901). The Anglo-Saxons of
the time were of course well acquainted with Island (first thus named in
870) Slesvic and Norweci (Norway), and there is no need to have recourse
to Adam of Bremen (1076) to account for their presence upon this map.
The broad features of the map were derived no doubt from an older
document which may likewise have served as the basis for the map of the
world engraved on silver for Charlemagne, and was also consulted by the
compilers of the Hereford and Ebstorf maps (see fig. 11).
[Illustration: FIG. 9.--T map from Isidor of Seville's _Origines_.]
The map or diagram of which Leonardo Dati in his poem on the Sphere
(Della Spera) wrote in 1422 "un T dentre a uno O mostra il disegno" (a T
within an O shows the design) is one of the most persistent types among
the circular or wheel maps of the world. It perpetuates the tripartite
division of the world by the ancient Greeks and survives in the Royal
Orb. A diagram of this description will be found in Isidor of Seville's
_Origines_ (630), see fig. 9.
T maps of more elaborate design illustrate the MS. copies of Sallust's
_Bellum jugurthinum_; one of these taken from a codex of the 11th
century in the Leipzig town library is shown in fig. 10.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.--Map illustrating Sallust's _Bellum jugurthinum_
(11th century, Leipzig).]
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