Geographical Hyphegesis

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Map of Southeast Asia (detail), manuscript from the 15th century

The Geographike Hyphegesis (Γεωγραφικὴ Ὑφήγησις; ancient Greek for geographical guidance ) is an atlas created by Claudius Ptolemy around the year 150 . It is based in part on older sources, such as the work of Marinos von Tyros and Hanno the Navigator .

scope

The geography is a comprehensive representation of the known world of the 2nd century AD with about 8000 locations through a coordinate system . It is thus the historically first known attempt to accurately represent parts of the earth recognized as a sphere in a map projection .

Problem

The modern interpretation of the ancient coordinates has so far led to an inexplicable contradiction in terms of their positional accuracy in relation to the two map projections proposed by Ptolemy , including the square flat map : Ptolemy used the then common basic dimensions of the stadium , which was almost exactly one fifth of a kilometer, however, he could have copied most of the locations from older and contemporary maps that used different units of measurement .

Ptolemy 's working method is also responsible for the uncertainties: the location information is based on reports from third parties (namely: from long-distance traders) about their travel routes. In addition, the work has only survived as a copy from the late Middle Ages . Because of the described type of data collection from several reports of different quality, in general the problem of converting distance data into degrees, later changes, especially of settlements due to desertification and renaming, as well as because of the alleged errors in duplication in the medieval scriptoria , many places are outside the It is difficult to clearly assign the ancient Roman empire - although some considerations about their local location and traffic route function are almost imposing, especially about Marionis and Marionis altera and a connection between these two places and the location of the two striking northeastern extreme points of the North Sea-Baltic Sea divide to the Bay of Lübeck down.

Interpretation by Alfred Stückelberger and his colleagues, Bern

The Ptolemy Research Center in Bern, under the direction of Alfred Stückelberger, has created a new edition of the Handbook of Geography (= Geographike hyphegesis ) by Klaudios Ptolemaios (text edition 2006; supplementary volume 2009), the first comprehensive new edition in more than 150 years, which is also the first complete contains German translation. When designing the Greek text, it was possible for the first time to continuously evaluate the probably most important map handwriting found in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul in 1927 (Codex Seragliensis GI 57, around 1300); through it numerous readings could be confirmed.

The Geographike Hyphegesis by Klaudios Ptolemaios, which was created in Alexandria around 150 AD , with its theoretical preamble, with the novel projection methods for a world map, with its catalog of around 6400 locations determined by coordinates as well as a map atlas with world map and 26 country maps belongs to the most important preserved works of the ancient history of science. Making this work accessible to a wider public was the declared aim of the team at the Ptolemy Research Center in Bern: A German translation, the necessary explanations in the notes and a comprehensive register should guarantee this.

In particular, the approximately 13,000 coordinates, which are often incorrectly and inconsistently handed down in the manuscripts, should be checked for plausibility by comparing them with the surviving maps. As a result of this check - based on the manuscripts - the entire set of maps was redrawn by Florian Mittenhuber and thus the attempt was made to make the original work of Ptolemy visible again. The editorial team was aware from the outset that Ptolemy had very different, in some cases incorrect sources available to obtain the coordinates and thus to design the maps and that the geographical image that has now been handed down shows some distortions. Since the causes of these distortions can be very different, it will be difficult to rectify the traditional data over a large area.

Interpretation by Dieter Lelgemann and others, Berlin

In Geographike Hyphegesis, for the first time, many places are provided with coordinates in such a way that maps or an atlas could be drawn from them if the information was not subject to a large number of errors. As far as the places in Ptolemy's work are attributed to the historical Roman Empire, some of the place names can be assigned locally (for example, Argentoratum is the place that was on the site of today's city of Strasbourg ). On the other hand, places outside the ancient Roman Empire can only be assigned geographically in exceptional cases.

Progress in the determination of such locations was achieved through the results of a project by the Institute for Geodesy and Geoinformation Technology at the Technical University of Berlin under the direction of Dieter Lelgemann . a. dealt with the coordinates in the second and third books of Geographike Hyphegesis.

For the Ptolemaic locations in Germania magna (Book 2, Chapter 11), the scientists at the TU Berlin have succeeded in transferring the ancient coordinates into the modern geographic coordinate system with the help of a few reference points ( CCAA , Vistula estuary, Bonn ) .

According to the project results, the places named by Ptolemy for this part of the world can be grouped into four groups. The first three groups concern locations whose coordinates are based on common geodetic measurement or distortion errors that can be calculated out. In the fourth group there were errors that could not be systematized and were therefore not taken into account.

  • Group 1: Places with rectifiable coordinates whose location is safe
Examples (historical location and assigned current location):
Kalisia near Kalisz , Kalamantia near Komárno , Askiborgion near Moers
  • Group 2: Locations with rectifiable coordinates whose location is probable
Examples (historical location and assigned current location):
Amisia near Fritzlar ( Geismar district ), Luppia near Bernburg , Ebourodounon near Brno
  • Group 3: Locations with rectifiable coordinates whose location is uncertain
Examples (historical location and assigned current location):
Phabiranum near Bremerhaven ( Heidenschanze near Sievern ), Leuphana near Hitzacker , Treva near Bad Oldesloe , Marionis near Schönberg (Mecklenburg) , Marionis altera near Güstrow (district Lalendorf ), Coenoenum near Waren

Because of the migration of peoples, the current location given in each case cannot simply be viewed as the continuation of the historical settlement in terms of the assigned historical location.

The contemporary scientific concern of Ptolemy is to summarize places in the Germania magna, which according to his knowledge share an equal distance between the pole and the equator, into " climates ". The term "klima" is not used to describe climatic zones in the modern sense, but it is about "a stretch of land, the parts of which showed the same angle of inclination of the incident sun rays against the horizon and thus all were under the same 'latitude'" . This classification of the Germanic places in climata could be traced back to measurements of the Roman army, which for the campaigns in Germania between 14 BC. And 16 AD and originated from the Roman garrisons on the Rhine. Apparently Ptolemy had access to it.

Editions and translations

  • Alfred Stückelberger, Gerd Graßhoff (ed.): Ptolemaios, Handbook of Geography (Greek-German) . Schwabe Verlag, Basel 2006, ISBN 3-7965-2148-7 (work in 2 half-volumes).
  • Karl Friedrich August Nobbe (editor): Claudii Ptolemaei Geographia. 3 volumes, Leipzig 1843, 1845, reprint Olms, Hildesheim 1966 (Greek text edition).
  • John Lennart Berggren , Alexander Jones : Ptolemy's Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical Chapters. Princeton University Press, 2000.
  • Edward Luther Stevenson (translator) Claudius Ptolemy: The Geography , New York Public Library 1932, reprinted Dover 1991 (English translation, very incorrect).

literature

  • Germania in the world map of Klaudios Ptolemaios . In: Adventure archeology . No. 1 . Spectrum of Science, Heidelberg 2004, p. 9 .
  • Andreas Kleineberg, Christian Marx, Eberhard Knobloch , Dieter Lelgemann : Germania and the island of Thule. The decoding of Ptolemy's "Atlas of the Oikumene" . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2010, ISBN 978-3-534-23757-9 , pp. 131 pages with partly colored maps .
  • Andreas Kleineberg, Christian Marx, Dieter Lelgemann: Europe in the geography of Ptolemy. The decoding of the "Atlas of the Oikumene": Between Orkney, Gibraltar and the Dinarides . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2012, ISBN 978-3-534-24835-3 .
  • Christian Marx, Andreas Kleineberg: The geography of Ptolemy. Geographike Hyphegesis Book 3: Europe between Neva, Don and Mediterranean . epubli, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-8442-2809-0 .
  • Hans-Jörg Nüsse, Andreas Kleinefeld, Dieter Lelgemann , Christian Marx: Germania magna - A new look at an old map. Corrected geographic data from Ptolemy for the ancient locations between the Rhine and the Vistula. In: Germania (magazine) , year 89, 2011. Frankfurt a. M. 2014. pp. 115-155.
  • Klaus Geus: Looking over Ptolemaios's shoulder - about his working method in Geographike Hyphegesis . In: Michael Rathmann (Hrsg.): Perception and recording of geographical spaces in antiquity . Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2007, ISBN 978-3-8053-3749-6 , p. 159-166 .
  • Elisabeth Rinner: On the genesis of the spatial coordinates of Asia Minor in the geography of Klaudios Ptolemaios , Bern Studies 2013 (received the Georg Uschmann Prize for the History of Science )

Web links

Commons : Geography (Ptolemy)  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ www.ptolemaios.unibe.ch
  2. ↑ www.ptolemaios.unibe.ch/textband.html
  3. ↑ www.ptolemaios.unibe.ch/ergaenzungsband.html
  4. ↑ Kleineberg et al., 2010; Nüsse et al., 2014
  5. ↑ Kleineberg et al., 2012
  6. ^ Marx and Kleineberg, 2012
  7. ↑ Ernst Honigmann: The seven climates and the poleis episemoi. An investigation into the history of geography and astrology in antiquity and the Middle Ages (Heidelberg 1929), p. 4; quoted here from Kleineberg et al. a. (see literature ) p. 25
  8. ↑ Kleineberg et al., 2010, pp. 22 and 25