Map · Latin

Geography (Cosmographia), Rome 1478 edition, copper-engraved maps including Septima and Octava Asiae Tabula (Scythia intra and extra Imaum, Serica)

Cosmographia

Ptolemy; engraved by Conrad Sweynheym (d. 1477), completed and printed by Arnold Buckinck, Rome 1478

How we know

compilation Assembled from earlier sources. The author did not observe it directly.

Retrospective transmission of second-century Ptolemaic geography; no observation.

Research notes

Same plates reissued Rome 1490, 1507 and 1508; plates engraved after the manuscript tradition of Donnus Nicolaus Germanus's earlier recension rather than the trapezoidal one used at Ulm. LOC metadata is extracted from WDL and its title is devised by LOC staff.
Found via LOC search 'Ptolemy 1478 Rome cosmographia' (1 hit).

Why it matters

First copper-engraved Ptolemy (Rome 1478) gives the classical Scythia/Serica frame in the clearest early printed form, a control for the Ulm 1482 woodcut version (L007 record) and for the 'Scythia = Tartary' identification made by 16th-century editors.