The ancient Egyptians were famed as “geometers,” and as early as the days of Rameses II. (Sesostris of the Greeks, 1333-1300 B.C.) there had been made a cadastral survey of the country showing the rows of pillars which separated the nomens as well as the boundaries of landed estates. It was upon a map based upon such a source that Eratosthenes (276-196 B.C.) measured the distance between Syene and Alexandria which he required for his determination of the length of a degree. Ptolemy, who had access to the treasures of the famous library of Alexandria was able, no doubt, to utilize these cadastral plans when compiling his geography. It should be noted that he places Syene only two degrees to the east of Alexandria instead of three degrees, the actual meridian distance between the two places; a difference which would result from an error of only 7° is the orientation of the map used by Ptolemy. Scarcely any specimens of ancient Egyptian cartography have survived. In the Turin Museum are preserved two papyri with rough drawings of gold mines established by Sesostris in the Nubian Desert.[11] These drawings have been commented upon by S. Birch, F. Chabas, R. J. Lauth and other Egyptologists, and have been referred to as the two most ancient maps in existence. They can, however, hardly be described as maps, while in age they are surpassed by several cartographical clay tablets discovered in Babylonia. On another papyrus in the same museum is depicted the victorious return of Seti I. (1366-1333) from Syria, showing the road from Pelusium to Heroopolis, the canal from the Nile with crocodiles, and a lake (mod. Lake Timsah) with fish in it. Apollonius of Rhodes who succeeded Eratosthenes as chief librarian at Alexandria (196 B.C.) reports in his Argonautica (iv. 279) that the inhabitants of Colchis whom, like Herodotus (ii., 104) he looks upon as the descendants of Egyptian colonists, preserved, as heirlooms, certain graven tablets (κύρβεις) on which land and sea, roads and towns were accurately indicated.[12] Eustathius (since 1160 archbishop of Thessalonica) in his commentary on Dionysius Periegetes, mentions route-maps which Sesostris caused to be prepared, while Strabo (i., 1. 5) dwells at length upon the wealth of geographical documents to be found in the library of Alexandria.
A cadastral survey for purposes of taxation was already at work in Babylonia in the age of Sargon of Akkad, 3800 B.C. In the British Museum may be seen a series of clay tablets, circular in shape and dating back to 2300 or 2100 B.C., which contain surveys of lands. One of these depicts in a rough way lower Babylonia encircled by a “salt water river,” Oceanus.
Development of Map-making among the Greeks.[13]—Ionian mercenaries and traders first arrived in Egypt, on the invitation of Psammetichus I. about the middle of the 7th century B.C. Among the visitors to Egypt, there were, no doubt, some who took an interest in the science of the Egyptians. One of the most distinguished among them was Thales of Miletus (640-543 B.C.), the founder of the Ionian school of philosophy, whose pupil, Anaximander (611-546 B.C.) is credited by Eratosthenes with having designed the first map of the world. Anaximander looked upon the earth as a section of a cylinder, of considerable thickness, suspended in the centre of the circular vault of the heavens, an idea perhaps borrowed from the Babylonians, for Job (xxvi. 7) already speaks of the earth as “hanging upon nothing.” Like Homer he looked upon the habitable world (οἰκουμένη) as being circular in outline and bounded by a circumfluent river. The geographical knowledge of Anaximander was naturally more ample than that of Homer, for it extended from the Cassiterides or Tin Islands in the west to the Caspian in the east, which he conceived to open out into Oceanus. The Aegean Sea occupied the centre of the map, while the line where ocean and firmament seemed to meet represented an enlarged horizon.
Anaximenes, a pupil of Anaximander, was the first to reject the view that the earth was a circular plane, but held it to be an oblong rectangle, buoyed up in the midst of the heavens by the compressed air upon which it rested. Circular maps, however, remained in the popular favour long after their erroneousness had been recognized by the learned.
Even Hecataeus of Miletus (549-472 B.C.), the author of a Periodos or description of the earth, of whom Herodotus borrowed the terse saying that Egypt was the gift of the Nile, retained this circular shape and circumfluent ocean when producing his map of the world, although he had at his disposal the results of the voyage of Scylax of Caryanda from the Indus to the Red Sea, of Darius’ campaign in Scythia (513), the information to be gathered among the merchants from all parts of the world who frequented an emporium like Miletus, and what he had learned in the course of his own extensive travels. Hecataeus was probably the author of the “bronze tablets upon which was engraved the whole circuit of the earth, the sea and rivers” (Herod, v. 49), which Aristagoras, the tyrant of Miletus, showed to Cleomenes, the king of Sparta, in 504, whose aid he sought in vain in a proposed revolt against Darius, which resulted disastrously in 494 in the destruction of Miletus. The map of the world brought upon the stage in Aristophanes’ comedy of The Clouds (423 B.C.), whereon a disciple of the Sophists points out upon it the position of Athens and of other places known to the audience, was probably of the popular circular type, which Herodotus (iv. 36) not many years before had derided and which was discarded by Greek cartographers ever after. Thus Democritus of Abdera (b. c. 450, d. after 360), the great philosopher and founder, with Leucippus, of the atomic theory, was also the author of a map of the inhabited world which he supposed to be half as long again from west to east, as it was broad.
Dicaearcus of Messana in Sicily, a pupil of Aristotle (326-296 B.C.), is the author of a topographical account of Hellas, with maps, of which only fragments are preserved; he is credited with having estimated the size of the earth, and, as far as known he was the first to draw a parallel across a map.[14] This parallel, or dividing line, called diaphragm (partition) by a commentator, extended due east from the Pillars of Hercules, through the Mediterranean, and along the Taurus and Imaus (Himalaya) to the eastern ocean. It divided the inhabited world, as then known, into a northern and a southern half. In compiling his map he was able to avail himself of the information obtained by the bematists (surveyors who determined distances by pacing) who accompanied Alexander the Great on his campaigns; of the results of the voyage of Nearchus from the Indus to the Euphrates, and of the “Periplus” of Scylax of Caryanda, which described the coast from between India and the head of the Arabian Gulf. On the other hand he unwisely rejected the results of the observations for latitude made by Pytheas in 326 B.C. at his native town, Massilia, and during a subsequent voyage to northern Europe. In the end the map of Dicaearcus resembled that of Democritus.
Scientific geography profited largely from the labours of Eratosthenes of Cyrene, whom Ptolemy Euergetes appointed keeper of the famous library of Alexandria in 247 B.C., and died in that city in 195 B.C. He won fame as having been the first to determine the size of the earth by a scientific method. Having determined the difference of latitude between Alexandria and Syene which he erroneously believed to lie on the same meridian, and obtained the distance of those places from each other from the surveys made by Egyptian geometers, he concluded that a degree of the meridian measured 700 stadia.[15]
Eratosthenes is the author of a treatise which deals systematically with the geographical knowledge of his time, but of which only fragments have been preserved by Strabo and others. This treatise was intended to illustrate and explain his map of the world. In this task he was much helped by the materials collected in his library. Among the travellers of whose information he was thus able to avail himself were Pytheas of Massilia, Patroclus, who had visited the Caspian (285-282 B.C.), Megasthenes, who visited Palibothra on the Ganges, as ambassador of Seleucus Nicator (302-291 B.C.), Timosthenus of Rhodes, the commander of the fleet of Ptolemy Philadelphus (284-246 B.C.) who wrote a treatise “On harbours,” and Philo, who visited Meroe on the upper Nile. His map formed a parallelogram measuring 75,800 stadia from Usisama (Ushant island) or Sacrum Promontorium in the west to the mouth of the Ganges and the land of the Coniaci (Comorin) in the east, and 46,000 stadia from Thule in the north to the supposed southern limit of Libya. Across it were drawn seven parallels, running through Meroe, Syene, Alexandria, Rhodes, Lysimachia on the Hellespont, the mouth of the Borysthenes and Thule, and these were crossed at right angles by seven meridians, drawn at irregular intervals, and passing through the Pillars of Hercules, Carthage, Alexandria, Thapsacus on the Euphrates, the Caspian gates, the mouth of the Indus and that of the Ganges. The position of all the places mentioned was supposed to have been determined by trustworthy authorities. The inhabited world thus delineated formed an island of irregular shape, surrounded on all sides by the ocean, the Erythrean Sea freely communicating with the western ocean. In his text Eratosthenes ignored the popular division of the world into Europe, Asia and Libya, and substituted for it a northern and southern division, divided by the parallel of Rhodes, each of which he subdivided into sphragides or plinthia—seals or plinths. The principles on which these divisions were made remain an enigma to the present day.
This map of Eratosthenes, notwithstanding its many errors, such as the assumed connexion of the Caspian with a northern ocean and the supposition that Carthage, Sicily and Rome lay on the same meridian, enjoyed a high reputation in his day. Even Strabo (c. 30 B.C.) adopted its main features, but while he improved the European frontier, he rejected the valuable information secured by Pytheas and retained the connexion between the Caspian and the outer ocean. In the extreme east his information extended no further than that of Eratosthenes, viz. to India and Taprobane (Ceylon) and the Sacae (Kirghiz).
Hipparchus, the famous astronomer, on the other hand, (c. 150 B.C.) proved a somewhat captious critic. He justly objected to the arbitrary network of the map of Eratosthenes. The parallels or climata[16] drawn through places, of which the longest day is of equal length and the decimation (distance) from the equator is the same, he maintained, ought to have been inserted at equal intervals, say of half an hour, and the meridians inserted on a like principle. In fact, he demanded that maps should be based upon a regular projection, several descriptions of which he had adopted for his star maps. He moreover accuses Eratosthenes, (whose determination of a degree he accepts without hesitation) with trusting too much to hypothesis in compiling his map instead of having recourse to latitudes and longitudes deduced by astronomical observations. Such observations, however, were but rarely available at the time. A few latitudes had indeed been observed, but although Hipparchus had shown how longitudes could be determined by the observation of eclipses, this method was in reality not available for want of trustworthy time-keepers. The determination of an ocean surrounding the inhabited earth he declared to be based on a mere hypothesis and that it would be equally allowable to describe the Erythraea as a sea surrounded by land. Hipparchus is not known to have compiled a map himself.