Claudius Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemy sketches in Iudic. 4.3-6 a theory on the origin of language that follows Epicurus’ doctrine. Since Ptolemy’s approach contains a naturalistic stage, this paper also discusses a section of another of Ptolemy’s works, Harmonics, relating to the human voice and its determinants. These are works with different interests, but it is possible to link Ptolemy’s naturalistic theory of language with rhetorical effects in both treatises.

In Making Mesopotamia: Geography and Empire in a Romano-Iranian
Borderland, Hamish Cameron examines the representation of the
Mesopotamian Borderland in the geographical writing of Strabo, Pliny
the Elder, Claudius Ptolemy, the anonymous Expositio Totius Mundi,
and Ammianus Marcellinus. This inter-imperial borderland between
the Roman Empire and the Arsacid and Sasanid Empires provided
fertile ground for Roman geographical writers to articulate their ideas
about space, boundaries, and imperial power. By examining these
geographical descriptions, Hamish Cameron shows how each author
constructed an image of Mesopotamia in keeping with the goals and
context of their own work, while collectively creating a vision of
Mesopotamia as a borderland space of movement, inter-imperial
tension, and global engagement.

It is well known that Ptolemy’s Geography used systematically exaggerated values for longitudes, which made his map look excessively stretched from West to East in comparison with modern maps. According to one recent hypothesis, the source of Ptolemy’s inaccurate longitudes lay in his adoption of a new value for the Earth’s circumference. Ptolemy chose to rely on an estimate provided by Posidonius instead of a larger estimate by Eratosthenes, and as a result, all the distances converted from linear into angular units became exaggerated. The present article tests this hypothesis and finds that, on the one hand, it explains the stretching of the map only partially, and in some cases does not fit the data at all. On the other hand, the stretching of Ptolemy’s map can largely be explained by a systematic exaggeration of the distances between basic points.

Este livro contém três partes principais: (1) uma tradução (grego-português) dos três primeiros capítulos do Tetrabiblos – obra astrológica de Claudio Ptolomeu; (2) uma análise detalhada e contextualizada do conteúdo total dessa obra; e (3) um estudo dos três sistemas cosmológicos que mais influenciaram Ptolomeu – o de Platão, o de Aristóteles e o dos estoicos -, pensados sempre à luz da hipótese de que há uma relação entre cosmologia e ética no helenismo.

Tendo em vista a total inexistência de traduções feitas diretamente do grego para o português da obra de Ptolomeu, o que reflete diretamente na quase inexistência de estudos sobre o assunto em nossa língua, pretendemos contribuir para a diminuição dessa lacuna nos estudos da antiguidade, tanto no que diz respeito à história da filosofia quanto da ciência.

Ver livro em: http://old.periodicos.uem.br/~eduem/novapagina/?q=node/704

While Luke-Acts names many geo­graphical sites and organizes its narrative and sayings materials around schemata of the movements of his various characters, the quality of his topography knowledge ranges widely. For the interior of Palestine, Luke shows only place-name knowledge but nonetheless uses a spatial imaginary as a key part of his presentation of Jesus’ activities. Luke has slight relational knowledge of Jerusalem, but it is slight. For the Levantine coast, however, Luke displays accurate relational or cartographical knowledge. Luke’s knowledge improves dramatically in Acts, especially for the northeast Aegean, where Luke seems to have local knowledge.
Second, the sources of Luke’s topographical knowledge are various: the topographical references embedded in his sources, Mark and Q, which he takes over whether or not he understands that topography. For sites in the northeast Aegean Luke seems to have local knowledge and betrays this knowledge inadvertently. For the Levantine coast, however, he has cartographical knowledge from sources such as Agrippa’s map or its successor, the Tabula Peutingeriana.
The third point is an inference from contrast between the sheer number of topographical sites named by Luke and his topographic ignorance. Although he appears to have no knowledge of certain topographies, topography is critical to his project. The paper explores the social and political values that are embedded in his representation of space and movement through space.

The story of the translation of Ptolemy’s Geography on the eve of the birth of Modernity has often been written with a perspective that privileges events unfolding on the Western shores of the Mediterranean Sea. In the same period, however, a parallel process was taking place on the Eastern shores, at the court of Sultan Mehmed II in Constantinople, the city that was to become Istanbul, the heart of the newly born Ottoman Empire. Here, in 1465, the Byzantine scholar George Amiroutzes (ca. 1400–1475) and his son Mehmed Bey produced a new world map with Arabic texts, one of the great endeavours in geographical studies in the years following the fall of Constantinople (1453). They were subsequently commissioned to produce a new translation of Ptolemy’s work into Arabic. The analysis of a number of studies on Amiroutzes’ contribution to Mehmed II’s ecumenical vision, as well as that of other Byzantine scholars such as George of Trabzon (Trapezuntius), offers new insight into how the Ottoman Empire wished to create fresh room for manoeuvre and express its desire to expand. At the same time, it lays the groundwork for future research on toponymy, on the mathematical and geopolitical contents of cartographic production at the time of Mehmed and, particularly, on the world-map described in this work.

Geus, Klaus: Wer ist Marinos von Tyros? Zur Hauptquelle des Ptolemaios in seiner "Geographie". In: Geographia antiqua 26 (2017), 13-22.
Abstract – As Ptolemy himself acknowledged, Marinos of Tyros was the main source for his Geographike Hyphegesis, his famous „Introduction to Geography“ (ca. AD 150). Next to nothing is known about this enigmatic geographer who wrote at the beginning of the second century AD. Several fragments exhibit that Marinos drew on unpublished sources, mined Latin geographical and topographical texts and had access to Roman military and administrative material which was otherwise inaccessible to ancient geographers. This makes it plausible that Marinos was not a Greek but a Roman geographer („Marinus“), probably one within the higher Roman administration. The author proposes to identify Marinos of Tyros with L. Iulius Marinus Caecilius Simplex, consul suffectus of the year AD 101. This Marinus´ origo was indeed Phoenicia. The denomination „Marinos of Tyros“ fits both the biographical information derived from Ptolemy and the common usage for Roman personalities in Greek texts from the Imperial period. The suggestions outlined in the article not only account for some peculiarities in connection with Marinos but also explain the numerous discrepancies between Ptolemy´s Geographike Hyphegesis and other geographical works in antiquity.

Trenčín je výnimočným mestom. V strednej Európe (východne od Rýna a severne od Dunaja) sa druhé také nenájde. Poznáme jeho najstaršiu zmienku už z 2. storočia nášho letopočtu, kedy tu (ako v meste Laugaríciu) zimovali rímske jednotky pod velením Marca Valeria Maximiana. Ostatné stredoeurópske mestá majú najstaršie zmienky až z raného stredoveku, teda z obdobia o 500 až 1000 rokov neskôr. V strednom a východnom Nemecku sú najstaršie mestá: Würzburg (704), Arnstadt (704), Mühlberg (704) a Großmonra (704). Na Slovensku: Nitra (828), Bratislava (907). V Čechách a v Poľsku Praha (965) a Krakov (965). Ostatné mestá (až na Trenčín) sú ešte mladšie. Bolo by pekné, hovorí si človek, keď sa díva v Trenčíne na hradnú skalu s nápisom Laugarício, keby aj iné mestá v strednej Európe mali to šťastie a dali by sa datovať do takto dávnej doby.. Nie je to nemožné a historická veda to dobre vie. Zachovala sa jedna stará antická mapa – Ptolemaiova mapa strednej Európy, nazývaná aj Magna Germánia, a na tejto mape je okrem Leucarista – Laugarícia, teda Trenčína, vyznačených ďalších 94 stredoeurópskych miest aj s ich antickými názvami: Leucaristus, Arsonium, Calisia, Setidava... Kde sú tieto staré mestá?

O tom, čo je to Ptolemaiova mapa, ako prebiehalo hľadanie týchto miest, prečo sa skončilo neúspešne a autorovu novú metódu hľadania týchto starých miest predkladáme na ďalších stranách tejto publikácie.

Ταρτησος (Tartesos) en un mapa de tradición ptolemea en el documental “Atlantis Rising” de James Cameron.

Por Georgeos Díaz-Montexano / Scientific Atlantology International Society (SAIS) / The Epigraphic Society / Historical-Scientific Atlantology Adviser for James Cameron, Simcha Jacobovici and National Geographic.

Paleografía

Lectura paleográfica del nombre de Tartesos de acuerdo a las minúsculas medievales usadas en los tiempos en que ha sido datado el códice (siglos XII al XIV).

Leer artículo en PDF en AtlantisRising.es (http://atlantisng.com/blog/tartessos-mapa/)

Identifies Mons Graupius with Craig Rossie based on the local place-name Duncrub, the siting of Ptolemy's Victoria south of the Tay, a 115-acre Flavian camp at Dunning and an assesment of population and Roman military installations.
Identifies Portus Trucculensis with the River Nith and the Roman installations at Ward Law/Lantonside, through Ptolemy's place-name Uxelum>Fl.Uxelensis.

Recorrido crítico por la figura y la obra de Piteas de Marsella, primer explorador del NO de Europa, que vivió en el s. IV a.C. Astrónomo y geógrafo, compuso una obra "Sobre el Océano", conservada de modo muy fragmentario, en la que estudiaba el Océano desde un punto de vista físico y astronómico. Cleómedes lo califica como "filósofo", probablemente debido a su relación con Eudoxo de Cnido. En la Antigüedad fue reconocido como astrónomo, matemático y explorador entre los hombres de ciencia (Eratóstenes, Hiparco, Posidonio, Ptolomeo), con la excepción del geógrafo Estrabón (que paradójicamente representa nuestra fuente de información más amplia), quien lo critica con fuerza. Por lo demás, la imagen que se ha transmitido de Piteas a través de Antonio Diógenes (Maravillas increíbles de más allá de Tule), Hecateo de Abdera, las Argonáuticas órficas y buena parte de la literatura fantástica de la Antigüedad es una imagen muy diferente a aquella de un hombre de ciencia. La influencia de Piteas en la tradición posterior se debe sobre todo al motivo mítico de la "ultima Tule" como un nuevo lugar utópico donde emplazar especulaciones y fantasías de todo tipo. Esquema del capítulo: Bibliografía general: Testimonios y fragmentos: Ediciones antiguas. Ediciones de referencia. Traducciones. Estudios generales. Datación. Obra: Título. Importancia filosófica. Influencia.

Project Supervisor for Magnetometric Survey at Pattanam: Researched, planned, and conducted a magnetometric survey, identifying sub-surface features and mapping the Indo-Roman maritime landscape of Pattanam. Processed data in Digital Archaeology Computing Laboratory, UoS. Established a standard practice for future archaeology in India. Assisted in project excavation, geoarchaeological survey, and ceramic analysis, providing comparative data for interpreting the port’s heritage. Project artifacts exhibited at Unearthing Pattanam: Histories, Cultures, Crossings (National Museum, New Dehli).

Geophysical Research:
"The geophysical studies conducted by Ms. Carmen Obied, (Southampton University) consisted of magnetometric survey of select areas of the Pattanam site. The  primary aim was to identify sub-surface features such as brick walls, hearths, kilns and dumps in order to map the ancient maritime landscape of Pattanam. Magnetometry is highly effective in archaeology since it can detect human processes and interventions that affect the magnetic properties of the soil. The magnetometric surveys have greater significance in Pattanam since they are particularly effective in waterlogged areas. At Pattanam, besides the water logged areas, the locations with possible sub-surface features were scanned using a dual sensor fluxgate gradiometer. The data will be processed at the Digital Archaeology Computing Laboratory at the University of Southampton and contextualized on the topographic survey maps of the Pattanam area. If the Pattanam survey generates positive results, it could become a standard practice for locating  potential archaeological spots elsewhere in India."

Summary:

The landscape Agisymba embraced a vast area south of the Sahara from Lake Chad to the west to the Niger bend and belonged politically to the reign of the king of the Garamantes. This king had his headquarters in the city of Garama in today's Fezzan. Agisymba is first time mentioned in the geographical work of the Alexandrian scholar Claudius Ptolemy (2nd century A. D.). An accurate localization of the landscape of Agisymba is still expected, but it is also believed in modern research to be an antecedent kingdom of Kanem. In the second half of the 1st century. A. D., Iulius Maternus who was probably a native of Roman North African, traveled from Leptis Magna to Garama. There he joined the entourage of the king of the Garamantes and traveled further four months a southerly direction until the landscape Agisymba. There are various considerations, what role Iulius Maternus had played during this expedition: he was seen as a Roman general, as a businessman or as a diplomat. I see in Maternus a diplomat who received the unique opportunity to make the extensive territory south of the Sahara accessible for the geographers in the Greco-Roman world. The cause of this long journey is assumed by many researchers to be a military campaign of the king of the Garamantes against rebellious subjects, or as a razzia.

English translation of the article, Η Πτολεμαϊκή Γεωγραφία στο Βυζάντιο. Pages 1-6 are also examined in detail in my article, Maximos Planoudes and the “Diagram” of Ptolemy.
The 47verse poem of Planoudes, Praise to Polemy, is translated in English for the first time and commented analytically (pp. 7-12).
The 14th c. scholars and their cartographical contribution are examined for the first time, too.

Zusammenfassung:

"In dieser Arbeit wird die (Kultur-)Geschichte zweier antiker libyscher Volksgruppen behandelt, die, im Saharagebiet lebend, als bedeutendste Grenzvölker an der Geschichte Nordafrikas in römischer Zeit Anteil nahmen. Tatsächlich lebten nomadische gaetulische Stämme im nördlichen Saharagebiet außerhalb der römischen Provinzgrenze, aber es waren ebenso zahlreiche gaetulische Stämme innerhalb des römischen Nordafrika wohnhaft. Diese Stämme waren es auch, welche etwa seit trajanischer Zeit teilweise romanisiert werden konnten. Die Garamanten bewohnten hauptsächlich eine Landschaft in der Sahara, die uns heute als Fezzan bekannt ist. (...) Diese Arbeit stützt sich (...) auch auf die archäologischen Ergebnisse, hat ihren Schwerpunkt jedoch im historisch-politischen und kulturgeschichtlichen Bereich. So wird zunächst das geographische Verbreitungsgebiet der Gaetuler und der Garamanten dargestellt. Dann werden die ersten Beziehungen beider Völker zu anderen Mittelmeerkulturen (Phöniker, Griechen), welche sich nachweisen lassen, besprochen. Auf die anthropologische Herkunft der beiden Völker wird ebenso eingegangen. Nachdem verschiedene kulturelle Aspekte (Religion, Siedlungsformen u. a.) abgehandelt werden, beginnt die historische Darstellung in chronologischer Form. So wird erklärt, wie Gaetuler und Garamanten im Laufe der Geschichte Nordafrikas seit dem 3. Jh. v. Chr. auftraten. Dabei wird der Schwerpunkt im Bereich der militärischen Auseinandersetzungen zwischen beiden Völkern und den Römern liegen, weil erst seit römischer Zeit die Quellen ausführlicher werden."

Summary:

"In this work, the (cultural) history of two ancient Libyan ethnic groups is treated who lived in the Sahara region as the most important border peoples in the history of North Africa in Roman times. In fact, nomadic Gaetulian tribes lived in the northern Sahara region outside the Roman provincial border but there were as many Gaetulian tribes within Roman North Africa living. These tribes were also partially romanized during the reign of Emperor Trajan. The Garamantes inhabited mainly a landscape in the Sahara, which is known to us as Fezzan today. (... ) This work is based (...) on archaeological results, but focuses in historical-political and cultural-historical things. So initially the geographical area with living places of Gaetulians and Garamantes is displayed. Then, the first relations between the two peoples to another  Mediterranean cultures (Phoenicians, Greeks) are also be shown. On the anthropological origins of the two peoples is also written. After several cultural aspects (religion, settlements, etc.), the historical account begins in chronological form. So it will be explained how Gaetulians and Garamantes ocurred in the history of North Africa since the 3rd century. B. C. The focus will be in the range of military conflict between the two peoples and the Romans, because only since Roman times, the sources are detailed. "

Actualización de un artículo publicado en Internet en 2005, en el que se revisa el texto griego de Estrabón referido a los pueblos montañeses del Cantábrico, entre los que la tradición insiste en incluir también a los antiguos Vascones, atribuyéndoles rasgos de “salvajismo, primitivismo, intratabilidad, instintos brutales o aislamiento”, apelando a su supuesta descripción por el geógrafo griego Estrabón hacia época de Augusto. Aquí se reúnen, transcriben y comentan los párrafos en los que Estrabón se refiere realmente a los Vascones que, como se verá, son sólo tres (cuatro en realidad), y el principal, con una nueva traducción del griego,  parece indicar todo lo contrario. He aprovechado para añadir dos apéndices, uno sobre la ciudad vascona de Eturissa, que se insiste en ubicar donde, según el propio Estrabón (con un argumento nuevo), no podía estar, y otro sobre las localizaciones, , apoyadas sobre todo en un análisis sectorial de Ptolomeo, y en otras variadas fuentes, de 19 ciudades vasconas que en 1997 seguían sin acuerdo de ubicación. Por último, en un “Epílogo semipolítico”, a partir del reciente artículo de un colega (marzo de 2019), se reflexiona sobre la utilización más o menos abiertamente política de los datos de la Antigüedad, cuando se llega a defender que “Navarra no fue la tierra de los Vascones”, o que este pueblo “fue una creación artificial de los romanos”.

This article presents a new interpretation of the reign of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (r. 1444-46, 1451-81) as refracted through the twin historical lenses of Mughal South Asia and the Renaissance Mediterranean. On the one hand, it argues that Mehmed, despite his current reputation as a conquering hero of Islam, in fact aspired to a model of sovereignty analogous to Akbar's Sulh-i Kull, and with a common point of origin in the conceptual worlds of post-Mongol Iran and Timurid central Asia. On the other hand, it also draws from the historiography of the Italian Renaissance to interpret Mehmed's cultural politics as being simultaneously inspired by a particular thread of Renaissance philosophy, the Prisca Theologia, which in many ways served as the Ottoman equivalent of Akbar's Sulh-i Kull.

The quest for the sources of the Nile had been -already since the antiquity- a major issue regarding the exploration of Africa by both locals and foreigners. This makes no surprise, if the importance of the river is taken into account, not only from a strictly economical point of view but also from a political, historical and cultural one.
Since Ptolemy introduced the Mountains of the Moon, the whole issue got a more stable basis; the quest had a specific aim from then on. Those mountains, either existing or product of a false translation tantalized the researchers for ages. On the other hand, the difficulties of such a risky expedition helped the Ptolemaic authority remain unchanged within the cartographic depictions long after the Age of Discovery.
This paper aims only to outline the framework of this great issue, highlighting also a few points and proposing answers to questions which, though not of high priority, are really important: Did Ptolemy himself have first-hand geographic knowledge of that area? Did the ancient people of that part of Africa have adequate knowledge of such a complicated hydrological phenomenon? Was the Ptolemaic text in its original form when Planoudis discovered it, or had it got updated with fresh geographic knowledge through the ages?

Geus, Klaus; Tupikova, Irina: Entdeckungsfahrten und Kartographie: Anmerkungen zu einer problembefrachteten Beziehung im Altertum. In: Schulz, Raimund (ed.): Maritime Entdeckung und Expansion: Kontinuitäten, Parallelen und Brüche von der Antike bis in die Neuzeit. Berlin; Boston: de Gruyter / Oldenbourg, 2019 (Historische Zeitschrift; Beiband 77),  223–242.

Abstract.
The interlink between the determination of the circumference of the Earth and the geographical mapping performed by Ptolemy in his Geography (c. 150 AD) is discussed. As Ptolemy himself stated, he used the value of 180,000 stades for the circumference of the Earth which is in stark contrast to the famous result of Eratosthenes, i.e. 252,000 stades. Many scholars see these different values as a result of the diverse definitions of a stade used by both ancient authors. Such a view cannot, nevertheless, explain the excessive distortion of Ptolemy's world map along the east-west direction. We have treated the problem with the methods of spherical trigonometry and have shown that many features of Ptolemy’s map can be easily explained and corrected under the presupposition that the length of the stade used by Ptolemy coincides with that of Eratosthenes. The latitudinal distortion in Ptolemaic map is caused by his underestimating of the size of the Earth in combination with his efforts to keep the known latitudes of the localities. Another mathematical consequence is a significant displacement of the localities lying approximately on the same meridian (so-called antikemenoi poleis), as in the case Carthage in relation to Rome. It is shown that a simple transformation of the Ptolemaic coordinates to the circumference of the Earth measured by Eratosthenes drastically improves the positions of the locations given in Ptolemy´s catalogue. The comparison of the recalculated positions of the identified localities with their actual positions confirmed a very high precision of Eratosthenes' result for the circumference of the Earth.

Zusammenfassung
Untersucht wird der Zusammenhang zwischen der Bestimmung des Erdumfangs und dem kartographischen Verfahren, das Ptolemaios in seiner Geographie (ca. 150 n. Chr.) anwendet. Wie Ptolemaios selbst behauptet, verwendet er statt des Resultats der berühmten Erd-umfangsmessung des Eratosthenes (252 000 Stadien) den Wert von 180 000 Stadien für die Erdgröße. Die meisten Forscher heute führen diesen Unter-schied auf unterschiedliche Stadien-Längen zurück. Eine solche Ansicht kann aber z. B. nicht die starke Ost-West-Überdehnung der Oikumene erklären, wie sie aus der Erdkarte des Ptolemaios bekannt ist. Wir haben daher dieses Problem mit den Methoden der Sphärischen Trigonometrie behandelt und können nun zeigen, dass sich viele Verzerrungen leicht erklären und korrigieren lassen, wenn wir annehmen, dass das Ptolemäische Stadion mit dem des Eratosthenes identisch ist. Vielmehr wird die Über-dehnung der Oikumene durch den zu geringen Erdumfang bei Ptolemaios in Verbindung mit seinem Bestreben, die überlieferten Breitenangaben für bekann¬te Orte zu bewahren, verursacht. Eine andere mathematische Konsequenz ist die signifikante Verlagerung von Orten, die auf dem gleichen Meridian liegen (so genannte antikemenoi poleis), wie die von Karthago gegenüber Rom. Wir können nachweisen, dass durch eine Rekalkulation der Ptolemaischen Koordinaten in Bezug auf die “richtige” Erdgröße des Eratosthenes die Positionen der Orte in seinem Katalog dramatisch verbessert werden. Ein Vergleich zwischen den rekalkulierten und modernen Koordinaten bestätigt außerdem die Genauigkeit der Eratosthenischen Erdmessung.

"Resumen
En la divulgación de la historia del desarrollo de la ciencia griega antigua, se suele dejar de lado para explicarla, razones de carácter práctico o utilitario, sea por una visión simplificada y estereotipada, o sea por una falta de textos antiguos y restos arqueológicos que permitan corroborar el verdadero nivel de la técnica griega.
Una combinación de evidencias arqueológicas, y una relectura histórica de los logros griegos, nos puede sugerir una relación más directa del desarrollo de la ciencia griega, su apogeo cultural y su expansión colonial (e influencia inmediata en sus sucesores romanos), si es que no una espiral de realimentación positiva con resultado exponencial.
Uno de los hitos de las matemáticas aplicadas griegas lo constituye la gran obra de Claudio Ptolomeo, conocida como Geografía (Geōgraphikē hyphēgēsis), precedida por otra mayor aún, el Almagesto.
En este trabajo, se expone parte de los logros de la Geografía, como muestra de matemática aplicada, junto con una serie de incógnitas que a su vez permiten vislumbrar cuán lejos llegaron los conocimientos geográficos griegos y su necesaria representación de base geométrica.
"

Cyrano de Bergerac´s 17th century work of early modern science-fiction gives us a window into the transition from a pre-Copernican culture towards the meaning of  scientific values in the present day. The Copernican heliocentric model, empirical experiments, Giordano Bruno´s philosophy of the infinite, Picco della Mirandola´s thesis on human dignity; all these show us how the birth of early modern science-fiction is relevant to understand the context of scientific humanism.

For this paper, all these different currents of modern thought are compared to the origins of astronomy in Ptolemaic and Aristotelian philosophy.  Thomas Kuhn´s notion of a scientific paradigm is used here to begin to understand the relationship between science and the history of culture. The theme of alien contact and space flight in Bergerac´s novel is seen here as an example of the effect of cultural paradigms in modernity., as well as showing the effects of scientific discovery on the human imagination.

(Introductive Chapter: Graphicacy and Reproduction)
The careful study of diagrams in illustrated manuscript texts can be extremely illuminating: it not only contributes, of course, to a better understanding of a certain text, but also sheds light on the history and the tradition of the text in question as well as on the history of the manuscripts containing and handing down this text, and hence on the stemmatology of these manuscripts. Nevertheless, the close reading of diagrams in illustrated manuscript texts has long been neglected. This aspect of analyzing a text and its tradition has only recently become popular among scholars.
Ptolemy’s Geography is a productive study subject for this method. The chapters on map projections in the theoretical parts of this work are provided with a set of originally five diagrams: four diagrams in Geogr. I,24 and one diagram in Geogr. VII,6. They are meant to illustrate the complex instructions on how to draw the three projection methods suggested by Ptolemy for tracing a world map or, more precisely, a map of the oikoumene: of the inhabited parts of the world then-known.
In the extant Greek manuscripts of Ptolemy’s Geography these diagrams appear intercalated into the text and can be found in both textual recensions of the work, Ξ and Ω. In some manuscripts, the diagrams –either all of them, some of them, or only one of them– were omitted. In this case the scribes often left a blank space (a so-called fenestra) between the two text portions where the diagram was supposed to have been placed. Thus the insertion of the diagrams was usually also planned in Geography codices which are completely or partially lacking the diagrams. All these circumstances suggest that the diagrams go back to an old tradition: they were most probably an integral part of the work since its composition ca. 150 CE, although the oldest surviving witnesses of Ptolemy’s Geography date from around the turn of the 13th to the 14th century and were therefore copied far more than one thousand years later.
The diagrams in the manuscripts of Ptolemy’s Geography are generally corrupted and defective in various ways: they were obviously continually copied from their respective models. As my examinations showed, they were usually drawn by the scribes, who ordinarily were not trained in cartography, in technical drawing, or in fundamental science; they roughly reproduced what they found in their exemplar, without necessarily understanding it.
We can therefore argue that the distortion of the diagrams in the manuscripts is on the one hand due to a) a lack of graphicacy of the persons who drafted the diagrams. Lack of graphicacy may have also been a reason for leaving them out. On the other hand the deformation of the diagrams is as a result of b) continuous reproduction, i.e. copying.

Geus, Klaus; Tupikova, Irina Tupikova: Astronomy and geography: some unexplored connections in Ptolemy. In: Pontani, Filippomaria (ed.): Certissima signa: a Venice conference on Greek and Latin astronomical texts. Venezia: Ca´ Foscari, 2017 (Antichistica; 13 = Philologia e letteratura; 2),. 61–73 [ISBN: 978-88-6969-166-9; also as ebook [ISBN 978-88-6969-165-2] in open access under: http://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/it/edizioni/libri/978-88-6969-166-9/].
Abstract:
The authors discuss the so-called 'zenith star method', first mentioned in Ptolemy's Geography (ca. AD 150), from an astronomical and historical perspective. They reach the conclusion that the exact representation in some texts, i.e. that the distance between the two points of culmination is 1°, does not in fact concern a pair of stars culminating at the zenith but only one star which is measured at an angle of 1° from the zenith. This peculiar condition points to a historical measurement carried out by an unknown Greek astronomer: it makes use of the fact that the bright star Pollux (β Geminorum) culminated at Alexandria with an angle distance of 1° from the zenith or (which is equivalent) culminated at the zenith over a place 1° south of Alexandria (ca. 110 km).

Esta tese é sobre a história das traduções de uma das obras fundadoras do cânone astrológico helenístico: o Tetrabiblos, escrito em grego, por Claudio Ptolomeu, na Alexandria do século II. Em geral, imagina-se que uma ciência seja transmitida intacta ao longo do tempo, o que legitimaria a autoridade dos textos científicos e de seus autores. À tradução, quando lembrada, cabe um papel secundário na história da ciência; no entanto a difusão da ciência sempre implica tradução ou algum tipo de reescrita. Por tudo isso, a hipótese aqui proposta é de que o Tetrabiblos, como todos os livros científicos antigos que nos alcançaram, caracteriza-se por sua peregrinação e constante transformação no tempo e no espaço, o que revela a sua historicidade. Autores e textos científicos são, pois, constructos históricos, e o que nos resta desses livros são seus rastros, as suas reescritas, algumas mais, outras menos próximas – tanto linguística quanto espaço-temporalmente – das suas escritas originais. Nessas andanças por várias línguas e culturas, constituiu-se aquilo que podemos chamar de tradição textual manuscrita e impressa da obra de Ptolomeu. É a essa tradição cambiante que aqui nos remetemos para historiar as origens e os processos de transmissão do Tetrabiblos desde a Antiguidade até o Renascimento. Trata-se, portanto, de uma biografia da obra astrológica de Ptolomeu, considerando-se o amálgama entre astrologia e astronomia na época em questão e a ampla circulação desse saber no período helenístico, no mundo árabe e no contexto ibérico, sobretudo a sua repercussão na expansão marítima.

This dissertation presents a history of translations of a founding text from the Hellenistic astrological canon: Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, which was written in Greek, in Alexandria (2nd century A.D.). It is generally assumed that science is transmitted intact along the years, thus grounding the authority of scientific texts and their authors. Translation is rarely remembered in the history of science, and when it happens, it usually plays a secondary role. Nevertheless the transmission of science always implies some kind of rewriting. Therefore the hypothesis here proposed is that Tetrabiblos, as all ancient scientific books which reached us, has pilgrimaged and constantly changed through time and space, revealing its historical feature. Scientific authors and texts are historical constructs, and the latter are handed down in form of rewritten vestiges, linguistically or spatiotemporally separated from the original writings to some extent. That pilgrimage through several languages and cultures has set up what we can call Ptolemy’s “manuscripted and printed textual tradition”. It is to this movable tradition that we will refer to historicize the origins and processes of transmission of Tetrabiblos from Antiquity to Renaissance. It is a biography of Ptolemy’s astrological book, regarding the amalgam between astrology and astronomy at that time and the extensive circulation of this knowledge across the Hellenistic period, the Arabic world and the Iberical context, especially its repercussion during the maritime expansionism.