Guide to Geography

His monumental work, the Guide to Geography (Geōgraphikē hyphēgēsis), was produced in eight volumes. The first volume discussed basic principles and dealt with map projection and globe construction. The next six volumes carried a list of the names of some 8,000 places and their approximate latitudes and longitudes. Except…

Geōgraphikē hyphēgēsis (Guide to Geography) provided all the information and techniques required to draw maps of the portion of the world known by Ptolemy’s contemporaries. By his own admission, Ptolemy did not attempt to collect and sift all the geographical data on which his maps were based.…

…in Ptolemy’s Geōgraphikē hyphēgēsis (Guide to Geography; c. 140 ce), and some 150 years later “the people of Dublin,” it was recorded, defeated an army from the province of Leinster. Yet, despite indications of habitation 2,000 years ago, the first settlement for which there is historical proof was not…

…from Indian merchants in his Guide to Geography concerning “Iabadiou,” presumably referring to Java, and “Malaiou,” which, with its variants, may be a rendition of “Malayu,” a term once broadly applied to various interior regions and kingdoms of Sumatra. (In contemporary usage and spelling, the term Melayu refers to Malay…

Ptolemy’s Guide to Geography, written in the 2nd century ce, mentions a people called “Serboi,” but it is not certain that this is a reference to the ancestors of the modern Serbs. The earliest information on the Serbs dates from the late 6th century, when they…