Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/540

Rh MAP on Dionysius Periegetes, mentions that Sesostris the Egyptian king caused route-maps to be prepared ; and Strabo also refers to certain old maps in the library of Eratosthenes in which Meroe and the south end of the peninsula of India were placed on the same parallel of latitude. These statements have been confirmed by the actual discovery of such maps and plans on old Egyptian papyrus-rolls. Birch has, for instance, identified a drawing on a papyrus in the, Turin Museum as the topographical map of a gold-mining district in Nubia. The perspective in this case is very childish : in order to show that the road leads between two mountain-chains, the mountains on one side of the road are inverted (comp. Lepsius, Urkun- denbucJi, pi. xxii.). This map is one thousand years older than that of Anaximander, who was considered by the Greeks as the inventor of cartography. On another sheet appears a representation of the victorious return of Sethos I. (1443-1392 B.C.) from Asia, showing the road from Pelusium by Leontopolis to Heroopolis, Lake Timsah with fish in it, the canal from the Nile with crocodiles, and at Heroopolis a bridge over the canal. Similar picture- maps were discovered by Layard in Assyria (Nineveh and Babylon, p. 231 sq., 1867). The ancient Babylonians have also the high distinction of having divided space and time in a way that allowed scientific measurements to be made after the still customary method. It was they who origin ated the division of the ecliptic into twelve signs and later into 360 degrees ; and the division of the circle into 360 degrees with 60 minutes to the degree and 60 seconds to the minute, as well as the corresponding division of the hour, was the outcome of their sexagesimal system of numeration. This method of division was introduced among the Greeks by Hipparchus (150 B.C.), and obtained general currency through the geographer Ptolemy (150 A.D.). By this means were provided the elements necessary for the astro nomical determination of geographical position. Among the Egyptians and Babylonians map- making remained in its first infantile stage ; its scientific development was received at the hands of the Greeks. 2. Development of Map-making among the Greeks. In Homer the &quot; circumfluent ocean &quot; represents the horizon which bounds the disk of the world ; the scientific treat ment of geography and map-making has its origin among the Ionic Greeks of Asia Minor. Anaximander, a pupil of Thaler (about 560 B.C.), sketched the first map (yewypa- &amp;lt;IKOS TuVaf), and was the first who sought to deter mine the compass of the earth (the world-disk) and the sea. As the Greeks gradually extended their journeys as far as India in the East and the Atlantic in the West, the con viction gained ground that the world-disk could not be bounded by a regular circular outline. About one hundred years after Anaximander, Democritus of Abdera ventured to draw a new map on the basis of his own observations (for in his extensive wanderings he had been as far as Persia and perhaps even India); and in opposition to the circular form of the lonians he gave the world an oblong shape, and taught that from east to west it was half as long again as from north to south. Although after the time of Aristotle the tabular or flat-surface theory of the figure of the earth was expelled by the spherical or globe theory, the portion of the earth s surface which was really known retained the same oblong shape which it had with Democritus ; and hence we still speak of longitude and latitude, that is, length and breadth. It was on this basis also that the far-travelled Hecata3us of Miletus, who wrote his TTJS TrcptoSos between 520 and 500 B.C., drew up his map ; for the representation of the world on a brazen tablet, which was shown by Aristagoras, tyrant of Miletus, to King Cleomenes of Sparta, was probably nothing else than the world-map of Hecaticus. The first application of astronomy to geography was made by the famous Arctic navigator Pytheas of Marseilles, about 326 B.C. ; it is from him that we obtain the first observation of latitude, and, what is of some importance, this is for Marseilles. His voyage to the extreme North (Thule) was undertaken partly for the purpose of satisfying himself in regard to the figure and size of the earth. Dicsearchus of Messana in Sicily, a pupil of Aristotle s (310 B.C.), made the first approach tu a projection. He divided the inhabited (i.e., the known) world, which he reckoned to be one and a half times as. long as it was broad, into a northern and a southern half by means of what he considered a straight line drawn from the pillars of Hercules, through Sicily, the Peloponnesus, Caria, Lycia, Pamphylia, Cilicia, and across the Taurus to the Imaus (Himalaya). He thus drew the first parallel of latitude, and upon this basis he prepared maps which were to be publicly exhibited in a hall (Agathem., 5 ; Strabo, p. 105). The name Sid^pay/xa T?}S ou&amp;lt;cw/AeV7?s, i.e., partition of the inhabited world, was given to the base-line. For the next material improvement we are indebted to the famous astronomer and geographer Eratosthenes of Gyrene, the keeper of the Alexandrian library (276-196 B.C.). He was the first to make a rational geodetic measurement for the purpose of determining the size of the earth, and he col lected in his Ffwypa^iKa the whole geographical learning of his time. This work has unfortunately been lost, but from the numerous fragments that have been preserved, especially by Strabo, it is possible to form an idea of this the first systematic geography. Starting with the spherical form and the size of the world, it gave a descrip tion of the oLKov/j-evr], discussed the space relations of the world-island, and estimated its extent in longitude and latitude. On the basis of the diaphragm of Dicre- archus, the course of which was more precisely indicated, a series of seven parallels and as many meridians cutting the diaphragm at right angles were drawn, and by this means the inhabited world was divided to the north and the south of the diaphragm into a certain number of regular divisions to which the name of sphragidia or seals was given. Then follows a description of the countries in the several &quot;seals,&quot; beginning with India. In this arrangement we may recognize the first attempt to con struct a network or system of degrees. As numerous data in regard to distances were already at his command, Eratosthenes greatly improved on the old maps in the matter of correctness ; but, as the number of astronomical determinations of latitude was still small, and the intervals between the parallels and the meridians were unequal and conditioned by the available data in regard to distance, his network of lines was far from being an exact mathematical system. Hipparchus of Nicaea in Bithynia, the greatest astronomer of the ancient world (about 150 B.C.), consequently rejected the geography of Eratosthenes because it only partially utilized the abundant resources provided by the high development of contemporary mathe matics and astronomy. Instead of the uncertain estimates of distance and direction furnished by travellers, only astronomical determinations of latitude and longitude should, he maintained, have been employed. He does not appear, however, to have himself written a geo graphy or constructed a map. About the same time Crates of Mallus made the first globe. On this he extended the Atlantic Ocean southward to the south pole, placed a corresponding ocean on the other hemisphere, and, in the belief that the torrid zone could be occupied by nothing but water, ran an Oceanic belt along the line of the equator (fig. 1). In the four segments thus produced he set four semicircular land-areas, only one of which was known to the ancient world. This systematic figure maintained its place down into the Middle Ages, as Fig. 1.