map drawn from Ptolemy's coordinates for a 1482 edition of his Geographia (The Ulm Edition, Leinhard Holle) Lands beyond the bounds of the known world tantalized the imaginations of ancient ...

Claudius Ptolemy was a Greek mathematician ... Much of medieval astronomy and geography were built on his ideas: his world map, published as part of his treatise Geography in the 2nd century ...

Still, when all due allowance is made for these drawbacks, there is no denying that Ptolemy's map of North-Eastern Africa bears a wonderful resemblance to reality—just the resemblance that might ...