Claudius Ptolemy or in Latin, Claudius Ptolemaeus, lived about 100 AD to about 170 AD and was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, geographer, and astrologer. He lived in the city of Alexandria in Egypt. Ptolemy's Almagest is the only surviving comprehensive ancient treatise on astronomy. Because of its reputation, it was widely sought and was translated into Latin and later European languages.
Ptolemy's model, like all those of his time, was geocentric and was universally accepted until the appearance of simpler heliocentric models by Copernicus around 1500 AD.
Because Claudius Ptolemy chose to begin his description of the known world-the Oikumene in the extreme northwest, Ireland was given pride of place in the Geography.
Book 2, Chapter 2 comprises a list of forty geographical features, together with their latitudes and longitudes, and the names and approximate locations of known tribes.
- These sixty items fall into the following categories:
- 5 Promontories or headlands
- 15 River mouths or estuaries
- 11 Towns or settlements
- 9 Offshore islands
- 20 Tribes
Ptolemy's other main work is his Geography, a compilation of geographical coordinates of the part of the world known during his time. The coordinates that he used in his Geographia showed that he knew the earth was a sphere, but he misjudged the circumference of it by about 16% too small. No complete copy of his Geographia survives, but there are several fragments extant, the best of which is in the The Vatican Archives
ArchaeoIogy Ireland's 'Ireland in the Iron Age Map of Ireland by Claudius Ptolemaeus'
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