ABSTRACT

The evidence of a scientific approach to cartography by the Greeks comes in the 4th century. Egypt, which exercised an influence on the ancient civilisations of southeast Europe and the Near East, has left no more numerous cartographic documents than her neighbour Babylon. There are many references to the existence of maps in ancient Rome. Some schematic maps have been transmitted to us through the Middle Ages, as they had previously passed from Greece to Rome. Ptolemy himself laid down principles for map-making in the polemical work, called by him i. e. geographical guide to the making of maps, and by later centuries simply Geographia or Cosmographia. Despite the richness of civilisation in ancient Babylonia and the recovery of whole archives and libraries, a handful of Babylonian maps have been found. They are impressed on small clay tablets like those used by the Babylonians for cuneiform inscription of documents — a medium which must have limited the cartographer's scope.