The Mediterranean, often called the cradle of Western civilization, has been a hub of trade, culture, and exploration for millennia. Its geographical position linking three continents—Europe, Asia, and Africa—makes it a crossroads for peoples and ideas. The ancient Mediterranean map is one of great interest to show how early civilizations perceived their world. Such maps did not only represent geographical knowledge but also reflected cultural, political, and mythological worldviews.
In this article, we will trace the evolution of ancient Mediterranean maps, the cultures that produced them, and what they reveal about the people who created them.
Early Mediterranean Mapping
Before the development of true cartography, ancient civilizations relied on rudimentary maps based on oral tradition, myths, and observations of the landscape. These early depictions of the Mediterranean were often symbolic rather than accurate representations of physical space.
The first civilizations to attempt mapping the Mediterranean were the Egyptians, who used maps for practical purposes like land surveying, resource management, and military expeditions. While their maps were not necessarily focused on the Mediterranean as a whole, they did offer a sense of how Egyptians viewed the surrounding territories. For example, the Egtptian World Map located on the wall of a tomb that has borne the name of an official named Hatshepsut, circa 15th century BCE, is one of the earliest examples of a geographically inspired map, but not one showing the Mediterranean basin.
The Greeks and the Rise of Geographical Knowledge
The first attempts that the Greeks produced were rather massive strides towards developing maps with forms of the Mediterranean that one would recognize today. Greek philosophers and explorers Herodotus and Pythias of Massalia, from present-day Marseille, started talking about the world more scientifically and in a much more systematic fashion. Herodotus was, after all, dubbed the “Father of History.” He had many accounts of travels in his well-known book called Histories. In the writings, there are geographical descriptions of locations within the region of the Mediterranean.
Greek maps from the 5th to 3rd centuries BCE, however, were still quite rudimentary. They tended to focus on the coastline, and many were drawn with the Mediterranean at the center. These early maps used a technique called projection, where the known world was mapped onto a flat surface. Although they did not have the tools or knowledge to create truly accurate maps, Greek cartographers began to divide the Mediterranean into identifiable regions, such as the Greek islands, the coasts of Asia Minor, and the northern African territories.
One of the most famous Greek maps is that of Eratosthenes (276-194 BCE), a Greek mathematician and geographer. He is known as one of the earliest known endeavors to make exact calculations for finding the circumference of the Earth and drew a map portraying the Mediterranean as it actually did in a manner more scientifically consistent. Eratosthenes used geometry combined with observation using longitude and latitude in his methodology. His map, however, was still short of the knowledge of his time since he did not know at all whether Earth is round or not, nor did he know the actual size of the continents.
The Roman Influence
With the emergence of the Roman Empire in the 1st century BCE, the Mediterranean became the focus point of a huge and complex empire. The Romans, inheriting and building upon the knowledge of geographers from Greece, made maps that were mainly administrative and military surveys. Roman maps of the Mediterranean reflected political organization and control by the empire within the area.
One of the most famous Roman maps is the Tabula Rogeriana, created in the 12th century by the Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi for the Norman King Roger II of Sicily. Although al-Idrisi’s map came long after the fall of the Roman Empire, it was based on earlier Roman knowledge and techniques, particularly those used by Pomponius Mela and Marinus of Tyre. The Romans approached mapping with a more practical perspective, paying more attention to the locations of military routes of great importance, trade routes, and cities.
While Roman maps, such as the Forma Urbis Romae, provided very elaborate and accurate renderings of urban landscapes, they did not contain much geographical information that would help in a broader understanding of the Mediterranean region. Another example from the Romans is the Itinerarium Antonini, a road map that represented the main routes used for military and travel communication.
Roman and Greco-Roman Myths in Mapping
Along with the scientific method that was becoming increasingly used to map, there was also the mythological and religious approach of the ancient Mediterranean. For the Greeks and Romans, the sea was not just a physical entity but a mythological one, replete with gods, monsters, and divine intervention. This mix of the physical and the mythical is reflected in the maps they created, which were often filled with legendary islands and mythical places such as the Island of the Blessed or Atlantis.
In Greek mythology, islands like that of Circe and the Isle of the Phaeacians were areas whose geographical locations are unknown but are deep-seated in the culture of ancient Greece. Sympathetic to the Roman and Greek mindset, such locations as these were included in their versions of maps that were often cloaked in symbolism.
Ptolemaic Influence
The work of Claudius Ptolemy, about 100-170 CE, is the zenith of ancient Mediterranean mapping. Ptolemy’s Geographia, a treatise that included a comprehensive and detailed map of the known world, became the standard reference for medieval cartographers. Ptolemy’s map used a grid system of latitude and longitude, allowing for greater accuracy in mapping the Mediterranean and its surrounding regions.
Although Ptolemy’s map was far from the perfect product, his approach utterly changed the mindset of people for viewing the world. For the first time in history, the Mediterranean was projected not as some confusing series of coastal landmarks, but as an integral part of a larger connected system of the world.
Such maps by Ptolemy had a crucial influence on other medieval and later Renaissance maps.
Decline of Roman Cartography and Middle Age
During the 5th century CE with the collapse of the Roman Empire, many in-depth geographical contents of the Mediterranean were either misplaced or no more accessible to many in Europe. During the time of Middle Age, many details of the chart were conserved by the Islam world in Europe, primarily along the territories in Spain and the North African coastline. Islamic scholars expanded upon the work of Ptolemy and other classical geographers, but the maps they created often fused geographical knowledge with Islamic cosmology and religious ideas.
While most of the ancient Greek and Roman maps were not readily available in Europe during the Dark Ages, they were revived in the Renaissance when European scholars rediscovered classical texts. These revivals gave way to a new understanding of the Mediterranean, which would go on to shape the Age of Exploration and the subsequent expansion of European powers around the world.
The Legacy of Ancient Mediterranean Map
The ancient Mediterranean map evolved, with contributions from diverse cultures, namely Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Islamic, all pushing together as humanity built on earlier knowledge. Many of these early maps were crude by today’s standards, but revolutionary for their time and therefore forged the way towards a more advanced geographical understanding.
