Cosmas

Cosmas (flourished 6th century ad, Alexandria, Egypt) was a merchant, traveler, theologian, and geographer whose treatise Topographia Christiana (c. 535–547; “Christian Topography”) contains one of the earliest and most famous of world maps. In this treatise, Cosmas tried to prove the literal accuracy of the Biblical picture of the universe, asserting in particular that the Earth is flat and trying to refute Ptolemy’s concept of a spherical universe.

Probably a Nestorian Christian, Cosmas sailed around the shores of the Indian Ocean and for some time was engaged in trade in Ethiopia and Asia. His variant name is Latin, meaning the Indian Navigator. He later became a monk and wrote several geographical treatises, but only the Topographia and fragments of his commentaries on the Psalms and Gospels have survived.

Cosmas viewed the Tabernacle of Moses as a model of the universe, the Earth being a rectangular plane surmounted by the sky, above which was heaven. In the centre of the plane was the inhabited Earth, surrounded by ocean, and beyond this the paradise of Adam. The Sun, much smaller than the Earth, revolved around a conical mountain to the north. Though Cosmas was scornful of Ptolemy and others who believed in a spherical Earth, his idiosyncratic work is not representative of the general state of cosmographic theory among Christian philosophers of his day and had small influence on later writers.