220 BC · 3rd century BC · Alexandria

Eratosthenes' World

A measured earth: the first grid of parallels and meridians.

View on the atlas → The Cartographic Sacrifice

Catalogue record

Record stands for A projection or reconstruction, not an artefact

Open questions

Looked at and unresolved. Listed so the gap reads as a question somebody asked rather than a field nobody reached.

attribution
Nothing drawn by Eratosthenes survives. What this record stands for is the reconstructed geography reported by later writers, not a document. Nothing can: the resolution is editorial, naming which modern reconstruction the essay follows and citing the ancient testimony it rests on.

Related essays

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