15 · Cartography in the Byzantine Empire
15 · Cartography in the Byzantine Empire o. A. W. DILKE WITH ADDITIONAL MATERIAL SUPPLIED BY THE EDITORS Of all the civilizations of the classical world, the Byzan rents that mingled in maritime and commercial centers tine is probably the least known from the cartographic such as Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, and Thessalon point of view. The Byzantine state was the richest, the ica-and above all in Constantinople itself-were com most powerful, and the most civilized in Europe and the plex. They were not only the contacts with the heartland Middle East at that time. 1 Although the territorial of the old classical world but also links with the Islamic boundaries of its empire fluctuated,2 there was a con and other societies to the east.4 Byzantine cities became tinuity in political organization, in cultural influences, entrepots through which astronomical and geographical and in religion for over a thousand years from A.D. 330, learning (including a knowledge of maps) was handed when Constantinople was founded, to the fall of Tre on in many directions. bizond in 1461, eight years after the collapse of the Notwithstanding their complexity, some of these con capital. ditions should have been favorable to the survival of It is paradoxical, however, that a literate society, heir classical cartographic knowledge. It is disappointing, to Greek and Roman learning, should have left so few therefore, that so few maps have come down to us from traces of an interest in mapping. At least some of the the whole of the Byzantine millennium. Moreover, it is necessary conditions for the development of such an quite clear that these few are representative neither of interest were present.
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