The Christian Topography (original Greek

Koine Greek

Koine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....

 title , Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 title Topographia Christiana) is a 6th-century work, one of the earliest essays in scientific geography written by a Christian author. It was originally written as five books by Cosmas Indicopleustes

Cosmas Indicopleustes

Cosmas Indicopleustes was an Alexandrian merchant and later hermit, probably of Nestorian tendencies. He was a 6th-century traveller, who made several voyages to India during the reign of emperor Justinian...

 and expanded to ten to twelve books around 550 AD. The work advances the idea that the world

World

World is a common name for the whole of human civilization, specifically human experience, history, or the human condition in general, worldwide, i.e. anywhere on Earth....

 is flat

Flat Earth

The Flat Earth model is a belief that the Earth's shape is a plane or disk. Most ancient cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period ...

, and that the heavens

Sky

The sky is the part of the atmosphere or outer space visible from the surface of any astronomical object. It is difficult to define precisely for several reasons. During daylight, the sky of Earth has the appearance of a pale blue surface because the air scatters the sunlight. The sky is sometimes...

 form the shape of a box

Box

Box describes a variety of containers and receptacles for permanent use as storage, or for temporary use often for transporting contents. The word derives from the Greek πύξος , "box, boxwood"....

 with a curved lid, and especially attacks the idea that the heavens were spherical and in motion, now known as the geocentric model

Geocentric model

In astronomy, the geocentric model , is the superseded theory that the Earth is the center of the universe, and that all other objects orbit around it. This geocentric model served as the predominant cosmological system in many ancient civilizations such as ancient Greece...

 model of the universe. The author cites passages of scripture which he interprets originally in order to support his thesis

Thesis

A dissertation or thesis is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings...

, and attempts to argue down the idea of a spherical earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

 by stigmatizing it as "pagan

Paganism

Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....

". An early surviving reference to the work is by Patriarch Photios I of Constantinople

Patriarch Photios I of Constantinople

Photios I , also spelled Photius or Fotios, was the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from 858 to 867 and from 877 to 886. He is recognized in the Eastern Orthodox churches as St...

 in the 9th century AD. Photius condemns the style and syntax of the text as well as the honesty of the author. More recent authors tend to agree with Photius on the stylistic points, but to find the author generally reliable for geographical and historical references. Edward Gibbon

Edward Gibbon

Edward Gibbon was an English historian and Member of Parliament...

, for example, said "the nonsense of the Monk was, nevertheless, mingled with the practical knowledge of the traveller" and used it in writing The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a non-fiction history book written by English historian Edward Gibbon and published in six volumes. Volume I was published in 1776, and went through six printings. Volumes II and III were published in 1781; volumes IV, V, VI in 1788–89...

.

The Topography is often cited as evidence that Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

 introduced the idea of the flat-earth into the world, and brought in the age of ignorance

Ignorance

Ignorance is a state of being uninformed . The word ignorant is an adjective describing a person in the state of being unaware and is often used as an insult...

. The latter pages of his work are devoted to rebutting the criticism

Criticism

Criticism is the judgement of the merits and faults of the work or actions of an individual or group by another . To criticize does not necessarily imply to find fault, but the word is often taken to mean the simple expression of an objection against prejudice, or a disapproval.Another meaning of...

 of his fellow monks that what he was saying was wrong. He repeatedly denounces "those reprobate Christians who, ..., prefer, through their perverse folly or downright wickedness, to adopt the miserable Pagan belief |xx that earth and heaven are spherical, and that there are Antipodes on whom the rain must fall up." Raymond Beazley, in the first volume of the The Dawn of Modern Geography (1897), said

The book is not without value, however. "Indicopleustes" means "Indian voyager". While it is known from classical literature that there had been trade

Trade

Trade is the transfer of ownership of goods and services from one person or entity to another. Trade is sometimes loosely called commerce or financial transaction or barter. A network that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and...

 between the Roman Empire

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

 and India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, Cosmas was one of the individuals who had actually made the journey. Indeed we learn from his book that he had travelled over much of the Red Sea

Red Sea

The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. In the north, there is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez...

 coast, and as far as modern Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

. He described and sketched some of what he saw in his Topography. Some of these have been copied into the existing manuscripts.

When not expounding his cosmology

Cosmology

Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...

, Cosmas proves to be an interesting and reliable guide, providing a window into a world that has since disappeared. He happened to be in Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

 when the King of Axum was preparing a 522 or 525 AD military expedition to attack Jewish Arabs in Yemen

Yemen

The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....

. He recorded now-vanished inscriptions such as the Monumentum Adulitanum

Monumentum Adulitanum

The Monumentum Adulitanum was an ancient Adulite inscription in Greek and Ge'ez depicting the military campaigns of an Adulite king. Though the inscription and the monument have never been located by archaeologists we know about it through the copying of the inscription by Cosmas Indicopleustes, a...

 (which he mistakenly attributed to Ptolemy III Euergetes

Ptolemy III Euergetes

-Family:Euergetes was the eldest son of Ptolemy II Philadelphus and his first wife, Arsinoe I, and came to power in 246 BC upon the death of his father.He married Berenice of Cyrene in the year corresponding to 244/243 BC; and their children were:...

).

Manuscripts

Three nearly complete manuscripts are known to exist. The earliest and best is from the 9th century, and is in the Vatican Library

Vatican Library

The Vatican Library is the library of the Holy See, currently located in Vatican City. It is one of the oldest libraries in the world and contains one of the most significant collections of historical texts. Formally established in 1475, though in fact much older, it has 75,000 codices from...

. This text has only ten books. Two closely related manuscripts of the 11th century, one from the Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai

Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai

Saint Catherine's Monastery lies on the Sinai Peninsula, at the mouth of a gorge at the foot of Mount Sinai in the city of Saint Catherine in Egypt's South Sinai Governorate. The monastery is Orthodox and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site...

 and the other probably originally from the Iviron monastery

Iviron monastery

Holy Monastery of Iviron is an Eastern Orthodox monastery at the monastic state of Mount Athos in Greece...

 of Mount Athos

Mount Athos

Mount Athos is a mountain and peninsula in Macedonia, Greece. A World Heritage Site, it is home to 20 Eastern Orthodox monasteries and forms a self-governed monastic state within the sovereignty of the Hellenic Republic. Spiritually, Mount Athos comes under the direct jurisdiction of the...

, contain twelve books and comment on the prophets in the same order that Theodore of Mopsuestia

Theodore of Mopsuestia

Theodore the Interpreter was bishop of Mopsuestia from 392 to 428 AD. He is also known as Theodore of Antioch, from the place of his birth and presbyterate...

 preferred rather than in Septuagint order. The eleventh and twelfth books may originally have been parts of other works by the same author. Portions of book five appear more frequently as a marginal commentary upon the psalms

Psalms

The Book of Psalms , commonly referred to simply as Psalms, is a book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible...

, and it is the name given to the author in these commentaries that is now used.

External links

• The Christian Topography by Cosmas Indicopleustes
• Original Greek text