One of the earliest maps of South East Asia and the eastern Indian Ocean, according to the Roman/Greek cartographers from classical antiquity.

A pristine example from the rare 1552 fourth and final edition of Münster's Geographia.

This is Sebastian Münster's woodcut map of Ptolemy's eleventh map of Asia, covering Southeast Asia beyond the Ganges river (INDIA EXTRA GANGEM), with the Malay peninsula including Zabae (Corresponding to Singapore), Maniola (by some identified with Manilla), and the legendary Cattigara (corresponding to a big Chinese harbour, possibly Canton), the furthest East that the Greeks visited for trading.

The geographical contents is based on Ptolemy's Geography that was published around 150 AD in Alexandria, and is the oldest surviving European representation of the region before the 16th Century explorers charted it.

Left is the Sinus Gangeticus, or Bay of Bengal. At the right is the Sinus Magnus, the "Great Gulf" or Pacific Ocean.

The fact that the coastline beyond Malaysia bends south (and eventually back to Africa further south) instead of north is an unfortunate mistake introduced by Ptolemy, who insisted that the Indian Ocean should be land-locked all around like the Mediterranean Sea, and is not normal theory among the early Greek cartographers upon which he based his work. For instance Eratosthenes, Marinus of Tyre, the Periplus rutters, as well as Alexander the Great all consider Asia as surrounded by water, and one big Oceanus that circumvents the three (known) continents Europe, Africa, and Asia.

The River Ganges and its estuary is in the nortwest. The islands with "Anthropophagi" (man-eaters, i.e. cannibals) are in the bottom of the map, it could reflect early Greek knowledge of the Andaman group of islands, where cannibalism flourished well into the 20th century.

Two independent references to China are given, highlighting the confusion in antiquity about these regions. First, in the northeast of the map there is a reference to "PARS Sericae", the Land of the Silk. The region of "SINA" is to the southeast of that.

The map is embellished with various animals on the left. A list of cities is given below that.

The back of the map has decorative woodcuts that are attributed to the great artist Hans Holbein the Younger, a close friend and colleague of Sebastian Münster.

Following the various editions of Waldseemüller's maps, the names of three cartographers dominate the sixteenth century: Mercator, Ortelius and Münster, and of these three Münster probably had the widest influence in spreading geographical knowledge throughout Europe in the middle years of the century.

His Cosmographia, issued in 1544, contained not only the latest maps and views of many well-known cities, but included an encyclopaedic amount of detail about the known - and unknown - world and undoubtedly must have been one of the most widely read books of its time, going through nearly forty editions in six languages.

An eminent German mathematician and linguist, Münster became Professor of Hebrew at Heidelberg and later at Basle, where he settled in 1529. In 1528, following his first mapping of Germany, he appealed to German scholars to send him "descriptions, so that all Germany with its villages, towns, trades, etc. may be seen as in a mirror", even going so far as to give instructions on how they should "map" their own localities. The response was far greater than expected and such information was sent by foreigners as well as Germans so that, eventually, he was able to include many up-to-date, if not very accurate, maps in his atlases.

He was the first to provide a separate map of each of the four known Continents and the first separately printed map of England. His maps, printed from woodblocks, are now greatly valued by collectors. His two major works, the Geographia and the Cosmographia were published in Basle by his step-son, Henri Petri, who continued to issue many editions after Münster's death of the plague in 1552.

(Moreland & Bannister).

The remaining modern maps, [...], are all drawn on a plane projection, undergraduated, without scales, and variously oriented with north, south, east or west at the top, "without the excuse of topographical necessity", as Nordenskjöld severely remarks. In spite of these and other cartographic defects, they constitute an important corpus of geographical knowledge and interpretation; Münster was the first atlas-maker to furnish separate maps of the four continents then known; and for England, Scandinavia and southern Germany, eastern Europe and America he brought recent and significant representations into general currency.

(Skelton).

The Cosmographia of Sebastian Münster must rank as the greatest geographical compendium of the period - an immensely detailed work illustrated with woodcut portraits, scenes, town plans and panoramas, and maps. Born in 1488, Münster was a Fransiscan who became Professor of Hebrew at Heidelberg and later at Basle, where he taught Hebrew and, amongst other works, published the first German translation of the Bible from Hebrew. In 1540 his edition of Ptolemy's Geographia was published, followed in 1544 by the Cosmographia Universalis. Together these ran to over 35 editions published mostly in Basle in Latin, German, French and Italian versions. Münster's particular cartographic importance lies in the number of 'new' maps he introduced and, above all, in the innovative, separate mapping of each of the four continents. The map of the Americas is not only the first map to show the Western Hemisphere separately, but is also the first to show North and South America joined together.

(Potter p38).

Sebastian Münster was raised as a Franciscan monk, converted to Lutheranism, taught Hebrew at Heidelberg and Basle, and was proficient in Greek and some Asian tongues. He died of the plague in 1552. First published in 1540, his atlas was the first to contain separate maps of each of the four continents.

(Suárez).

In 1540 Sebastian Münster, who was to become one of the most influential cartographers in the sixteenth century, published his edition of Ptolemy's Geographia with a further section of modern, more up-to-date maps. He included for the first time a set of continental maps, the America was the earliest of any note. Münster studied Hebrew at Heidelberg and was a scholar of geography, writing amongst other works the Polyhistor.

He was one of the first to create space in the woodblock for the insertion of place-names in metal type. The map's inclusion in Münster's Cosmography, first published in 1544, sealed the fate of "America" as the name for the New World. The book proved to be very popular, there being nearly forty editions during the following 100 years.

(Burden).