“Syria-Cypern-Palestina-Mesopotamia-Babylonia-Chaldea und zwey Arabia-mit Bergen-Waesseren und Staetten.” Hand-colored woodcut map.

From: Muenster’s Cosmographia, Basel, 1545, map no. XXI. The map is identical with Ptolemy’s Tabula IIII Asiae, in Muenster’s 1540 Ptolemy’s edition. German cartographer, cosmographer and foremost Christian Hebraist scholars of his time, Sebastian Muenster (1489-1552) published his Cosmographia in 1544. It was the earliest German description of the world and had a profound impact on the 16th-century European perception of the modern world.