Claudius Ptolemaios deciphered ?

[D B Campbell]

Thanks for your report, Siggi. I have been swithering over whether to buy this book or not.

But what really worries me is that me and most people I know seem to be somewhat "at a loss" judging the data computed in this book simply because lack of specialist knowledge with "Geodäsie".

In my opinion (which may turn out to be wrong :wink: ), the main problem to be overcome is a historiographical one. Where did Ptolemy get his data from? Archaeologists in Scotland have been discussing the British section of the Geography for some time, and it seems most likely that the Scottish placenames derived from a Flavian military source. (In other words, the date of Ptolemy himself is almost irrelevant -- it is the date of his source that we should seek.)

When we turn to Germany, the first question I would ask is: what was Ptolemy's source? I would immediately assume it to be an Augustan military source. (When else did a pre-Antonine expedition gather geographical data from Germania Magna?) And, like the placenames in Scotland, I would expect some to be linked with military bases and others to be "native" sites (whatever that means, in practice).

I wonder if this book addresses these problems, before launching into the "more glamorous" task (certainly, from the perspective of the ordinary newspaper-reading, documentary-watching man in the street) of "guessing" which modern towns line up (however approximately) with Ptolemy's ancient placenames.

Yes there is more than a scant probability that the island of Thule may be the island of SMOLA Trondheim/Norway.

British archaeologists/classicists are pretty well convinced that Thule was Shetland.