Tabula XI Asiae

Lorenz Fries was a Strasbourg physician, astrologer, and editor whose cartographic work was closely tied to the maps first published in Martin Waldseemüller’s 1513 Strasbourg edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia. In 1522, Johann Grüninger acquired woodblocks used for Waldseemüller’s maps from Johann Schott and commissioned Fries to prepare a new, smaller-format edition. Fries reduced and simplified the maps while adding some material intended to reflect more recent geographical knowledge. In this process, Waldseemüller’s Undecima Asiae Tabula (61) was reworked as this map, Tabula XI Asiae.

Although adapted to a smaller format, the map retains many defining elements of Waldseemüller’s original and remains closely aligned with classical geography, such as India extra Gangem and the Sinarum situs. The Aurea Chersonesus, or Golden Peninsula extends southward between the Sinus Gangeticus and Magnus Sinus, reflecting the inherited Ptolemaic arrangement of Southeast Asia and its surrounding seas. Mountains, rivers, and settlements are organised around this ancient structure rather than around the maritime geography emerging from Portuguese and Spanish voyages. At the centre of this geography is the mountain range Meandrus mons, which extends northward through the peninsula and anchors the surrounding river systems and settlements. Nearby ranges, including Bepyruss, Damasi, and Semanthini, reinforce the map’s dependence on Ptolemaic inland geography. At the northeastern base of Meandrus mons, the city of Cirradia, noted for its cinnamon, appears alongside the Aurea regio (Golden Region) and Argentea regio (Silver Region), territories associated with precious metals.

Fries also preserves Waldseemüller’s island geography in the Indian Ocean, including several places associated with marvels and strange peoples. Bazacata is described as rich in shellfish and inhabited by the naked Agmatae, while the Bone Fortune and Maniolae islands were associated with magnetic rocks said to attract ships and with anthropophagi. Other islands, including Sarussae, Sindae, Sabadicae, and the Satyrorum islands, continue to reflect medieval and classical tradition of locating wondrous peoples and dangerous places at the edges of the known world. A notable addition in Fries’s edition is the dramatic verso illustration of cynocephali, or dog-headed people, dismembering a human figure. This image is absent from Waldseemüller’s original map and reappears in Fries’s 1525Uselegung der Mercarthen oder Carta Marina, where it is reused to represent the inhabitants of the New World.

Within the collection, this map is closely connected with Waldseemüller’s earlier Undecima Asiae Tabula (61), from which it derives, and Fries’s modern map of the East Indies, Tabula moderna Indiae Orientalis (2). Together, 1and 2show the contrast between inherited Ptolemaic Southeast Asia and a more recent, voyage-informed image of the region. Fries’s modern world maps (89and 359) provide the wider global framework for this transition from classical geography to hydrographic knowledge.