Tabu mo in orig

Lorenz Fries was a Strasbourg physician, astrologer, and editor whose 1522 edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia reworked the maps associated with Martin Waldseemüller’s 1513 Strasbourg edition. In producing the smaller-format edition for Johann Grüninger, Fries reduced and simplified many of Waldseemüller’s maps, but he also added new “modern” maps intended to reflect more recent geographical knowledge: this map of Southeast Asia, a map of China and Tartary Tabula superioris Indiae et Tartariae majoris, and a world map, Orbis typus universalis iuxta hydrographorum traditionem exactissime depicta (359). The engraved title of this map appears in abbreviated form as Tabu mo in orig.

Unlike the Ptolemaic Tabula XI Asiae (1), this map draws on more recent geography associated with Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map and the changing European understanding of the Indian Ocean. It rejects the old Ptolemaic idea of a fully enclosed Indian Ocean. By the early sixteenth century, Portuguese navigation around Africa had shown that no southern land bridge connected Africa to Asia. Yet the revision is only partial. Ultimately inspired by Henricus Martellus’s c. 1490 world map, Fries shows a truncated landmass south of India extra Gangem, forming a large inward-curving peninsula extending south of the Tropic of Capricorn and is labelled India meridionalis. Fries also closely followed Waldseemüller’s framework in retaining key toponyms and inscriptions. Along the mainland appear names such as Moabar provincia and Lac regnum, with Coilu reg at the southern extremity, and Loac regnum on the eastern shore. The six principal islands also correspond closely to Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map and ultimately derive from the travel accounts of Marco Polo. From west to east, these are Seylam (Sri Lanka), Peutam (Bintan), Java Minor (Sumatra), Necura (Nicobar Islands), Angama (Andaman Islands), and Java Maior (Java).

Although many of the textual descriptions were retained from earlier sources, Fries added a striking visual detail on Angama: anthropophagi preparing a feast. This scene is absent from Waldseemüller’s earlier map. By adding it, Fries turned an inherited written tradition about the peoples of Angama into a vivid pictorial detail.

Within the collection, this map is closely connected with Fries’s Ptolemaic Tabula XI Asiae (1), which presents the same broad region through inherited classical geography. It also relates to Fries’s modern world map (359), another of the new maps added to the 1522 edition, and to Fries’s Tabula nova orbis (89), which explicitly contrasts hydrographers’ geography with Ptolemy’s world. Together, these works show how Fries’s edition placed classical authority and newer maritime geography side by side.