Africa

Exhibit items related to Africa.

Exhibit Items

1	The City of God Augustine, (1489) The frontispiece shows Augustine in his study. Augustine taught that the language of Scripture was accommodated to the understanding of ordinary readers and therefore not well-suited to teach the theories of natural science.
1	Almagest, ed. Regiomontanus Ptolemy, Claudius (1496) Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaios) lived in Alexandria, Egypt, in the second century. Ptolemy’s technical work on astronomy, originally written in Greek, was titled Almagest (“The Greatest”) by its Arabic translators.
2	Ethiopian Bible Augustine served as the Bishop of Hippo in the Roman province of Africa, or present-day Algeria. The formative influence of northern Africa upon later European culture was both immense and diverse.
3	On the Dream of Scipio Macrobius, (1521) This work by Macrobius (5th century) illustrates the wealth of ancient and early medieval literary sources relevant to cosmology. Macrobius here comments upon a classic story of Cicero which described a vision given to the Roman general Scipio.
6	Cosmography, 1574 Munster, Sebastian (1574) Munster’s Cosmography was one of the most popular books of the 16th century. In addition to the map of the world, it includes separate maps for America, Africa, Asia and Europe. First published in 1540, at least 24 editions were published in the following century.