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Exploring Byzantine Cartographies: Ancient Science, Christian Cosmology, and Geopolitics in Imperial-Era Mapping

Exploring Byzantine Cartographies: Ancient Science, Christian Cosmology, and Geopolitics in Imperial-Era Mapping

Lecture by Alex Papadopoulos

Given at the National Hellenic Museum (Chicago, Illinois) on May 5th 2011

Byzantine cartography is an important link to the mathematical, astronomical and geographic vanguard of the Hellenistic period-especially to the opus of Claudius Ptolemy, to geographical models of pre-Socratic philosophers and Classical period historians, and to Byzantine theology which engaged in a biblical exegesis of the world through the medium of cartography. Dr. Papadopoulos will explain how the study of Byzantine maps illuminate how Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean people understood themselves, their belief systems, and their political positionality in territorial terms.

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