FIFTEENTH-CENTURY WORLD MAPS 65 



of Nuremburg for a stay of three years and it was then, at the 

 request of influential burghers that the globe was made. 

 Behaim received payment for "a printed niappa mundi embrac- 

 ing the whole world", which was used in making the globe. 

 Since he is said to have ''expended thereon his art and pains", 

 he may be credited at least with amending the printed repre- 

 sentation in the African section, though his contribution was 

 not distinguished. As far as one can tell from a facsimile, the 

 drawing and illumination of the globe's surface were carefully 

 and attractively executed; for this the credit must go to the 

 miniaturist, Georg Holzschuler. 



The globe is twenty inches in diameter: on it appear the 

 Equator, the two tropics, and the Arctic and Antarctic circles. 

 The Equator is divided into 360 degrees, but these are un- 

 numbered. One meridian, 80° to the west of Lisbon is shown, 

 and this is likewise graduated for degrees. These are also 

 unnumbered, but in high latitudes the lengths of the longest 

 days are given. The longitudinal extent of the old world 

 accepted by Ptolemy was approximately 177° to the eastern 

 shore of the Magnus Sinus, plus an unspecified number of 

 degrees for the remaining extent of China. Behaim accepted 

 more or less Ptolemy's 177° and added 57° to embrace the 

 eastern shores of China. He thus arrived at a total of 234°, the 

 correct figure being 131°. The eflFect of this was to reduce the 

 distance from western Europe westwards to the Asiatic shores 

 to 126°, in place of the correct figure of 229°. There is no 

 indication on the globe of what Behaim considered the length 

 of a degree to be — but even if he did not go as far as Columbus 

 in adopting the figure of 56f miles for a degree, he presented 

 a YtTj misleading impression of the distance to be covered 

 in reaching the east from the west. Since in addition, Cipangu, 

 in accordance with Marco Polo's report, is placed some 25° 

 off the coast of China on the tropic of Cancer, and the Cape 

 Verde Islands are shown as extending to 30° west of the Lisbon 

 meridian, the distance remaining to be navigated is virtually 

 annihilated. 



The general outline is not unlike that of the Genoese map 

 of 1457; it is also evident that later cartographers, e.g. Contarini 

 and Waldseemiiller drew on a source common to Behaim for the 



