‘What Is More, the Sea or the Earth?’: Partitioning the Earth on Late Byzantine Diagrams

Six late Byzantine astrological compilations reproduce in the centre of larger diagrams a simple figure of the earth and waters that conceptualises the share occupied by a generic ‘sea’, the ocean, the oikoumenē and its uninhabited counterpart, and in some cases an abyss. This schematic structure accompanies a brief text on waters abridged from Chapter 23 of John of Damascus’ Expositio fidei. Diagrams and text are analysed in the context of each astrological collection. Similar ideas may be at play in other contexts, including medicine, a world map introducing Ptolemy’s Geography in Marcianus gr. Z 516, and works inspired by Genesis.