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Voyage

Around AD 550, while a monk in the retirement of a Sinai cloister,^[1] Cosmas wrote the once-copiously illustrated Christian Topography, a work partly based on his personal experiences as a merchant on the Red Sea and Indian Ocean in the early 6th century. Although there has been debate, it can be determined that Cosmas wrote his famous description in Alexandria.^[2] His description of India and Ceylon during the 6th century is invaluable to historians. Cosmas also provides invaluable information regarding the transferring of silk, located in China to the west.^[3] Cosmas seems to have personally visited the Kingdom of Axum in modern day northern Ethiopia, as well as Eritrea. He sailed along the coast of Socotra, but it cannot be ascertained that he really visited India and Ceylon. Interestingly, Cosmas is the earliest Greek writer known to have learned, through secondhand accounts, that there was a sea to the east of China. Michael Kordosis notes that even the great geographer Ptolemy did not know this, and places the east of China as "Unknown land".^[4]

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