Cosmas Indicopleustes

Cosmas Indicopleustes was a 6th-century traveler who made several voyages to India and Ethiopia during the reign of emperor Justinian. He wrote a work called Christian Topography, which contained some of the earliest and most famous world maps. He tried to prove the literal accuracy of the Biblical picture of the universe, asserting that the Earth is flat and surrounded by ocean and paradise. He was a follower of the Church of the East and a pupil of the East Syriac Patriarch Aba I. He also wrote commentaries on the Psalms and Gospels, but only fragments of them have survived. He is also known as Cosmas the Monk, because he later became a hermit in a Sinai cloister. His name means “Cosmas who sailed to India” in Greek. He is one of the few sources of information about the trade and culture of India and Ethiopia in the 6th century.