No One Knows What Ptolemy Looked Like #Shorts

Full film: Ptolemy: The Wandering Stars | How the Almagest Predicted the Planets: https://youtu.be/nB62mCDRoyk

No picture of Ptolemy survives. Medieval and Renaissance artists often drew him wearing a crown, because they mixed him up with the kings of Egypt who shared his name, the Ptolemies who ruled from 305 to 30 BC. He was not a king. What we do know is thin: his name, Claudius Ptolemy, points to a Roman citizen with a Greek name living in Egypt, and the observations in his Almagest run from about 127 to 141 AD in Alexandria, under the emperors Hadrian and Antoninus. That is why our films show his hands and his instruments, never a face. One short poem in the Greek Anthology (9.577) carries his name. It is attributed to him, which is as far as the evidence goes, and it is about the feeling of leaving the earth behind while studying the stars.

Sources
Ptolemy, Almagest (about 150 AD), trans. G. J. Toomer, Ptolemy's Almagest (1984), introduction, on his dates and observations.
The Greek Anthology, Book 9, epigram 577, trans. W. R. Paton, Loeb Classical Library (1917).
James Evans, The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy (1998).

Pictures: code-drawn diagrams only. Nothing is AI-drawn. No face is shown for Ptolemy, because none survives. The narration is my own cloned voice.

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#Ptolemy #Almagest #HistoryOfAstronomy #HistoryOfScience #Shorts