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The Christian Topography is a 6th century book written by Cosmas Indicopleustes. It advances the idea that the world is flat, and that the heavens form the shape of a box with a curved lid. The author cites passages of scripture which he interprets unconventionally^{[citation needed]} in order to support his thesis, and attempts to argue down the idea of a spherical earth by stigmatizing it as "pagan".

The Topography is often cited as evidence that Christianity introduced the idea of the flat-earth into the world, and brought in the age of ignorance. This is hardly fair, since Cosmas does not represent a mainstream view; the latter pages of his work are devoted to rebutting the criticism of his fellow monks that what he was saying was wrong.[1]

The book is not without value, however. "Indicopleustes" means "Indian voyager". While it is known from classical literature that there had been trade between the Roman Empire and India, Cosmas was one of the individuals who had actually made the journey. Indeed we learn from his book that he had travelled over much of the Red Sea coast, and as far as modern Sri Lanka. He described and sketched some of what he saw in his Topography. Some of these have been copied into the existing manuscripts.

When not expounding his cosmology, Cosmas proves to be an interesting and reliable guide, providing a window into a world that has since disappeared. He happened to be in Ethiopia at the time when the King of Axum was preparing a military expedition to attack Jewish Arabs in Yemen. He recorded now-vanished inscriptions such as the Monumentum Adulitanum (which he mistakenly attributed to Ptolemy III Euergetes).

• The Christian Topography by Cosmas Indicopleustes
• The Christian Topography by Cosmas Indicopleustes

This article uses text taken from the Preface to the Online English translation of the Christian Topography, which is in the public domain.

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