Editing Gazetteer (section)

====Hellenistic and Greco-Roman eras====
[[File:PtolemyWorldMap.jpg|thumb|right|A 15th-century manuscript copy of the [[Ptolemy world map]], reconstituted from Ptolemy's ''Geographia'' ({{circa|150}}), indicating the countries of "[[Serica]]" and "Sinae" ([[China]]) at the extreme right, beyond the island of "Taprobane" ([[Sri Lanka]], oversized) and the "Aurea Chersonesus" ([[Malay Peninsula]]).]]
[[File:London - John Norden's map of 1593.jpg|thumb|[[John Norden]]'s map of [[London]] published in 1593]]
[[File:Bedford - John Speed's map (1611).jpg|thumb|right|[[John Speed]]'s map of "[[Bedford]]e", from his ''Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine'', published in 1611]]
[[File:Brit IndianEmpireReligions3.jpg|thumb|right|"[[Religion in India|Prevailing Religions]] of the [[British Raj|British Indian Empire]]", from the [[The Imperial Gazetteer of India|Imperial Gazetteer of India]], [[Oxford University Press]], 1909]]
[[File:North America 1797 - U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1909.jpg|thumb|right|American geographer [[Jedidiah Morse]]'s "A New Map of North America Shewing all the New Discoveries" from his gazetteer of 1797]]
In his journal article "Alexander and the Ganges" (1923), the 20th-century historian [[William Woodthorpe Tarn|W.W. Tarn]] calls a list and description of [[satrap]]ies of [[Alexander the Great|Alexander's Empire]] written between 324 and 323 BC as an ancient gazetteer.<ref name="tarn 93 94">Tarn, 93–94.</ref> Tarn notes that the document is dated no later than June 323&nbsp;BC, since it features [[Partition of Babylon|Babylon as not yet partitioned]] by Alexander's generals.<ref name="tarn 94">Tarn, 94.</ref> It was revised by the Greek historian [[Diodorus Siculus]] in the 1st century BC.<ref name="tarn 94"/> In the 1st century BC, [[Dionysius of Halicarnassus]] mentioned the [[chronicle]]-type format of the writing of the [[Logographer (history)|logographers]] in the age before the founder of the Greek historiographic tradition, [[Herodotus]] (i.e.,&nbsp;before the 480s&nbsp;BC), saying "they did not write connected accounts but instead broke them up according to peoples and cities, treating each separately".<ref name="brown 1954 837">Brown (1954), 837.</ref> Historian [[Truesdell Sparhawk Brown|Truesdell S. Brown]] asserts that what Dionysius describes in this quote about the logographers should be categorized not as a true "history" but rather as a gazetteer.<ref name="brown 1954 837"/> While discussing the Greek conception of the [[river delta]] in ancient Greek literature, Francis Celoria notes that both [[Ptolemy]] and [[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]] of the 2nd century AD provided gazetteer information on geographical terms.<ref name="celoria 387">Celoria, 387.</ref>

Perhaps predating Greek gazetteers were those made in [[ancient Egypt]]. Although she does not specifically label the document as a gazetteer, [[Penelope Wilson]] (Department of Archaeology, [[Durham University]]) describes an ancient Egyptian [[papyrus]] found at the site of [[Tanis, Egypt]] (a city founded during the [[Twentieth dynasty of Egypt]]), which provides the following for each [[Nome (Egypt)|administrative area of Egypt]] at the time:<ref name="wilson 2003 98">Wilson (2003), 98.</ref>

<blockquote>...the name of a nome capital, its sacred barque, its sacred tree, its cemetery, the date of its festival, the names of forbidden objects, the local god, land, and lake of the city. This interesting codification of data, probably made by a priest, is paralleled by very similar editions of data on the temple walls at Edfu, for example.<ref name="wilson 2003 98"/></blockquote>