Transmission atlas · 2nd century to the present
How Galen's texts traveled
Choose any catalogued work to distinguish its ancient composition from the later manuscript traditions that preserve it, the Arabic translations or summaries held by Pergamap, and documented Hebrew, Latin, German, English, or digital branches. Empty branches are shown honestly; absence from this map is not proof that no witness exists.
Explore every branch
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Work identity is not a manuscript. The Greek-manuscript and Arabic-witness panels are sibling branches from the ancient work—not steps in one automatic chain. A dashed Arabic branch means Pergamap has not yet established whether that witness came directly from Greek, through Syriac, or by another route. The versions are indirect tradition — evidence about the text rather than copies of it — but their exemplars may antedate the surviving Greek, which is why they belong on the map at all.
The transmission data could not be loaded. The raw datasets remain available below.
Influence is not descent
The books people are more likely to recognize
These works help orient the story, but the broken connector matters: they reorganize, debate, teach, or transmit Galenic medicine rather than copy one specific Pergamap witness. Treating them as direct descendants would flatten the history.
The short answer
Yes—Arabic Galen has substantial international branches
The clearest routes currently in this map include Arabic Ars medica into both Latin and Hebrew; Arabic Galen on the pulse and the Hippocratic Aphorisms into Latin; an Arabic Alexandrian summary into Hebrew; and Arabic-only or Arabic-complete works made accessible in modern English and German. These are textual routes, not a general claim that every Latin or Hebrew Galen came through Arabic—many translations were made directly from Greek.
Evidence
Sources and limits
The local Greek and Arabic links come from Pergamap's versioned datasets. Later connections are deliberately selective and cite library catalogues, scholarly repositories, or specialist transmission databases. Dates often describe a translation or surviving witness, not the date of the lost exemplar.
Many Arabic versions were translated directly from Greek, while others passed through Syriac. Pergamap therefore marks the source-language route as uncertain for each local Arabic file until a cited, work-specific route is encoded. A missing Syriac node must never be read as evidence that Syriac was not involved.