With the help of the FBI's special art crime department, two 15th century maps stolen from the Spanish National Library in Madrid, Spain have been recovered.
FBI has turned over to Spain two of the world maps from Ptolemy's 'Geographia' that were stolen from Madrid's National Library in August, the Spanish news agency EFE said.
FBI chief Robert Muller handed over the maps to Spain's general director of the National Police and Civil Guard Joan Mesquida Thursday.
The first of the maps -- which were recovered in the US -- is a cosmography printed in 1482 and the second is a geography map from 1507 showing the newly discovered New World.
Only four examples of the second exist, while there are only two copies of the cosmography, one in the National Library in Spain -- the one that was returned Thursday -- and another at the Juan March Foundation in Mallorca.
The cosmography belongs to the same edition as another map that was also stolen in August but was recovered recently in Sydney, Australia.
The method of colouring the map -- the colours of which are still quite brilliant -- is unique, according to the Spanish interior ministry.
Eight other world maps, stolen in the same batch but found in Argentina, have already been returned to Spain, and the map found in Sydney, would be turned over by Australian authorities within a month at the most, Mesquida said.
National Library officials reported the theft of the maps last August.
Claudius Ptolemy (85-165), a Greek astronomer and geographer, lived and worked in Alexandria, Egypt, when it was under the control of the Roman Empire. His activities included studying the movements of the known planets, predicting their future positions and cataloguing the stars.
His basic contribution was his geocentric model of the universe. He believed that the earth was fixed in the centre of the universe and that the planets and stars revolved around it.
Ptolemy's cosmological theories remained influential until the 16th century.
Cesar Gomez Rivero, a 60-year-old Spanish citizen of Uruguayan origin who is a resident of Argentina, has been accused of the theft, but he remains a fugitive and returned several of the documents, according to his lawyer.
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