Cosmas

Cosmas, an Alexandrian merchant of the sixth century, who, after travelling in the East, retired to a monastic life in Egypt, and wrote a work on Christian Topography, in which he set forth some astonishing views of the universe, which he described as oblong, after the model of the tabernacle in the wilderness, with four walls and a roof, the earth lying in the middle, surrounded by the ocean, outside of which lay the Garden of Eden. His travels in India gained him the name of "Indicopleustus."