Navalia is a town (''polis'' or ''oppidum'') that was mentioned by

Claudius Ptolemaeus Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importanc ...

in his ''

Geographia The ''Geography'' ( grc-gre, Γεωγραφικὴ Ὑφήγησις, ''Geōgraphikḕ Hyphḗgēsis'', "Geographical Guidance"), also known by its Latin names as the ' and the ', is a gazetteer, an atlas, and a treatise on cartography, com ...

''. The town has recently been associated with Essen."Mapping Ancient Germania: Berlin Researchers Crack the Ptolemy Code", Der Spiegel
/ref> The name translates from Latin as "dock" or "wharf", but this may be coincidental. Though Ptolemy provides

coordinate In geometry, a coordinate system is a system that uses one or more numbers, or coordinates, to uniquely determine the position of the points or other geometric elements on a manifold such as Euclidean space. The order of the coordinates is sign ...

s, it is unknown which

prime meridian A prime meridian is an arbitrary meridian (a line of longitude) in a geographic coordinate system at which longitude is defined to be 0°. Together, a prime meridian and its anti-meridian (the 180th meridian in a 360°-system) form a great ...

he used. Moreover the coordinates provided have been polluted by mistakes by copyists. The exact locations of the places mentioned remained unsure until recently.Lacus Curtius
/ref>

References

{{Authority control Roman sites in Germany