The "Affrica" spelling can be traced to several of the earliest surviving maps (in Latin) from the dawn of the age of exploration. Among the best known examples are:

AFFRICA (as appearing on a world map), Ptolemy (c. 120), recreated in the edition of his Geography printed in Ulm, southern Germany, in 1498. Ptolemy's most important innovation was to banish the age-old idea that Africa was surrounded by an ocean. Instead he extended it to the south and made the Indian Ocean an enormous landlocked lake. This was an obstacle for European sailors of the fifteenth century searching for a passage round Africa to the east (from "The Shape of the World", PBS, Channel 13, NY.

AFFRICA (as appearing on a world map), Martellus (c. 1490), The British Museum Library Add. MS 15760, ff. 68v-69.

affrica (as appearing on a world map), Cantino (1502), Biblioteca Estense, Modena.

AFFRICA (as appearing on a world globe), workshop of Waldseemüller (by 1503). The globe, commissioned by Lukas Rem, has long been missing. However, it is prominently depicted in the painting Triptych: Holy Trinity above the Globe by Quentin Massys, Antwerp, 1519.

AFFRICA (as appearing on a world map), Waldseemüller (1507). Original in the Library of Wolfegg Castle, Germany. Published in Columbus by Bjorn Landstrom, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1966.

AFFRICA and South AMERICA, F. Monachus, (1527), The British Museum Library, 568.b.23.

Affricae Tabula Nova, S. Munster (1580).

AFFRICA (as appearing on a map of Africa), Dudley (between 1646 and 1647). Original in the Maps and Image Library of the University of Florida Marston Science Library

 The Dudley Map

For additional information on the history of cartography and early maps of Africa, the following publications are recommended:

Akademische Druck – u. Verlagsanstalt, Monumenta Ethnographica: Early Ethnographical Pictorial Documents – Volume 1, Black Africa, Graz, Austria, 1967.

Oscar I. Norwich, Maps of Africa: An illustrated and annotated carto-bibliography, Ad. Donker/Publisher, 1983.

Peter Whitfield, New Found Lands: Maps in the History of Exploration, Routledge, New York, NY, 1998.