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Description

Rare First Edition In Early Color

One of the earliest obtainable modern maps of the Holy Land, which appeared in the first edition of Munster's Geographia, first published in Basle in 1540.

The map extends from Sidon and the land of the Phoenians in the north to Gaza in the south with numerous Biblical sites and a number of vignettes. The inset is a key of ancient and modern placenames. This map is orientated with west at the top and is based on earlier maps by Munster and Ziegler.

In 1540, the last word in the title was abbreviated as "Tab." In 1542, the title was changed to spell out "Tabula." After the 1542 edition of Munster's Geographia, the title was changes to XXIII. It should also be noted that by 1542, a vertical split in the woodblock had already begun to show on the map, just to the right of the center and the word Occidens.

Munster's Geographia was a cartographic landmark, including not only Ptolemaic maps, but also a number of landmark modern maps, including the first separate maps of the 4 continents, the first map of England and the earliest obtainable map of Scandinavia. Munster dominated cartographic publication during the mid-16th Century. Munster is generally regarded as one of the most important map makers of the 16th Century.

Sebastien Munster was a linguist and mathematician, who initially taught Hebrew in Heidelberg. He issued his first mapping of Germany in 1529, after which he issued a call geographical information about Germany to scholars throughout the country. The response was better than hoped for, and included substantial foreign material, which supplied him with up to date, if not necessarily accurate maps for the issuance of his Geographia in 1540.

The 1540 edition of the map is rare in any form. This the first example of the first state of the map we have ever encountered in old color.

Condition Description
Old Color. Minor soiling and some wear at centerfold and some minor wormholes and offsetting in the title area.
Reference
Laor 616.
Sebastian Munster Biography

Sebastian Münster (1488-1552) was a cosmographer and professor of Hebrew who taught at Tübingen, Heidelberg, and Basel. He settled in the latter in 1529 and died there, of plague, in 1552. Münster made himself the center of a large network of scholars from whom he obtained geographic descriptions, maps, and directions.

As a young man, Münster joined the Franciscan order, in which he became a priest. He then studied geography at Tübingen, graduating in 1518. He moved to Basel, where he published a Hebrew grammar, one of the first books in Hebrew published in Germany. In 1521 Münster moved again, to Heidelberg, where he continued to publish Hebrew texts and the first German-produced books in Aramaic. After converting to Protestantism in 1529, he took over the chair of Hebrew at Basel, where he published his main Hebrew work, a two-volume Old Testament with a Latin translation.

Münster published his first known map, a map of Germany, in 1525. Three years later, he released a treatise on sundials. In 1540, he published Geographia universalis vetus et nova, an updated edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia. In addition to the Ptolemaic maps, Münster added 21 modern maps. One of Münster’s innovations was to include one map for each continent, a concept that would influence Ortelius and other early atlas makers. The Geographia was reprinted in 1542, 1545, and 1552.  

He is best known for his Cosmographia universalis, first published in 1544 and released in at least 35 editions by 1628. It was the first German-language description of the world and contained 471 woodcuts and 26 maps over six volumes. Many of the maps were taken from the Geographia and modified over time. The Cosmographia was widely used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The text, woodcuts, and maps all influenced geographical thought for generations.