21 results
Jerusalem Delivered
La Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem delivered) is a verse epic by the late-Renaissance Italian poet Torquato Tasso (1544–95). Written in the eight-line stanzas common to Italian Renaissance poetry, Tasso’s masterpiece is known for the beauty of its language, profound expressions of emotion, and concern for historical accuracy. The subject of the poem is the First Crusade of 1096–99 and the quest by the Frankish knight Godfrey of Bouillon to liberate the sepulcher of Jesus Christ. Tasso was born in Sorrento, in the Kingdom of Naples, and his interest ...
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University Library of Naples
Palestine, Tribes, and Jerusalem
Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville (1697-1782) was one of the most important French geographers of the 18th century. He worked during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI. D’Anville’s approach to geography was geometric; he believed that man’s presence was worthy of acknowledgement only insofar as it helped the cartographer to establish the boundaries of a place. He focused on fidelity to what was documented about the territory in question using knowledge gleaned from travel journals, historical accounts, old maps, poems, and more. D’Anville was ...
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Library of Congress
Map of the River Jordan and Dead Sea: And the Route of the Party Under the Command of Lieutenant W.F. Lynch, United States Navy
In 1847-48, Lt. William Francis Lynch of the U.S. Navy led a 16-man expedition to explore the Dead Sea and the course of the River Jordan to its source, with the assent of the Secretary of the Navy John Y. Mason and the support of the United States Naval Hydrographic Office. The United States had no formal designs on territory in the Middle East, but personally Lynch found the Holy Land ripe for colonization and commerce. Upon his return, he published accounts of the expedition and lectured on the ...
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Library of Congress
The Holy Land or Promised Land (Formerly Palestine), Recently Depicted and Published
Nicolaus (also spelled Nicolas, Nicolaes) Visscher was the son of a Dutch master painter and mapmaker, Claes Janszoon Visscher, and was known for the exquisite artistry of the maps he produced. In the 16th and 17th centuries the Dutch were involved in a race against Portugal for control of the spice trade. The antipathy between the two states ran especially deep because of the alliance of Portugal with the Kingdom of Spain, with whom the Dutch had been embroiled in the Eighty Years' War (1566-1648). Only one year before the ...
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Library of Congress
Division of the Land of Israel Within its Borders: Copied from the Great Luminary, the Famous and Pious Gaon, Our Teacher and Rabbi, Rabbi Eliyahu from Vilna, the Capital
This drawing of the division of the Land of Israel among the 12 tribes is a copy of a work by Rabbi Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman (1720-97), better known as the Vilna Gaon or Elijah of Vilna (Vilnius, in present-day Lithuania). Elijah of Vilna was one of the most influential non-Hasidic Jewish thinkers since the Middle Ages. In addition to being an authority on the Torah and the Talmud, he was recognized as an accomplished mathematician and astronomer. A prolific writer, Elijah of Vilna produced commentary on nearly every known ...
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National Library of Israel
Sixth Map of Asia
Several editions of Ptolemy’s Geographia (Geography), translated into Latin from the original Greek, were published in Europe in the 15th century. This map is from the 1478 edition, which was published in Rome. Ptolemaic atlases included 12 maps of Asia. The “Sixth Map of Asia” covered the Arabian Peninsula. The outlines of this map are crude, but many geographic features, including the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and different features of the peninsula are clearly recognizable.
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Qatar National Library
Second Map of Sacred Geography Gathered from the Old and New Testaments: This Map Shows the Promised Land Divided into Its Tribes and Regions
This hand-colored map of the Holy Land is a reprint of a map that appeared in the 1662 edition of Nicolas Sanson’s Geographia sacra (Sacred geography), first published in 1653. Sanson (1600-67) is considered by many to be the founder of the French school of cartography. The map was published in Amsterdam in 1704 by François Halma (1653-1722), a Dutch bookseller and publisher who started a business in Utrecht, later moved to Amsterdam, and finally settled in Leeuwarden.
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National Library of Israel
Judaea, or the Holy Land, Which is Divided into the Twelve Tribes of the Hebrews or Israelites
This map of the Holy Land by Guillaume Sanson (1633-1703) and Alexis Hubert Jaillot (1632?-1712) is an enlargement of a previous map by Sanson’s father, Nicolas Sanson (1600-67). The map shows the division of Biblical Israel among the Twelve Tribes and is based on information found in the Bible. The younger Sanson took over the family publishing business after his father’s death and had a long-standing relationship with Jaillot, who re-engraved many of Nicolas Sanson’s maps.
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National Library of Israel
This [is being produced] so that all can know the route of the travels [of the Israelites] 40 years in the desert [through] the width and length of the Holy Land from the Nile to the city of Damascus, from the Arnon Valley to the Mediterranean Sea, and in it each individual tribe was given its own portion of the land
This 1695 copperplate engraving of the Holy Land is one of the earliest printed maps in Hebrew. The map was drawn by Abraham Ben-Jacob, a convert to Judaism, based on an earlier map by Christiaan van Adrichem (1533-85), and reproduced in the Amsterdam Haggadah. The map features Biblical illustrations, among them depictions of the story of Jonah and the whale, King Solomon’s fleet carrying the cedar trees for the construction of the temple in Jerusalem, and beehives and cows symbolizing the milk and honey of the Promised Land. The ...
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National Library of Israel
A Geographical Rendering of Judaea, or the Land of Israel, in Which the Positions of the Most Famous Places in the Old and New Testament are Precisely Depicted
This hand-colored copperplate map of the Holy Land, featuring notable cities from the Bible, appeared in Le theatre du monde ou nouvel atlas (Theater of the world, or new atlas), a work by Jan Jansson (1588-1664) that was published in Amsterdam circa 1658. It depicts the kingdoms of Judea and Israel, along with territory stretching north to present-day Beirut and land on both sides of the Jordan River as far south as the Dead Sea. It also includes a key to major cities, priestly towns, and towns belonging to the ...
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National Library of Israel
The Situation of the Promised Land Accurately Reveals a Knowledge of the Holy Bible
This copperplate engraving of the Holy Land is the first in a series of reprints of a map by Christiaan van Adrichem (1533-85) by Dutch publishers in the 17th century. Adrichem was a Roman Catholic priest and biblical scholar, and the map depicts the Holy Land as Adrichem conceived it, based on his study of the scriptures. The map was printed in Amsterdam in 1633 by Henricus Hondius (1597-1651), and was included in a new edition of the Atlas ou representation du monde universel (Atlas, or universal representation of the ...
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National Library of Israel
Journey and Life of the Patriarch Abraham
This map tracing the life of the patriarch Abraham was published in Antwerp in 1590 by Abraham Ortelius (1527-98), the Flemish publisher who created the world’s first atlas. It is the first printing of a map by Tilemann Stella (circa 1525-89), a German cartographer, geographer, and mathematician. The inset map at the upper left shows Abraham’s journey to the Holy Land from the land of his birth, identified in the Bible as Ur of the Chaldees. The main map shows places in the Holy Land identified with Abraham ...
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National Library of Israel
Description of the Holy Land
This woodcut map of 1585 shows the Holy Land as it would have appeared at the time of Jesus, divided into Galilee, Samaria, and Judea. The map appeared in the Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae (Travel book through Holy Scripture) of Heinrich Bünting (1545-1606). Bünting studied theology at the University of Wittenberg in Germany and became a Protestant pastor and theologian, but retired from the ministry after controversy arose over some of his teachings. Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae was an immensely popular book in its day. It provided the most complete available summary ...
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National Library of Israel
Present-Day Palestine and the Holy Land
This map of Palestine and the Holy Land was published in Florence around 1480 and was included in Francesco Berlinghieri’s expanded edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia (Geography). Berlinghieri, an Italian scholar and diplomat, was the first modern European to interpret, expand upon, and republish the works of the second-century Greek astronomer and geographer. Nicolo Tedesco, a German printer who worked in Florence, printed Berlinghieri’s work as well as engraved the maps. As with all the modern maps of Palestine added to the early printed editions of Ptolemy, this ...
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National Library of Israel
Palestine
This Latin woodcut map of Palestine is from the Rudimentum Novitiorum (A handbook for beginners), which is a history of the world published in Lübeck, Germany, in 1475 and contains what are considered to be the first printed maps. The map was printed by Lucas Brandis de Schass, and is based on an earlier map by Burchardus de Monte Sion (Burchard of Mount Zion), a 13th-century Dominican priest who traveled extensively through the Holy Land and the Middle East in 1274-84. The map is oriented with west at the bottom ...
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National Library of Israel
Judaea or the Holy Land, Here Divided into the Twelve Tribes of the Hebrews or Israelites
This 1696 map of the Holy Land is by Alexis Hubert Jaillot (1632-1712), a French cartographer best known for his Noveau atlas (New atlas) of 1689. Jaillot based much of his work on earlier maps by Nicolas Sanson and his sons, and he credits this map to William Sanson. The engraver was Louis Cordier. The map notes the locations of cities, towns, mountains, deserts, and other places mentioned in the Bible. Relief is shown pictorially in exceptionally sharp detail. Hand coloring is used to show the boundaries of the territories ...
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Library of Congress
The Abridged Amusement of the Calculator from "The Guide"
Much traditional scholarship holds that the period after about 1250 saw a decline in the production of scientific and philosophical works in the Arab world. This view is challenged by the impressive number of manuscripts written after that date in different Arabic-speaking countries that contain original treatises and commentaries. The work preserved in this manuscript, Nuzhat al-Hussāb al-Muhtasara min al-Muršida (The abridged amusement of the calculator from The guide), is a shorter version of Muršida fī Sina’at al-Gubar (The guide to the art of the numerals), an extensive treatise ...
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Library of Congress
The New Passover Haggadah
The Passover, or Pesach, Haggadah is one of the most important and beloved texts in the Jewish tradition. At the beginning of Passover, Jews the world over gather around tables to read from the Haggadah, a book containing the traditional narrative of the Exodus from Egypt. “Haggadah” means recital or retelling. With its songs and tales and emphasis on the instruction of children, the ancient Passover story is the most commonly illustrated Jewish prayer book. The New Passover Haggadah was created by Israeli artist Asher Kalderon, who in his introduction ...
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Library of Congress
Moriah Haggadah
The Passover, or Pesach, Haggadah is one of the most important and beloved texts in the Jewish tradition. At the beginning of Passover, Jews the world over gather around tables to read from the Haggadah, a book containing the traditional narrative of the Exodus from Egypt. “Haggadah” means recital or retelling. With its songs and tales and emphasis on the instruction of children, the ancient Passover story is the most commonly illustrated Jewish prayer book. The Moriah Haggadah was created by Israeli artist Avner Moriah, who drew his models from ...
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Library of Congress
The Song of Solomon
This work is a modern artist’s edition of the biblical Song of Songs, traditionally attributed to King Solomon. The Song of Songs has been interpreted in different ways, ranging from literal interpretations that focus on human love between a man and a woman to those that see it as a divine allegory of God’s love for the Jewish people. This edition, by Israeli artist Tamar Messer, emphasizes the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. The text is in Hebrew and English. The original silk ...
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Library of Congress
The Haftarah of Jonah
This work is an artist’s edition of the Book of Jonah, one of the twelve later or minor prophets in the Hebrew Bible. In the Jewish tradition, a haftarah is a reading from the prophets, which takes place on the Sabbath, festivals, and holy days. With its emphasis on the theme of repentance, the Book of Jonah has become a traditional part of the synagogue service on the holiest day in the Hebrew calendar, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. This haftarah was created with original etchings and a ...
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Library of Congress