1581 Bünting Woodcut Map of the Peregrination of Israel

Exodus of the Israelites.

This is a Heinrich Bünting's 1581 map of the Holy Land, depicting the peregrination of the Israelites from Egypt to the Jordan River. The map illustrates the path of the Exodus, numbering the various stops. Biblical scenes are depicted in vignettes: Moses, having crossed the Red Sea, looks back at Egyptians drowning with their chariots; and the army of the Moabites can be seen fleeing their kingdom from the onslaught of the Israelites. The Mediterranean is decorated with a merman (although Laor maintained that this was a depiction of Jonah riding astride, rather than inside, the whale). There are also two giant fish, and a duck.

Publication History and Census

This woodcut appeared first in the 1581 Helmstadt edition of Heinrich Bünting's Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae, the first book dedicated to describing the journeys taken by figures in the Bible. Its popularity kept it in print into the 18th century. The formschneider is unknown. This example conforms typographically to the 1597 edition of the work. In its various editions, Bünting's book is well represented in institutional collections. Nine examples of the separate map are cataloged in OCLC, but it appears on the market from time to time.

Cartographer

Heinrich Bünting (1545 – 1606) was a Protestant pastor and theologian. He was born in Hanover, and studied theology at the University of Wittenberg. He earned his Master's degree in 1569. He remained in Wittenberg as a pastor there, before being appointed to that same position at Alt Calenberg, in the service of the Dukes of Saxony. The estate was dissolved when the marriage of the Duchess Sidona and Duke Eric the Younger foundered, and Bünting became pastor in Gronau in 1575. In Gronau, he wrote his two major works - the 1581 Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae, and the 1584 Brunswick and Lüneburg Chronicle. He produced a smaller work on Biblical coins and measures in 1582. He would briefly serve as superintendent in Goslar, but he would be dismissed as a result of theological differences. Stung, he returned to his hometown and changed to the less controversial profession of a beer brewer, until his death in 1606. The work for which he is best known, Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae, was the first complete summary of biblical geography. It remained in print in more than sixty editions, long after his death. Earlier editions contain some of the most distinctive and sought after maps, most notably his map of the world in the shape of a cloverleaf, and an allegorical map of Asia in the form of a Pegasus.   Further Details...

Source

Bünting, Heinrich, Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae, (Magdeburg) 1597.    

Condition

Good. Marginal mends; cropped to left and right with some loss to borders. margins reinstated.

References

OCLC 163817121. Laor, E. Mapping of the Holy Land 142.