1635 Bünting/ Hasaert Woodcut Map of the Holy Land

Tribes of Israel.

This is a scarce 1635 Dutch woodcut map of the Holy Land, presenting (as per the title) a 'map of the Holy Lands, describing how it was when the Children of Israel lived there.' The map depicts the location of present-day Israel, Palestine, and parts of Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.

A Closer Look

The Mediterranean coastline is mapped from Gaza in the south to Sidon in the north. The Jordan River, the Sea of Galilee, and the Dead Sea, extending to the Biblical Arnon River (Wadi Mujib), all appear. At the eastern extreme of the map are pictorial mountains separating the Holy Land from Arabia. Biblical cities and towns are copiously marked, and the regions of the Tribes of Israel are labeled. The Mediterranean is decorated with fine sailing ships, one of which is menaced by a whale as a passenger - the Prophet Jonah - is thrown overboard to placate it.

Publication History and Census

This woodcut appeared in a 1635 Matthias Hasaert Dutch edition of Heinrich Bünting's Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae, a paper pilgrimage to the Holy Land first printed in 1581. Its popularity kept it in print into the 18th century. Later examples appear to come from a separate block. The formschneider is unknown. There are seventeen examples of the Hasaert-published Bünting Itinerarium listed in OCLC. There are no examples of this map cataloged in institutional collections.

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

Hasaert, Matthias/ Laurensz, Hendrick, Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae. Dat is: Het reysboeck der heyligher Schrift, (Amsterdam), 1635.    

Condition

Very good. Light toning at edges, else excellent with a bold strike.

References

cf OCLC 1249019963 (a different block of the same map, from a 1648 Theunis Jacobsz edition.)