Girolamo Ruscelli's 1561 Egypt and North East Africa

I attended the last Ottawa Antiquarian Book Fair. This is not a really big fair and the focus really is much more on books than maps, but there are the occasional vendors who have a good selection worth spending some time looking at.

I ended up buying two maps from a vendor I saw there (I actually didn't buy at the fair but contacted him months later to see if he still had them) who I don't think specialized in maps at all, but had a real range of materials for sale, the maps I chose being the apparent exception to the rule.

Here's the map, and what I've learned about it follows:

This is a projection of north east Africa, primarily Egypt, printed in 1561 by Girolamo Ruscelli.

Ruscelli himself was an interesting guy. He was into a bit of everything, including cartography, and apparently published a 'book of secrets' which aimed to answer some basic scientific questions, provide advice on matters related to science and perhaps dabbled in some alchemy as well.

This map is one of a number he published in his revision of Ptolemy's Geography. There's a link to it, with a high quality image here, where you can see it's on sale for USD$125 (I paid much less for it, which is very satisfying).

There is much that I don't know about this region, and it's difficult for me to comment too heavily on the map, but when I saw it, having been to Egypt, I knew I wanted it.

The map has some interesting elements, for example, showing off the cities of Cairo and Alexandria. Having a strangely representative delta of the Nile, and showing what appears to be some sizable islands in the Nile

The map also seems to show the Nile having three southern branches, different than the two (Blue and While Niles). The rivers on the map are not particularly well labeled, however, so it's hard to be sure what they refer to.



This is one of two maps by the same cartographer I bought from the same vendor and it's interesting for its age, the history behind it and it's producer and of course the subject matter. Egypt was and is a source of fascination to many for many reasons. I'm lucky to have such an early representation of it.

The Puzzle of the Map: Seven Bridges of Königsberg (today Kaliningrad)

I'm bad at math. Like, really bad. This is hard on my father who is a mathematician with the degrees to prove it. He keeps trying to get me interested in math, and his latest attempt is to tell me about the problem of the seven bridges of Königsberg, today Kaliningrad, Russia.

Here's the issue, and a colourful 1732 map of the city available for purchase here (as always no affiliation between me and the seller of any kind, simply giving credit where it's due), to help illustrate it.

As you can see, the city in 1732 had seven bridges, which I've highlighted in yellow. Residents used to like to play a game. They would try to take a stroll around the town attempting to cross each bridge exactly once and start and end in the same spot.

This is the point where you may want to take out a piece of paper and try to sketch this out on your own. 

Meanwhile, I can also show you this fabulous map of the city from sometime in the 1580's before the city's seventh bridge was built. This map is no longer for sale, as it was sold by Sanderus Antiquariat, as you can see here. It looks like if there were a seventh bridge on this map, it would be obscured by the couple standing in the foreground. 

WARNING

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON

One of the wonderful things about the beautiful map above, is that having six, instead of seven bridges, is basically the only way it would be (sort of) possible to accomplish this bridge-walking map puzzle. It's impossible to do it with seven bridges, and possible with six bridges if you end up somewhere other than where you've started, and this is where the math comes in.

My father suggested I write about this because of the famous mathematician Leonhard Euler. Euler essentially reduced the problem to a graph. Now, this is where my lack of mathematical knowledge shows, but from what I understand, you have to almost forget about the bridges for a moment, and imagine the various points or nodes you'll be going to. Looking at the map above, imagine for example that you start at the church on the central island, you can cross to the south bank of the river, use the other bridge to get you back to the central church, then cross to the north bank, walk along it to get back to the central church, cross to the orchard in the east, and then back up to the north bank.

Like this:

Euler explained that in order for the puzzle to work, each location, point or node (the central church, the north and south bank and the orchard, must have either exactly zero or two points of contact with each other. If there are more, and (I think) especially if it's an odd number, then it doesn't work. 

Anyway, I don't want to pretend to know anything about math, so I'll happy link to a few good sources of information about the puzzle. Here, here and of course, wikipedia, here.

Meanwhile, to soothe your frustration, enjoy these beautiful maps. They're really great.

Caveat Emptor: The Lesson of the Fake Waldseemüller Gores

There have been stories recently, in major news publications, about an extremely rare, early 16th century map that was set to go to auction with an expected selling price of at least USD800,000, but that has turned out to be a fake. It's a cool story, and a cautionary tale worth recording.

The map in question is the Martin Waldseemüller "gores". Gores are meant to be cut out and pasted onto a sphere to create a globe. That's one reason why this map is so rare. Most of these maps would have been cut up after being produced and lost over time. In fact, only four originals were known to exist of a map believed to be the first printed globe and the first to use the word "America".

The map was described as "a huge deal". It was the first to show the world in 360 degrees. Showed an important new landmass, and introduced an important new word into our lexicon. It also gave arguably inflated importance to the explorer Amerigo Vespucci.

It's an amazing thought, that just 15 years after Columbus's voyage, a map-maker scrambled to compile all this new information he's learning about the new world and to try and express it in a new way.  

Apparently, the story goes that someone walked off the street into Christie's auction house and claimed to be a descendant of a well known British paper restorer who had found the map among his late-relative's papers. The experts at the Auction house were overjoyed. The felt they had chanced upon an amazing treasure. Too bad they were wrong.

A map expert named Alex Clausen, employed by the well known (in the map world) Barry Ruderman of Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps, spotted a few things amiss.

A drop of glue on the paper, that would have affixed it to something, had print on top of the adhesive, rather than under it, as might be expected. In other places, detail seems to have been added to the map, where it would have been expected to be missing as the printing process wore it down. Another concern, caught by another paper expert, was that there was a line on the map that matched a spot where a verified original map had been repaired. It was too coincidental for this new map to have an identical repair. Moreover, another copy of the map, previously presumed to be original also had this same line. That latter map's status as an original is now also being re-considered by its owner.

Such a map would likely never be in the hands of an amateur or casual map collector, but it raises a question: if most experts were nearly fooled, how could an amateur ever avoid being duped? If the nuances between the real thing and a fake are so hard to detect, it's discouraging to someone who may want to take a step into buying some of the rarer, older, and more expensive maps that are on the market. The best advice, is probably to ask lots of questions of the seller, including about the provenance--the historical chain of ownership--of the map. It also helps to have a high level of trust in the seller.

Above all, it reinforces the much older maxim: caveat emptor! Let the buyer beware.