One of the earliest maps showing Pakistan

PTOLEMY, Claudius.

[Nona Asie] Tabula.
Ulm, Johan Reger, 1482-86. Original hand colour with blue finishing on the sea area and rivers. Woodcut, 410 x 550mm.

Lower margin trimmed into border by 3 mm.

Rare map of Pakistan and Afghanistan, from an early German edition of Ptolemy, with metal-type lettering within a coloured trapezoid border, with a Latin-text on verso with a coloured capital.

The map was originally published by Lienhart Holle in an edition of Ptolemy's 'Geography' with revisions by the cartographer Nicolaus Germanus Donis. This was the first European atlas published outside Italy and the first to be illustrated with woodcut maps. Soon afterwards Holle went bankrupt, probably because of the cost of producing the atlas, and Reger acquired the rights to the 'Geography', reissuing the second and last edition of this version in 1486.


Stock ID : 12238