Holy Land (1702)

Stunning 1702 map of the Holy Land, Israel, or Palestine by N. Visscher and D. Stoopendaal. This map, from Keur's important Dutch Bible of 1702, is oriented to west and covers from the Nile Delta, Cairo and Memphis, Egypt, across the Red Sea and along the Mediterranean Coast as far north as Sidon and Tyre (Lebanon), and further inland, Palmyra. Cartographically this map hails from the Nicholas Visscher map of 1650, but it does exhibit some modifications including completely revised topical imagery in the lower quadrants. Like Visscher's map, our map shows the course of the Israelites as they fled out of Egypt, across the Red Sea, and subsequently spent the next forty years wandering in the Sinai before migrating into the Promised Land by crossing the Jordan river just north of the Dead Sea. Mt. Sinai, Mt. Horeb, Sodom, Gomorra, Jerusalem, and countless other importable Biblical locals are noted. In the Mediterranean a fleet of ships is transporting cedar from Sidon to Jaffa for the construction of Solomon's Temple. Also in the Mediterranean, there is an illustration Jonah being swallowed by the whale.

These are the only two decorative elements that are inherited directly from Visscher's map of 1650. The elaborate decorative engraving work in the lower quadrants of the map is the work of Stoopendaal, a Dutch engraver active in Amsterdam during the late 17th and early 19th centuries. Stoopendaal's elaborate illustrations depicts various scenes from Exodus including Moses receiving the Tables of Law, the encampments of the Israelites, Moses producing water from a stone, etc. A truly beautiful map and one of the finest maps to appear in an 18th century Bible.