Von den Ländern Africe. / Von den auffgerichten Seulen egyptenlandts, Pyramides genannt.

Title

Von den Ländern Africe. / Von den auffgerichten Seulen egyptenlandts, Pyramides genannt.

Description

Illustration of the pyramids of Egypt with a German description. The reverse shows the balsam herb or lady's mint (Tanacetum balsamita) and a garden with 5 fountains in Marteria, near Alkair, where this balsam herb grew at that time.

ca. 1550

Artist

Münster (1489-1552)

Sebastian Münsters (1489-1552) is one of the famous cosmographers of the Renaissance. Its real importance in the field of cartography is based on its famous cosmography, which he published in 1544 with 24 double-sided maps (including Moscow and Transylvania). The material for this came largely from research and the collection of information from around 1528, which he initially only wanted to use for a description of Germany, but was now sufficient for a map of the entire world and ultimately led to a cosmography. He constantly tried to improve this work, i.e. to replace or add to maps. In the edition of 1550, only 14 maps were taken over from the earlier editions. The 52 maps printed in the text were also only partially based on the old maps. The great success of this cosmography was also based on the precise work of the woodcuts mostly by Hans Holbein the Younger, Urs Graf, Hans Rudolph Deutsch and David Kandel. It was the first scientific and at the same time generally understandable description of the knowledge of the world in German, in which the basics of history and geography, astronomy and natural sciences, regional and folklore were summarized according to the state of knowledge at that time. Cosmography is the science of describing the earth and the universe. Until the late Middle Ages, geography, geology and astronomy were also part of it. The first edition of the Cosmographia took place in 1544 in German, printed in Heinrich Petri's office in Basel. Heinrich Petri was a son from the first marriage of Münster's wife to the Basel printer Adam Petri. Over half of all editions up to 1628 were also published in German. However, the work has also been published in Latin, French, Czech and Italian. The English editions all comprised only a part of the complete work. Viktor Hantzsch identified a total of 46 editions in 1898 (German 27; Latin 8; French 3; Italian 3; Czech 1) that appeared from 1544 to 1650, while Karl Heinz Burmeister only had 36 (German 21; Latin 5; French 6; Italian 3; Czech 1) that appeared between 1544 and 1628. The first edition from 1544 was followed by the second edition in 1545, the third in 1546, the fourth edition in 1548 and the fifth edition in 1550, each supplemented by new reports and details, text images, city views and maps and revised altogether. Little has been known about who - apart from the book printers Heinrich Petri and Sebastian Henricpetri - were responsible for the new editions after Münster's death. The 1628 edition was edited and expanded by the Basel theologian Wolfgang Meyer. With Cosmographia, Sebastian Münster has published for the first time a joint work by learned historians and artists, by publishers, wood cutters and engravers. The numerous vedute are usually made as woodcuts. Sebastian Münster obtained his knowledge from the travel reports and stories of various scholars, geographers, cartographers and sea travelers. Long after his death, "Kosmographie" was still a popular work with large editions: 27 German, 8 Latin, 3 French, 4 English and even 1 Czech editions appeared. The last edition appeared in Basel in 1650.

Historical Description

Cairo's significance really changed in the 19th century with the emergence of the Khedive Empire. Ismail Pasha, who ruled between 1863 and 1879, had numerous buildings erected in the city and took the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 as an opportunity to present Cairo to the European powers as a flourishing metropolis. However, most of the development was financed by foreign loans, which increased Britain's influence in particular. During the reign of Ismail Pasha, Cairo, which now became the capital again, expanded westwards across the Nile. European architects were commissioned to renovate the city, the residential districts of Zamalek and Muhandisin were built, but large parts of today's city center also date from this period. As Egypt's industrialization accelerated, the country's capital continued to grow. By the end of the 19th century, Egypt's foreign debt and the weakness of the Ottoman Empire resulted in growing European influence in Cairo. With the occupation of Egypt by British troops and the crushing of the Urabi movement (1881-1882), Great Britain took control of the country without ending its formal affiliation with the Ottoman Empire. The Khediv of Egypt remained formally a vassal of the Ottomans. The Urabi movement emerged in the fall of 1881 when, following the financial ruin of Egypt under Ismail Pasha, the country came under international financial control. The movement opposed this international control of financial and economic policy and the autocratic rule of the Muhammad Ali dynasty.