Africae magna pars…

Title

Africae magna pars…

Description

Map of the northwestern part of Africa and a very decorative cartouche.

ca. 1720

Artist

Seutter (1678-1757)

Matthias Seutter (1678- 1757) Augsburg was the son of a goldsmith in Augsburg. In 1697, Seutter began his studies in Nuremberg and subsequently worked in the publishing house of Jeremias Wolff in Augsburg. In 1710, he established his own publishing house and print shop. The Seutter publishing house produced a great number of maps, atlases, and globes. However, very few original maps were printed there, as Augsburg at that time had no university and no connection to the fields of mathematics or the natural sciences. Seutter therefore copied the work of other cartographers, making his own engravings based on their models. Over 500 maps were produced in his studio. Seutter's most well-known works are the 1725 "Geographical Atlas or an Accurate Depiction of the Whole World" ("Atlas Geographicus oder Accurate Vorstellung der ganzen Welt") with 46 maps, the 1734 "Large Atlas" ("Grosser Atlas") with 131 maps, and the 1744 pocket atlas "Small Atlas" ("Atlas minor") with 64 maps. Matthäus Seutter died in 1757. Seutter's son Albrecht Karl, his son-in-law Conrad Tobias Lotter, and his business partner Johann Michael Probst ran the printing business for five more years.

Historical Description

According to the "Out-of-Africa theory", Africa is considered the "cradle of mankind", where homo development led to the development of the anatomically modern human Homo sapiens. One of the earliest advanced civilizations in mankind was formed in ancient Egypt. Over the millennia, various "great empires" such as the Empire of Abyssinia emerged on the continent. There were other kingdoms in West Africa, such as the Ashanti and Haussa, but they emerged much later. There were also some important cultures in East and South Africa, as in the area of today's Sudan, then called Nubia or Kush. Nubian pharaohs ruled all of Egypt for a dynasty. For example, the inhabitants of Greater Zimbabwe were important cultures in southern Africa. This stone castle was architecturally a masterpiece at that time and important for trade between the peoples of the south and east. The Swahili were known in East Africa. North Africa was connected to Europe and the Near East by the Mediterranean rather than separated. Carthage, a foundation of the Phoenicians in what is now Tunisia, was around the middle of the 1st millennium BC. The dominant power in the western Mediterranean until it was replaced by Rome in the Punic Wars. This prevailed from 30 BC. BC (conquest of Egypt) over all of North Africa. Even the ancient Egyptians (Queen Hatshepsut) made trips to Punt, probably in what is now Somalia. The kingdom of the Queen of Sheba, which probably had its center in southern Arabia, is said to have spanned parts of the Horn from Africa to the north of Ethiopia.