Sefer Igeret orḥot ʻolam
Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol, ca. 1451–ca. 1525
Sefer Igeret orḥot ʻolam (Letter of the Paths of the World)
Prague: Eisenwanger, 1793
The book Sefer Igeret orḥot ʻolam (Letter of the Paths of the World) by Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol, an illustrious Jewish-Italian geographer, contains the first mention of America in Hebrew literature. Moreover, Farissol dedicated an entire chapter to the description of America’s geography and Indigenous population. While he completed the manuscript before his death around 1525, the first edition of the book was not published in Venice until 1586 (The New York Public Library has a copy of this rare first edition in its collection). The Prague edition (shown here) was produced much later, in 1793, and was the first to include contemporary engravings by the Czech artist Antonín Karel Balzer (1771–1807).
Balzer’s work reflects the 18th century’s perceptions of geography and science. The famous engraving on the left side of the page shows the allegorical discovery of America as Balzer imagined it: people and domestic animals entering the New World through a door in the celestial body of the Earth. This woodcut also evokes the biblical narrative from the Book of Genesis about Noah’s Ark, when Noah, his family members, and domestic animals find refuge from a global flood.
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