A cornerstone map & the first collectible map to show all of Africa. This is the only edition with the surrounding gridline:   AFRICA XXV NOVA TABULA

Original woodblock printed map
Uncolored as issued
257 x 345 mm (not including title above map)
Map # AF-550   
$ Sold

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This map is famous for the medieval depiction of the Cyclops.  The map also shows an elephant, and various African kingdoms including Hamarich, the capital of the famous Christian king, Prester John.  Munster's map is based partly on Ptolemaic sources (the Nile begins in the two fictitious lakes), partly on Portuguese sources, and partly on Arabic sources. 

This map first appeared in Munster's edition of Claudius Ptolemy's Geographia in 1540.  There were only four editions of Munster's Geographia.   These were the only editions with "NOVA TABULA" in the title above the map (the "XXV" refers to the map's page number in the book).   This particular map is from the 1552 edition of Munster's Geographia.  The 1552 edition is the only one with the surrounding numerical gridline.  

This is Variant 9 of the map.  There is a later woodcut map of Africa that appeared in editions of the Cosmographia from 1588 to 1628.

Sebastian Munster (1489-1552) was one of the three great cartographers who dominated the sixteenth century, along with Mercator and Ortelius, "and of these three, Munster probably had the widest influence in spreading geographical knowledge throughout Europe in the middle years of the century" (Moreland & Bannister, p.78). "[Munster's] Cosmographia... contained not only the latest maps and views of many well-known cities, but included an encyclopedic amount of detail about the known - and unknown - world and undoubtedly must have been one of the most widely read books of its time."

Reference:  Betz Map #3, Variant 9.  Tooley, Map Collectors' Circle: Map Collectors' Series on African Maps, No. 29.  Norwich Map # 2.  Moreland and Bannister.

Very Fine condition.  Solid paper with a clean, strong map image.