Maps and Map-Makers of the Aegean [antikvár]

The subject of this book is the mapping of the Aegean Sea, or the Greek Archipelago, as it was perhaps better-known to foreign cartographers and travellers. The maps the book contains which have necessarily been the result of a process of selection span the period from the early 15th century, when the first attempts were made in the West to depict a specific area in the form of a map, to recent times. With the exception of the manuscript maps of Buondelmonti and some manuscript portolans, all the maps are printed: many are copper engravings, with woodcuts and lithographs being encountered less frequently.Throughout this period, lasting more than five hundred years (the most recent map is that of the North Aegean published by the Greek Hydrographical Service in 1967), and through copying, repetition, alteration and additions large and small, the maps record and bear witness to the development of cartographic tools and techniques, to the gradual formulation of the modern concept of geographical space, and, primarily, to the particular interest which the Aegean has always had for the countries surrounding it. Our book's ambition is to provide a reading of this three-fold yet unified phenomenon.It frequently happens that a map is at the same time a work of art, a scientific record and a political document, and the co-existence of these three features constituted the basic criterion on which the maps were selected. The persistent mapping of a specific area, by cartographers of various countries often acting on the orders of their governments, is