World Digital Library – Greece

 

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Album of Religious Artifacts from the Church Archaeological Museum of Kiev Theological Academy

This book, the first in a series of albums dedicated to the Church Archaeological Museum of Kiev Theological Academy, is about the collection of icons from Mount Sinai and Mount Athos assembled by Bishop Porfiry Uspensky (1804–85). Bishop Porfiry was born in Russia, studied at the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy, and was ordained as a priest in 1829. In 1842 he was sent by the synod of the Russian Orthodox Church to Jerusalem to strengthen relations with the Orthodox Christians of Syria and Palestine. In 1845–46 he made …

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National Parliamentary Library of Ukraine

Commentaries by Domizio Calderini on Works by Juvenal, Statius, Ovid, and Propertius

Under the influence of Italian humanism and of his book-collector tutor János Vitéz, the Archbishop of Esztergom, Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (1443–1490), developed a passion for books and learning. Elected king of Hungary in 1458 at the age of 14, Matthias won great acclaim for his battles against the Ottoman Turks and his patronage of learning and science. He created the Bibliotheca Corviniana, in its day one of Europe’s finest libraries. After his death, and especially after the conquest of Buda by the Turks in 1541, the library …

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Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence

Dialogues of the Gods

This manuscript contains ten of the dialogues of Lucianus, a second-century rhetorician and satirist who wrote in Greek, in the Latin version of Livio Guidolotto (also seen as Guidalotto or Guidalotti). Livio, a classical scholar from Urbino, was the apostolic assistant of Pope Leo X, and he dedicated his translation to the pope in an introductory epistle of 1518 ("Romae, Idibus maii MDXVIII"; folio 150v). The latest possible date for the manuscript thus is 1521, the year Leo died. The emblem of Giovanni de’ Medici, with the beam accompanied by …

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Municipal Library Intronati

Of Medical Substances

The precious codex known as the Dioscurides Neapolitanus contains the work of Pedanius Dioscorides, the Greek physician who was born at Anazarbus near Tarsus in Cilicia (present-day Turkey) and lived in the first century AD during the reign of the Emperor Nero. Dioscorides wrote the treatise Perì üles iatrichès, commonly known in Latin as De materia medica (Of medical substances), in five books. It is considered the most important medical manual and pharmacopeia of ancient Greece and Rome and was highly regarded in the Middle Ages in both the Western …

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National Library of Naples

The Eastern Question in Europe and Asia

In the late-19th century, European politics were troubled by what had come to be called the “Eastern Question,” the fate of the 600-year Ottoman Empire. Once encompassing the Ottoman heartland of Anatolia (present-day Turkey), most of the Arab Middle East, and the Balkan Peninsula, by 1886 the empire had shrunk dramatically as a result of wars with European powers, Russia in particular, and revolts by subject peoples. This 1886 map, published in London, shows the Turkish Empire as comprised mainly of Albania, Thrace, Crete, Anatolia, and parts of the Arab …

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Library of Congress

The Near and Middle East: Balkan Peninsula

This map of the Near and Middle East was compiled in 1940 by the Geographical Section of the General Staff of the British Army and published by the War Office of the British government in 1941. The map shows topographic relief by gradient tints and indicates railroads, principal roads, secondary roads, caravan routes and tracks, the names and boundaries of provinces and districts, and deserts, rivers, swamps, and other topographic features. Towns and cities are classified and shown by categories, from first (capitals) to fifth in importance. Also shown are …

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Library of Congress

General Map of the Turkish War Theater

This map, published in Berlin in July 1916, shows the Turkish theater of World War I. It is based on an 1884 map in French of the Asian provinces of the Ottoman Empire by German geographer and cartographer Heinrich Kiepert (1818–99). The map contains additional notes in German and its coverage of existing and projected railroads is updated to 1916. The Ottoman territories, shown in pink, include present-day Turkey, Cyprus, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, as well as Saudi Arabia. The Ottoman Empire, or Turkey as it was …

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Library of Congress

The Empire and Expeditions of Alexander the Great

This 1833 map in Latin shows the conquests of Alexander the Great (356–323 BC), whose empire stretched from present-day Greece through Turkey and the Middle East to Afghanistan. In 326 BC Alexander set out to conquer India, but he was stymied when his exhausted armies mutinied on the banks of the Hyphasis River (now known as the Beas River) in northern India. The map shows the cities that Alexander founded and named after himself, including Alexandria Arachosia (Kandahar, Afghanistan), Alexandria Ariana (Herat, Afghanistan), Alexandria, Egypt, and many others. Place-names …

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Library of Congress

The Historical Theater in the Year 400 AD, in Which Both Romans and Barbarians Resided Side by Side in the Eastern Part of the Roman Empire

This map in Latin by the great French mapmaker Guillaume de L’Isle (1675–1726) shows the eastern parts of the Roman Empire circa 400 AD and the territory of adjacent tribes and kingdoms not under Rome’s control. The latter include the Sarmatians and the Scythians, peoples that the Romans regarded as barbarians. Arabia is shown divided into its three traditional divisions, Arabia Petrea, Arabia Felix, and Arabia Deserta. Qatar is indicated as “Catarei.” The eastern part of the map shows the empire of Alexander the Great, including Persia …

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Library of Congress

Map of Asian-Eastern Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, and Arabia

This map, published in Paris in 1842, shows the Asian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, Persia (present-day Iran), Afghanistan, and the Arabian Peninsula. The map appeared in Atlas universel de géographie ancienne et moderne (Universal atlas of ancient and modern geography) by the cartographer and engraver Pierre M. Lapie (1779–1850). Lapie was a member of the corps of topographical engineers in the French army, where he rose to the rank of colonel. He eventually became head of the topographical section in the Ministry of War. He was assisted by …

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Library of Congress

Studio Portrait of Models Wearing Traditional Clothing from the Province of Selanik (Salonica), Ottoman Empire

Pascal Sébah was a prolific and well-known Ottoman photographer who worked for both Ottoman and Western clients. Sébah’s studio produced a number of collections of ethnographic and costume photos, some in collaborations with the painter and archaeologist Osman Hamdi Bey. This photomechanical print is drawn from one such collaboration, a book entitled Les costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873 (Folk [or Traditional] costumes of Turkey in 1873). This album depicting ethnic costumes from throughout the Ottoman Empire was commissioned by the Ottoman government for the 1873 International Fair …

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Library of Congress

Peloponnesus, Presently the Kingdom of Morea, Clearly Divided into All Its Provinces, Both Contemporary and Ancient, and to which is Added the Islands of Cefalonia, Zante, Cerigo, and St. Maura

This late-17th century map by the Dutch engraver, publisher, and map seller Frederick de Wit (1629 or 1630-1706) shows the Peloponnesian Peninsula of Greece. The outer margins contain views of 14 fortified towns, the names of which are given in Italian. The illustration at the lower left shows a lion with enslaved human figures in an embellished cartouche with title. At the time the map was made, Greece was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans allowed religious freedom to the Christians of Greece, but not full equality …

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Library of Congress

Preface of Nicolas Gerbelius to Sophianos’s Description of Greece

Nikolaos Sophianos was a 16th-century Greek priest, scholar, translator, and publisher. He was born on Corfu and sent to Rome at an early age, where he studied at the Greek school on the Quirinal. He completed the first grammar of the Modern Greek language and translated works from ancient into Modern Greek. At some point he left Rome to settle in Venice, where by 1545 he had set up a press. Sophianos’s only known cartographic work is this map of his native country. Known as the Hellados perigraphe (Description …

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Library of Congress

Commentary on Hippocrates’ Aphorisms

The Greek medical tradition survived long after the decline of the Hellenistic world, thanks to the work of Arabic translators and commentators, who preserved the theoretical and practical discoveries of Greek physicians in Arabic translations. The translation of Greek medical texts into Arabic was mainly conducted under the ‘Abbasid caliphs and, in particular, in the circle of intellectuals linked to the name of Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (circa 809–73). Among the Greek physicians, Hippocrates has always been considered an exemplary character, the symbol of the true and scrupulous physician, thanks …

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Library of Congress

Orestes 338-44

This Greek text on papyrus, written around 200 BC in Hermopolis, Egypt, has seven lines of writing containing parts of verses 338–344 from the first chorus of Orestes. Composed in 408 BC by the Greek tragedian Euripides (circa 480 BC–406 BC), the play recounts the story of Orestes, who kills his mother Clytaemnestra to avenge the death of his father, Agamemnon, and is pursued by the Furies for this deed. In addition to a passage of a chorus song (stasimon), the fragment contains vocal and instrumental symbols written …

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Austrian National Library

The Book of Compilation

Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi (also known by his Latinized name, Alpharabius, circa 870–950 AD) was a Muslim philosopher and scientist, who also had interests in political philosophy, logic, cosmology, music, and psychology. Although his origin is unconfirmed, it is generally agreed that al-Farabi was of Persian origin and that he was born either in Faryab in present-day Afghanistan or in Farab in present-day Kazakhstan. He was called the “Second Teacher,” a deferential reference suggesting he was second in philosophy only to Aristotle. Shown here is Kitab Al-majmu’ (Book of …

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Bibliotheca Alexandrina

On the Life of Plotinus. The Six Enneads

Under the influence of Italian humanism and of his book-collector tutor János Vitéz, the Archbishop of Esztergom, Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (1443–1490), developed a passion for books and learning. Elected king of Hungary in 1458 at the age of 14, Matthias won great acclaim for his battles against the Ottoman Turks and his patronage of learning and science. He created the Bibliotheca Corviniana, in its day one of Europe’s finest libraries. After his death, and especially after the conquest of Buda by the Turks in 1541, the library …

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Bavarian State Library

Hieroglyphs: Commentaries on the Sacred Letters of the Egyptians and Other Peoples

Hieroglyphica by the Italian humanist Pierio Valeriano (1477–1560), also known by the Latinized version of his name, Pierius Valerianus, is the first modern study of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Originally published in Basel, Switzerland, in 1556, the book became very popular in Europe. It was reprinted in the 16th and 17th centuries and translated from the original Latin into French and Italian. This Latin edition was published in Lyon, France, in 1602. Valeriano partly based his book on theHieroglyphica of Horapollo, who is said to have been an Egyptian priest …

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Museum Plantin-Moretus/Print Room

Ethnographic Map of the Balkan Peninsula

The dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I transformed the political organization of the Balkans. The war had started in the Balkans with the assassination of the Habsburg Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a militant Bosnian Serb seeking independence for his country from the dual empire. Jovan Cvijić, the author of this “ethnographic map” of the Balkans, published in 1918 by the American Geographical Society of New York, was a professor of geography at the University of Belgrade. Cvijić completed his doctorate at the University of …

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Library of Congress

Three Books on the Soul

Muhammad ibn Ahmed ibn Rushd (also known by the Latinized version of his name, Averroes, 1126–98) was a Muslim jurist, physician, and philosopher from Cordoba, Spain, best known in the West for reintroducing Aristotle to Europe and in the East for his medical works. He studied theology, law, and medicine, and wrote important works in all of these fields. He served as the religious judge of Seville in 1169–72 and as the chief judge of Cordoba in 1172–82. In 1169, Ibn Rushd began writing a series of …

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Qatar National Library

The Story of Dhu al-Qarnayn (Better Known as Alexander the Great)

Timbuktu (present-day Tombouctou in Mali), founded around 1100 as a commercial center for trade across the Sahara Desert, was also an important seat of Islamic learning from the 14th century onward. The libraries there contain many important manuscripts, in different styles of Arabic scripts, which were written and copied by Timbuktu’s scribes and scholars. These works constitute the city’s most famous and long-lasting contribution to Islamic and world civilization.Kitab Qiṣṣat Dhū al-Qarnayn is a 12th-century rendition of the Alexander romance (legends about the mythical exploits …

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Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library