The earliest available printed map of the Holy Land in Hebrew

An important map of the Holy Land, engraved for Moses Wesel's Haggadah (1695), the first to contain a map. It is the earliest available printed map of the region in Hebrew; the only complete example of the earliest, the 1621 map of Yaaqov ben Abraham Zaddiq, is in the Bibliothèque National in Paris. The map was drawn by Abraham bar Jacob (or Abraham bar Yaaqov, (c.1669-1730), a German pastor from the Rhineland who converted to Judaism and moved to Amsterdam, becoming an engraver. He has based his map on that of Christian Van Adrichom but has removed any reference to Christianity. The land is divided into the Twelve Tribes, with the names of villages mentioned in the Bible. The Exodus is marked, with a list of the 41 camps in the strapwork cartouche, with the unusual feature of presenting the journey 'not as leaving but returning' (Karp: 'From the Ends of the Earth Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress'). Among the vignettes under the map are the ships of Solomon dragging rafts of cedar for the building of the Temple, and Jonah being thrown overboard and his deliverance. The eagle represents the verse in Exodus in which describes bearing the Israelites from Egypt on eagles' wings. The woman riding a crocodile is an allegorical representation of Egypt. Because the map was published in a Haggadah, for use at the Seder Table, it is usually found with some damage. It was first published c.1695 but continued to be printed until at least 1781.