Sumatra ein grosse Insel / so von den alten Geographen Taprobana genennt worden. [Sumatra A Large Island Named Taprobana by the Ancient Geographers]

Description

hand-coloured wood engraving map. verso: “Taprobana…” One of the earliest known recognisable maps of Malay and Sumatra from “Cosmographia Universalis” (German edition.) Both Sumatra and Sri Lanka “have been associated with the mythical island of Taprobana.”

Münster was a German cartographer and cosmographer whose “Cosmographia” was the first work of science-based knowledge in the German language. He was a Hebrew scholar and became a Franciscan monk at an early age. The contents, the woodcut images and specially his maps influenced geographical thought for generations and well into the 17th Century, enforced by many posthumous reprints.