Random notes on rare books (10)

Youssouf Kamal : Monumenta cartographica Africae et Aegypti. [Le Caire] 1926-51. 5 vols. in 16 books. (call number: 912.6x-Y83m)

This is a comprehensive collection of ancient maps of Egypt, Africa, the whole world, and related materials.

Youssouf Kamal was an Egyptian prince. Monumenta was actually compiled by Frederick Caspar Wieder (1874-1943) of Leiden University Library. The original concept of the collection was reduced by Wieder's death and the fifth volume, posthumously published as a supplement, was to be the last.

Kamal printed only a hundred copies of Monumenta as his private edition (printed and bound by E. J. Brill) not for sale. The prince kept twenty-five copies and donated 75 to major libraries and institutions throughout the world. A list of the organizations which received a copy is carried in Quelques éclaircissementes épars sur mes monumenta cartographica Africae et Aegypti (private edition. 1935. Call number: 912.6-Y83q), a separate volume of Monumenta, and it shows that about thirty copies were given to libraries in Africa and the Middle and Near East (including ten copies to institutions in Cairo) and most of the rest to European and American libraries. The Imperial Library (one of the predecessors of the NDL) was the only one in Japan that received Monumenta.

Monumenta is bound in such a large edition (76 x 63 cm, and about 5 cm thick) that it is difficult to handle. It is clothbound with a spine label in morocco leather.

The volumes are composed chronologically in principle: Vol. 1 (one book): pre-Ptolemaic era; Vol. 2 (four books): Ptolemaic and Greco-Roman periods; Vol. 3 (five books): Age of Islamic science; Vol. 4 (four books): Age of portolano (marine charts); Vol. 5 (two books): Renaissance and modernization of cartology.

The contents vary very widely: from manuscripts to printed matter, from independent sheet maps to such documents as chronicles and travel records. Reconstructions of a later period are not unusual.

The plates in Monumenta which include only a very few colored ones, are collotypes, as the collotype process was the best method of reproduction in those days. It contains many rare maps scattered all over the world, but naturally features the richness of the Islamic collection. For the documents, French translations are added as well as texts in the original languages, in a style so de luxe that all the African place-names are printed in red ink.

A list of geographical atlases in the Library of Congress (8 vols. published by LC in 1909-74. Call number: G62-10) carries the list of all the items contained in Monumenta (pp.426-458).