British Library exhibit features magnificent maps

by Vrej Nersessian

Published: Tuesday August 17, 2010

A serio-comic map by Fred W. Rose from 1877.

London - Magnificent Maps: Power, propaganda and art is an exhibit at The British Library running through September 19. Sourced from one of the greatest map collections in the world, many of the visual delights will be completely new even to experts. Over 130 ‘ magnificent' maps ranging from Ancient Rome (AD 200) to modern period are exhibited, accompanied by a catalogue of the same title.

Most people are unaware of the impact originally created by wall maps, and painted maps because so few have survived. They used size and beauty to convey messages of status and power. This exhibition focuses on re-establishing manuscript, painted and printed mural maps as a major cultural medium particularly in early modern Europe.

The British Library's map collection contains fifteen maps in the Armenian language. These were catalogued by me in the Catalogue of Early Armenian Books, 1512-1850; The British Library, 1980 [entries 677-691, pp.150-152].

This Catalogue provides a description of the 670 early Armenian printed books in the British Library and the Bodleian Library.

Of special significance is the ‘magnificent' Armenian atlas called Hamatarads Ashkharhatsoyts Meds [Atlas of the world in double-hemispheres, BL Map Room 920.(89)] printed in the printing press of Archbishop T'ovmas Vanandetsi Amsterdam in 1695.

The engravings of the map are by "Amsterdam's most renowned engravers" brothers Adrian and Peter Schoonebeck and the Armenian text by the nephew of Archbishop T'ovmas Ghoukas Nurijanian Vanandetsi. The eight-sheet map measuring 126 x 158 was a "prohibitively expensive for all but the wealthiest of patrons."

The description and evaluation provided by the curators of the exhibition in their catalogue of this spectacular map is well short of being competent [124]. The full and comprehensive provenance of the map is provided by the twelve-line Armenian inscription on the map, which the curator's have not consulted.

To facilitate the use of the Map Ghoukas Nourijanian, Vanandetsi in 1696 published his Banali Hamatarads Ashkharhatsutsin (Key to the Map...) in the same press as the Atlas.

In addition to the Key in order to ensure the full benefit of the map for the Armenian merchants who held influential position during the heyday of the Dutch East India Company, the headquarters of which were in Amsterdam, Ghoukas Nurijanian also compiled and printed third manual called Ganj Tchapoy, kshroy, tevoy ew dramits vorov bolor ashkhari vacharakanoutiwnn vari...[A manual of the measures, weights, numbers and currencies by which the world's entire trade is done], also issued by the T'ovmas Vanandetsi press in Amsterdam in 1699. According to the colophon the patron of this volume was Khatchatour of New Julfa, son of Petros.

The current exhibit's catalogue refers to ‘the Armenian Archbishop Warthabeth' giving the impression that Warthabeth is the name of the archbishop. In fact warthabeth is the Armenian term vardapet by which celibate or unmarried priests are know in the Armenian Church.

These errors could have been avoided if the curator's had consulted British Library's Catalogues of its holdings.

In May 1707 the two important figures of Armenian printing T'ovmas Vanandetsi, Archbishop of Goghtn province in Van and his nephew Ghoukas Nurijanian founders of the Armenian press in Amsterdam visited Oxford.

On May 29 of that year the renowned Theatro Sheldoniano, Archbishop T'ovmas Vandandets was rewarded a Doctorate of Divinity, and his nephew, Ghoukas Nurijanian was given the award of Master of Arts. In connection with the conferment of these honorary degrees, a pamphlet was printed. One of the testimonials appended to the narration gives a list of the books printed at the Vanandetsi press in Amsterdam up to that date, which were the Archbishop's gift to the Bodleian Library and are kept in the collection under a press mark which bears the initials ‘Th' for T'ovmas' (see Nersessian,pp.41-43).

The second exhibit of timely interest is Fred. W. Rose's Serio-Comic Map for the year 1877 (size 55.5 x 71cm;BL.Maps*1078. (45).

Russia threatened to invade the enfeebled Ottoman Empire in support of its fellow Christian Bulgarians who had been the victims of a Turkish massacre (indicated by a skull). Britian and Germany were determined that Russia should not conquer Constantinople and thereby gain direct access for its fleet to the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

Rose shows Russia as an octopus with two eyes (representing St Petersburg and Moscow). It is throttling Poland and nearly strangling Finland, while its tentacles threaten the shah of Persia, Central Asia, Armenia, the Holy Land and Constantinople, shown as the Sultan's gold watch. Greece, portrayed as a crab, is ready to join the Russian attack on Turkey.

The old German emperor, Wilhelm I, tries to push back the octopus, and Hungary wants to intervene but is restrained by Austria, while England and Scotland look on anxiously.

In the event Germany and the United Kingdom made a common cause at the Berlin Conference in 1878 from where the British Prime Minister Disraeli returned holding the ‘Peace with Honour' document subsequently satirized by Fred. W. Rose.