File:L'Afrique selon les relations les plus nouvelles - dressée sur les memoires du Sr de Tillemont; divisée en tous ses royaumes (MAPS 83).jpg

Copper engraving handcolored with watercolor.

Outline color.

Paper contains watermarks.

Relief shown pictorially.

Shows the Nile River and the Blue Nile as having a its source in Lake Tana in Abyssinian highlands. The Niger River in West Africa is shown with an east to west orientation that begins in Niger Lake and ends in the Atlantic Ocean. The Nubia River is shown as running west to east into the Nile. In Southern Africa, three rivers are shown: Zambeze, Cuame and Spirito Santo.

Decorative title cartouche in upper right quadrant featuring illustrations of a hunter pointing his spear at the mouth of a crocodile, a snake, a camel, an elephant, and a lioness. Cartouche in lower right corner holds six geographic bar scales showing Italian miles, French leagues, Spanish leagues, German leagues, road leagues, and marine leagues. A key is engraved to the left of the geographic bar scales. Two intertwined serpents over modern-day Rwanda, Burundi and over parts of the DRC, Zambia, and Tanzania, hold text describing what was known by Europeans at the time of the map's creation about the Nile River, making reference to the Egyptians, Jesuit explorations of Abyssinia by Pedro Paez, Manuel de Almeida, Alphonso Mendez and Jerome Lobo, and a 1681 maps of Abyssinia published in Hiob Ludolf's "Historia Aethiopia". Includes an illustration of a ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

Jean Baptiste Nolin (1648-1708) was a French geographer, publisher and engraver in Paris. His works include "Siam" (1687), "Canada" (1688-9), "America Septentrionale" (1689) and "Celestial Globe" (1693). He published revisions of Vincenzo Coronelli's maps by Jean Nicolas Du Trallage, Sieur de Tellemon(t) (d. 1699). After Nolin's death, his son and namesake continued to publish many of his maps and later published "Le Theatre du Monde" (Tooley, 182, 467; Moreland and Bannister, 130). Herman van Loon (fl. 1667-74) was an engraver and publisher, first in Amsterdam and then in Paris after 1686. He engraved maps for De Fer, De L'Isle and Nolin (Tooley, 400). This particular map is the fourth state of a map originally by Vincenzo Coronelli in 1689. This state has been revised by Jean Nicolas Du Trallage, Sieur de Tillemon(t) (d. 1699) for publication by Jean Baptiste Nolin (1648-1708). His son, Jean Baptiste Nolin (1686-1762), later published this state in 1742 in "Le Theatre du Monde." This map is considered a major "transitional map" in the history of Africa's cartography. It attempts to fix erroneous river systems evident in earlier maps. It "almost completely omits the two Ptolemaic lakes in Central Africa, except for the lower portion of …Lake Zaire" (Betz, 431-3). Of note, the map attempts to give current information about European settlements along the coast and it follows Jaillot's 1674 map in showing only three major rivers in southern Africa: Zambeze, Cuame and Spirito Santo (Betz, 432). Source(s): Bassett, Thomas J. and Philip W. Porter. "'From the Best Authorities': The Mountains of Kong in the Cartography of West Africa." The Journal of African History. 32.3 (1991): 367-413. Betz, Richard L. "The Mapping of Africa: A Cartobibliography of Printed Maps of the African Continent to 1700." 't Goy Houten: Hes & de Graaf, 2007. Moreland, Carl and David Bannister. "Antique Maps: A Collector's Handbook." New York: Longman Group, Ltd., 1983. Tooley, Ronald Vere. "Tooley's Dictionary of Mapmakers." Hertfordshire: Map Collector Publications Limited, 1979.

• Subjects (LCSH): Africa--Maps--Early works to 1800
• Categories: Cartographic Curiosa