Sepher Eilim

AUCTION 4 | Tuesday, March 03rd, 1998 at 1:00

Fine Judaica: Books, Manuscripts and Works of Art The Property of Various Owners

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Lot 161

DELMEDIGO, JOSEPH SOLOMON OF CRETE

Sepher Eilim

FIRST EDITION. Three Parts in one. Engraved frontispiece portrait of the Author, numerous astronomical and mathematical illustrations. A good wide-margined copy pp.(4),96,80,97-190,(14),83, misbound though all complete. Small stain through opening 4 pp., and on final page, three leaves with neat marginal repairs not affecting text. Contemporary limp vellum. 4to

Amsterdam: Menassah ben Israel 1628-29

Est: $4,000 - $5,000

PRICE REALIZED $7,500

One of the great scientific books of Hebrew Literature, Delmedigo presents these treatises in response to inquiries by Karaite scholars, relating to: geometry, algebra, chemistry, astronomy, physics, medicine and metaphysics. Sabin-Hill calls the Sepher Eilim “the most sumptuously illustrated of early scientific works in Hebrew, and unique in printed Hebrew literature before the modern period.” See National Library of Canada Catalogue, The Jacob H. Lowy Collection (1981) no.80 (illustrated); A. Neher, Jewish Thought and the Scientific Revolution of the Sixteenth Century (1986) pp.251-2; H. Friedenwald, Jewish Luminaries in Medical History-Catalogue (1946) p.111; A.J. Karp. From the Ends of the Earth: Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress (1991) pp. 199-200