Sepher Mayan Ganim - Sepher Eilim - Mayan Chathum.

DELMEDIGO, JOSEPH SOLOMON OF CRETE.

Menasseh ben Israel

Amsterdam

1628-29

FIRST EDITION. Three Parts in one, two titles. Numerous astronomical and mathematical illustrations. Engraved frontispiece portrait of the author (tipped in from another copy) engraved by W. Delff after a painting by C. Duyster. Titles within typographical border. With the scarce additional introductory leaf in Latin. A wide-margined copy.

Vinograd, Amsterdam 20; Fuks, Amsterdam 150-1; Silva Rosa 6.

A Fine Wide-Margined Copy of One of the Great Scientific Books of Hebrew Literature. Includes treatises relating to geometry, algebra, chemistry, astronomy, physics, medicine and metaphysics. The Sepher Eilim has been described as: “The most sumptuously illustrated of early scientific works in Hebrew, and unique in printed Hebrew literature before the modern period.” National Library of Canada Catalogue, The Jacob H. Lowy Collection, 1981, no. 80. The author, Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, or as he is known in Hebrew, YaSha”R (Yosef Shelomo Rophe) of Candia (1591-1655), was of German descent, whose family settled on the isle of Crete (Candia) at the end of the 14th-century. In his youth, he studied medicine at the University of Padua. Delmedigo was most peripatetic, at various times he lived in Cairo, Vilna and Amsterdam and is buried in the old Jewish cemetery of Prague. See I. Barzilay, Yoseph Shlomo Delmedigo (Yashar of Candia): His Life, Works and Times (Leiden, 1974); 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.