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Description

The Sources of the Nile in The Ancient Ethiopean Empire

Nice example of Sanuto's map of the Horn of Africa, from his Geografia di M Livio Sanuto Distinta in XII Libri ... con XII Tavole di essa Africa in Dissegno di Rame ..., first published in Venice in 1588. 

The map covers the region from Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan in the north to Tanzania, Kenya and the area around Lake Victoria.

In the compilation of this and the other African maps, Sanuto relied on Gastaldi's 1564 map and Portuguese sea charts for the mapping of the coasts and for information about the interior, used accounts by Duarte Barbosa and João de Barros. After its publication in 1588, this work was copied by other leading map makers for nearly a century afterwards.

Livio Sanuto Biography

Livio Sanuto (c.1520-1576), was a Venetian cosmographer, mathematician and maker of terrestrial globes and also belonged to the prestigious Lafreri school of engravers, whose output signalled the transition between the maps of Ptolemy and the maps of Mercator and Ortelius.

Livio and his brother Giulio planned a massive, comprehensive atlas to include maps and descriptions of the whole world, which he believed would be more accurate than any previously published. Unfortunately, he died in 1576 having only completed twelve maps of Africa. The twelve maps were eventually published in 1588 by Livio's brother Giulio, under the title "Geografia Di M. Livio Sanuto..." .