Lot 213
  • 213

Potocki, Jan, Count.

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Description

  • Mémoire sur un nouveau peryple du Pont Euxin, ainsi que sur la plus ancienne histoire des peuples du Taurus, du Caucase, et de la Scythie. Vienna: Matthias André Schmidt, 1796
4to (238 x 189mm.), large folding engraved map, original marbled boards, 2 contemporary printed labels (one about the map, one of a St Petersburg bookseller), foot of title rebacked with loss of one letter only, some very light spotting, neatly rebacked

Catalogue Note

first edition, extremely rare. In this monograph on a portolan chart of the Black Sea, dated 1497 and discovered in the library at Wolfenbüttel, Potocki compares this version with five others in various libraries, and includes essays on the different races bordering the Black Sea. It formed part of his intended great work on the prehistory of the Slavic peoples.

Count Jan Potocki (1761-1815) was a pioneer ethnographer, Egyptologist, archaeologist and historian of the pre-Slavonic peoples. He travelled widely around the Mediterranean, the Balkans, the Caucasus and China.He reputedly killed himself by using as a bullet the silver knob from the top of his samovar which he first had blessed by a priest. His ethnographic researches were printed at his own expense in very small numbers.