For the detailed analysis of what is the only forgery, so far identified, made up from elements of different originals, see the detailed analysis by John Woram.

Update: 7 April 2010: further references, including Richard Janko's support for it being a fake]

[Update, 20 August 2008: in a message to the MapHist list, Catherine Delano Smith, reporting briefly on the Oxford symposium (organised by Kai Brodersen, 13 June 2008) , commented that 'after a series of quite exemplarily dispassionate, critical and highly scholarly presentations and discussion on the full range of aspects (physical, palaeographical, graphic, textual, etc) it became clear beyond all reasonable doubt that the artefact and its content are both genuine (i.e. dating from the first century BC).']

The discovery of a first century B.C. scroll, containing a one-metre long, uncompleted map on papyrus, thought to represent an itinerary map depicting part of Spain, was first mentioned in the 1990s. Although the area depicted has not been identified, it is thought to show roads, rivers and settlements. It was exhibited in Turin at the Palazzo Bricherasio in 2006 (with the catalogue issued by Electa in Milan). The full official exposition has yet to appear.

In a recent 534-page analysis Professor Canfora has claimed the map to be a fake, and specificially that it is the work of the noted mid-19th-century counterfeiter Constantine Simonides. This view is strongly contested by some writers.

References:
There was a conference, 'Geografia e cartografia nel Papiro di Artemidoro', organised by the Società Geografica Italiana, in Rome, 27 November 2009.

Richard Talbert, 'P. Artemid.: The Map', in: Brodersen Kai & Jas Elsner (eds) Images and Text in the "Artemidorus Papyrus": Working papers on P. Artemid [St John's College, Oxford, 13 June 2008]. Historia - Einzelschriften. Band 214 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2009), pp. 57-64 (ills. pp.158-63).

Richard Janko, 'The Artemidorus Papyrus', Classical Review 59: 2 (2009): 403-10. [A review article of Luciano Canfora's books of 2007 & 2008 and the papyrus's publication by Galazzi et al. in 2008, concluding that "C[anfora]’s circumstantial case that this papyrus is a modern counterfeit, and indeed one made by S[imonides], is extremely strong."]

Kai Brodersen & Jas Elsner. 'The Artemidorus Papyrus. A one-day conference at St John's College, Oxford, on Friday, June 13th, 2008. Select Bibliography [scroll down to this for references before that date not noted below].

Abstracts of the papers presented at the 2008 Oxford conference.

Peter Parsons, 'Forging ahead: Has Simonides struck again?', Times Literary Supplement (22 February 2008), p.14.

Luciano Canfora, Il papiro di Artemidoro (Rome/Bari: Editori Laterza, 2008).

Franco Farinelli, Sulla "Tradizione Roaman dei Segni Cartografici", Quaderni di Storia 66 (2007), pp. 353-70.

Le tre vite del Papiro di Artemidoro. Voci e sguardi dall’Egitto greco-romano (Milan: Electa, 2006).

Barbel Kramer, 'The Earliest Known Map of Spain (?) and the Geography of Artemidorus of Ephesus on Papyrus', Imago Mundi 53 (2001), pp. 115-120. [Private subscribers to Imago Mundi, and those with institutional access, can get that article via JSTOR.]

Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete, 44, 2 (1998, i.e. April 1999).

New entry January 2011

A misleading version of the Blaeu map of America appeared on eBay in January 2011 < http://cgi.ebay.com/1642-Willem-Janszoon-Blaeu-Americae-Nova-Tabula-Old-Map-/110631852394 > . It is on very clean, crisp, obviously modern paper (despite the imitation chain-lines and the watermarks designed to give the impression of hand-made paper). There is no text on the verso and no central fold. It has the very wide fake platemark so often found on such fabrications. It is not possible to see this from the eBay photograph but the original, very narrow platemark may be visible. What distinguishes this from a straightforward facsimile (albeit one designed to deceive) is the fictitious date, 1642, added in a modern typeface to what is clearly a photo-lithographed production. This joins a growing number of imitations whose date, ironically added so as to give spurious authenticity, actually betrays it. It may however be the first instance where the date was the only false addition.

The genuine map, which never carried a date, appeared first in 1617. The model for this version is either the fourth state of 1642 or possibly the final one that appeared in or after 1645 [no scan of that is to hand] and that continued to be published up to the time of the 1672 fire. The distinguishing feature of the genuine 1642 state concerns the ship placed in the middle of the inscription Mare Pacificum. The sea surrounding the ship has been extended to the left to fill the grid square beneath the 'P' of Pacificum.

The source for this fake/facsimile may perhaps have been an atlas dated 1642.

I am grateful to Daniel Strebe for drawing this to my attention. His attempt to discover from the vendor where he had obtained the map produced no response. It received no bids at $50, which is an encouraging sign.

Reference:
Philip D. Burden, The Mapping of North America: a List of Printed Maps 1511-1670 (Rickmansworth: Raleigh Publications, 1996), No. 189, Plate 189 (illustrating the 1617 state - signed 'Guiljel. Janssonio', which was changed to 'Guiljelmo. Blaeuw' [as here] in 1621).

Joep de Koning to MapHist 13 August 2005:
"Of the 1650 Blaeu stand-alone etching of Nieuw Amsterdam, on exclusive contemporary Blaeu paper, usually called by dealers "the Visscher view" because it was incorporated, together with the 1650 Jansson map of Nieuw Netherland, in the 1651 composite emendata map by Visscher, later copies exist on "old" paper (not Blaeu paper). The paper is generic and there is a deep impression of a purported plate mark. The authentic Blaeu views were "cuttings" so no deep plate marks exist. The "forgeries" are not as detailed as the originals because, in the photographic copying process and etching, the definition of the lines suffered so that in the darker shadow portions the ink clotted. Because of the immense interest about the New Netherland period in the early twentieth-century and the already wide use of photography, the forgeries could be from that time."

Daniel Strebe reported to MapHist on 18 July 2007 [with follow-up notes to the editor of this page] that he had acquired an example of Willem Jansz. Blaeu, 'Virginiae partis australis, et Floridae partis orientalis, interjacentiumq, regionum Nova Descriptio', with the inscription 'Auctore Guiljelmo Blaeuw. 1660'. The map, which probably first appeared in 1638, the year of Willem Blaeu's death, continued to be used after the Blaeu auction in 1677, appearing in atlases produced by Frederick de Wit and Christopher Browne (c. 1708). No original impression is recorded with either a signature or a date. The owner thinks, from the condition of the mount, that it must date from some decades ago.

It is not possible to establish the status of this map conclusively without detailed photographic evidence. However, it appears that the map has a wide, false platemark.

Reference:
Philip D. Burden, The Mapping of North America: a List of Printed Maps 1511-1670 (Rickmansworth: Raleigh Publications, 1996), No. 253, Plate 253.

"Apparently the original copper plate of the left half of the map still exists in Italy, though its location is not known (to me). Twentieth-century restrikes from this plate, printed on old paper, come onto the market at regular intervals, and some have been sold to collectors and institutions as originals." (Dahl p.42).

The restrike will, inevitably, be of the final state. This has the addition of the engraver's name "Gio: fed.co Pesca f." (Giovanni Federico Pesca fecit - a reference to a 17th-century Neapolitan engraver) on the underside of the 'scroll' for the Huronum inset. A Native American canoe has also been added beneath the Mare of Mare Dulce [L. Huron]. As yet, no original impression of this later state of the left hand sheet has been identified.

Originals of the complete two-sheet map are known in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, and the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. In 2002, Library and Archives Canada acquired the right half of this map, via the April 2002 auction of Reiss & Sohn (Lot 3676) [Burden II: p.xxxviii, No.323].

References:
Louis Cardinal, 'Bressani: "Io dedico la nuova Francia ... I dedicate New France ... Franc. Gius. Bressano ... Bologna 11th January 1657." Analysis of a recently identified copy of Father Francesco Giuseppe Bressani's map including dedication, authorship, place and date of printing, notes,' The Portolan 76 (Winter 2009): 33-42 [about a hitherto unrecorded example of the map, in the Modena Archives, with explanatory letterpress text attached beneath the two joined sheets. This is, of course, an original printing.]

Philip D. Burden, The Mapping of North America II: a List of Printed Maps 1671-1700 (Rickmansworth: Raleigh Publications, 2007).

Louis Cardinal, 'Record of an ideal: Father Francesco Giuseppe Bressani's 1657 map of New France', The Portolan 61 (Winter 2004-2005): 13-28.

Edward H. Dahl, 'A second Bressani original of New France comes to light', The Map Collector 63 (1993): 42-3 [discussing a 20th century restrike of the left of two sheets of the 1657 map - but with added details], and 'Addendum' [i.e. correction] in The Map Collector 64 (1993): 51 [reproducing the two joined sheets of the original printing, in Vienna].

In January 2006, a Chinese collector, Liu Gang, announced that he had acquired, in 2001, a hand-drawn map that referred to Admiral Zheng He’s expedition in 1418. The Economist (12 January 2006) ran an article, 'An ancient map that strongly suggests Chinese seamen were first round the world', describing it as 'a copy, made in 1763, of a map, dated 1418' [This is now available on subscription.]

There are two issues: the supposed connection with Zheng He, which was seen as tying in with Gavin Menzies's theories about a 1421 discovery of America; and the question of whether the map (supposedly subjected to radiocarbon-dating testing) was a (misinterpreted?) eighteenth-century original or a modern fake.

Both sides of the argument can be accessed via the '1421 exposed' site, which sets out reasoned arguments against the overlapping Menzies and Liu Gang theories. See also 'The "Liu/Menzies" world map: a critique' (pdf article by Geoff Wade, in: e-Perimetron, 2:4 (Autumn, 2007), pp. 270-7). [Added 29 June 2008.]

New entry November 2008

On 14 October 2008, the London-based Guardian newspaper included a thumbnail illustration of a map as part of its 'Black History Timeline Part 2'. Wrongly captioned, this was traced back to the Bridgeman Art Library [search for XJL 181925], where it was listed as from a 'Private collection'. No other references to it have yet been traced, but information from the Bridgeman suggests the collection it belongs to was created in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. The map on which it is based, 'Occidentalis Americae partis', appeared in Theodore De Bry's Americae Pars Quarta (1594) and is described in Burden (No.83). It covers the Caribbean, extending into the lower United States and the northern part of South America.

The map is another fake 'concoction'. Like the Albarel map of North America it is a hand-drawn copy of an original map, with additional illustrative details, which was then reproduced via lithography. The quality is so poor that it would not be listed here were it not for the fact that its presence on the image database of an international picture library makes it possible that it will appear, misleadingly, as a book illustration. Seen in high resolution it is clearly a fake; reproduced in a book it might be less obvious.

The only available picture is here [search for XJL 181925]. Since that is no more than a thumbnail, a few details are given here. The map has no platemark (even a fake one) and the colour is printed. The title repeats the original wording, within a different cartouche, with mistakes in the Latin: Vel becomes Vol, Qui totis is run together, eas becomes cas, conflata becomes Constata, and the date MDXCIII (1594) becomes MDXIIII (1514). Decorative elements have been added or moved around, e.g. portraits of 'Reyna Ysabel' and Columbus upper left and Indian figures in the two lower corners. The large vignette of a goddess (?) sitting on a leashed sea monster is copied from the Hondius-Le Clerc map of America (1602?), illustrated by Burden Pl. 145. The map has been extended on three sides - at the west to include the full coastline of the Gulf of Mexico; at the east by about 5 degrees; and to the south, leaving the graduated Equator (which had marked the map's lower edge) as the division between the original and the fake detail, to which an anachronistic outline of the Amazon has been added.

Reference:
Burden, Philip D., The Mapping of North America: A List of Printed Maps, 1511-1670 (Rickmansworth: Raleigh Publications, 1996), No. & Pl. 83.

Doubts have been cast as to whether a number of early globes are in fact later printings, facsimiles, or modern forgeries, created by making up globes from the facsimiles of gores published by the Munich bookseller, Ludwig Rosenthal in the 1880s. The names of Johann Schöner and Georg Hartmann have been mentioned, and one version relates to the globe depicted by Hans Holbein in his painting, 'The Ambassadors'.

References:
A. D. Baynes-Cope, 'The Investigation of a Group of Globes', Imago Mundi 33 (1981): 9-20.

Rodney W. Shirley, The Mapping of the World: Early Printed World, Maps, 1472-1700 (Holland Press, 1983, and subsequent editions, some with Corrections and Additions) No. 62, Plate 57.

David Allen, in a message to MapHist on 23 August 2006, cites a passage from: Joseph A. Borome, 'An Interview between Justin Winsor and Henry Harrisse', The Hispanic American Historical Review, 32, No. 3 (Aug., 1952), 378.

On globes see also other entries under 'Globe' in the Area column of the Index.

'In a much publicized recent case, an individual consigned a facsimile globe to Christie's, in London, and it was sold at auction as an original'. Francis J. Manasek, 'Facsimiles, Forgeries, and Other Copies', in Collecting Old Maps (Norwich Vt.: Terra Nova Press, 1998):73 (without providing further detail).

New entry October 2009

There are two counterfeit versions of the Henricus Hondius map, which had originally appeared in the 1636 Mercator-Hondius Atlas (Burden 245). Burden reproduces the first state of the original (undated and without an imprint). The second state, issued in the 1641 edition of the atlas, added the imprint AMSTELODAMI, Excudit Ioannes Ianssonius. A scan of that can be seen on the Library of Congress American Memory site. Finally, there was a third state, produced by Valk & Schenk about 1694. The original map was never dated.

• '1629'. 'In 2003 Jim Lorson brought to the author's attention a facsimile edition. Its origin is unknown but can be most easily identified by the presence in the cartouche lower left of AMSTELODAMI,/ Sumptibus et typis aenis/ Henrici Hondii./ Anno Domini 1629, and a large compass rose in the Atlantic' (Burden II: xxvii, No.245).

  In September 2009 Edward Dahl kindly forwarded a scan of this version, identifying the points of difference. This is not just a photographic copy of a genuine map, to which an imprint and date had been added. Rather it is another of the growing number of 'concoctions', identifiable by the additional decorative elements that were introduced at the same time. Besides the false imprint, the most obvious alterations and additions here are elements set into the sea. Ed Dahl identified more than ten additions, of ships, sea creatures and the large compass rose in the Atlantic. These were presumably taken from other early maps but are, as usual, much enlarged, so as to unbalance the original composition. [On this see the note, added June 2010, about the South American pair to this map.] Since such counterfeits are created photographically they reproduce the outlines and place-names of the original, which make their pretend dates anachronistic. In this case, Burden noted elements on the 1636 original that had first appeared on maps in the period 1631-3.

  Interestingly, although the 1636 map was originally unsigned, Burden does attribute it to Henricus Hondius, in the first volume of his bibliography published in 1996 (i.e. seven years before the '1629' fake was reported). Although most fakers are not cartobibliographically aware might this be an exception? Was the faker trying to supply what might have been thought a plausible missing first state? In talking of the original, Manasek notes (p.79) that the form with the empty cartouche bears 'slight traces of a previous inscription that was burnished out'. [I do not have a good enough reproduction to confirm that for myself.] Might there really have been an earlier, genuine, Hondius state?

• '1631'. 'There exists a reproduction of this map that itself appears to originate from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. It bears the curious imprint lower left Amstelodami / Excusum apud Iudocum et Henricum Hondium. Anno 1631. As Jodocus Hondius Jr. had died in 1629 this is an obvious error. The quality of the engraving is of a poor standard. On closer examination it appears to be of Italian origin' (Burden 245).

  This version is reproduced and discussed by F.J. Manasek (pp. 77-81), who gives high resolution, comparative details of one section to demonstrate that it is printed from a different plate to that used for the original. He concludes, like Burden, that it is a genuine copper-engraving, copied, with decorative alterations, from the original. He was aware of four examples, dating back as far as the 1930s. There is an example in the New York Public Library's Lawrence H. Slaughter collection.

  The impression Manasek had examined was on laid paper (i.e. apparently before 1800) and well coloured, in what seemed to be neither 17th century nor modern tinting. He concludes that he did not think it was intended to deceive. However if this was one of the late 17th-century Italian copies of Dutch maps (like those made of Blaeu's wall maps) the invented imprint must have been intended to disguise the Italian origin and give authenticity. It should perhaps be considered, if a bit ponderously, as a falsified, near- contemporary engraved copy.

  [Update note, March 2010:] Not only does the author here make the fundamental error of including a compass rose on a map clearly marked out with converging meridians [as found also on the 1629 fake], but he has placed the normal east pointer to the west - evidence that his model for that feature was taken from a map with parallel meridians, and then reversed in the copying process. I was alerted to the latter point by a note by Wulf Bodenstein in the BIMCC Newsletter 36 (January 2010) p.35.]

The most obvious visual feature, which distinguishes the counterfeits from the original and equally from each other, is the enlarged compass rose in the Atlantic (level with Florida in the '1629' version and level with Virginia in the '1631'). It is this, for example, that enables the counterfeits to be easily picked out from a page of online thumbnails, such as Google Images.

[Update note:] In February 2010 Kenneth Baker reported that he had acquired examples of both the 1629 and 1631 versions via eBay (about two and four years ago respectively).
      '1629'. He notes that his example is on convincing laid paper (without a watermark) and with the more heavily inked sections raised to the touch, as you would find with an original. It has been carefully hand coloured. The counterfeit is slightly smaller than the original. It seems that this 1629 version may have been etched into a copperplate and printed in the usual way. [An impression from a photographically produced reproduction plate will be slightly smaller than the original model because the paper, damped for printing, shrinks once it dries.] Kenneth Baker also comments that, in introducing the large compass rose, the faker showed his cartographic ignorance by imposing a due North pointer on a map with converging lines of longitude.
      '1631'. Kenneth Baker makes the following observations. 'There are numerous differences, apart from the obvious compass rose, and other embellishments. The placename I. de Ceintas is missing from one of the small islands off the west coast of California. The little canoe with two rowers is missing, just off the Carolina coast. The placename C. de Neord, in the lower right corner, runs through the banded degree border, into the area of the degree numbers, but not to the margin itself. The latitude and longitude numbers vary in size, style and placement in the border. Also, many placenames vary in angle and placement from the original.' He concludes that it is a 'beautiful bold engraving, with extraordinary hand coloring.'

[Note the parallels with the Jodocus Hondius 'America', one of whose versions was also identified by Jim Lorson in 2003.]

References:
Burden, Philip D., The Mapping of North America: A List of Printed Maps, 1511-1670 (Rickmansworth: Raleigh Publications, 1996) No.245 and the 'Corrigenda and Addenda' at the front of Vol . II (2007), p.xxvii.

Francis J. Manasek, 'Facsimiles, Forgeries, and Other Copies', in Collecting Old Maps (Norwich Vt.: Terra Nova Press, 1998): 77-81, 165.

New entry June 2010

In May 2010, I was sent details by Kirby W. Brown, Paradise, California of a map of South America, issued as a pair with the Henricus Hondius map of North America and, like that, with the false date 1629.

The title reads 'Americae pars Meridionalis. Amstelodami Sumptibus Henrici Hondy' [with, separately lower left] 'Anno Domini 1629'. Again, it is a 'concoction', a copy of a genuine map with added decorative elements. These involve an extra outer border, formed of alternating short rods and three small balls, matching that on the map of North America, and various illustrations, invariably over-sized, added in the sea. The inland areas seem to be 'unimproved'.

The faker's most obvious contribution is the addition of two vast compass roses: a quarter one in the bottom left corner and a complete one, to the right, by the Tropic of Capricorn. These will allow this fake version to be speedily identified even from a thumbnail illustration. The lines that radiate from these unhelpful roses cause confusion with the curved meridians and parallels of the original, which they contradict. Once again, the faker demonstrates ignorance of, or disregard for, basic cartographic principles with these compass roses, which are apparently taken from the same source as those used for the North America map.

Otherwise, ships and monsters, vastly out of scale and from an as yet unidentified source, have been stuck onto the master from which this photo-lithograph was created, sometimes in place of the modest original ones, sometimes incongruously alongside them. As a result a new sea monster, upper right, could have devoured the small retained ship nearby in a single mouthful. The original map has the large lettering for the Atlantic, OCEA / NUS AETHIO / PI / CUS. Because of a newly inserted ship, the fake leaves behind just the A of OCEANUS.

The original map first appeared in Volume III of the Mercator-Hondius-Janssonius atlas in 1636 (not 1629). At that stage it had the imprint of Heny Hondius ('Henrici Hondy'). Then in 1647 his name was removed and that of Joannes Janssonius ('Ioannis Ianssony') put in its place. The original map was never dated. The best scan I could find of the original is of the Janssonius version on the University of Wisconsin's Digital Collections - search for 'Meridionalis' (the original is from the Clipstone Foundation).

Kirby Brown (without whose generous help this note could not have been written) informed me that examples of the North and South America maps had been found, together, about two years ago. Most interesting is the fact that, on the reverse of each, there are various abbreviated notes, in Spanish, apparently comprising technical instructions to a printer, but also mentioning a figure of $4.096 c/u [i.e., each]. The equivalent map of North America was first noticed in 2003 but only now has its South America pair come to light.

New entry November 2008

There are various 'facsimile/fake' versions of the Jodocus Hondius map, which had originally appeared, undated, in the 1606 Mercator-Hondius Atlas (Burden 150):

• undated. 'A counterfeit of this map which apparently has a plate mark that is too large; the original is between 1-2 mm for the image' (Burden 150)
• '1588'. 'In 2003 Jim Lorson brought to the author's attention a facsimile bearing a platemark. Its origin is unknown but can be most easily identified by the presence of a small cartouche upper left bearing ANNO 1588'. (Burden II: xvii, No.150). [The date, in modern lettering style, replaces the content of the brief Latin note in that cartouche. Logically, that referred to the illustration of the Japanese boat just below. Burden pointed out that the scene lower left was from De Bry, whose series started in 1590. A partial scan on eBay was seen in July 2011]
• '1597'. In October 2008 (private communication) Jeremy Pool drew attention to a version without a platemark, though apparently on toned, laid paper and coloured in the manner of the time (by hand or machine?). A modern-looking '1597' has been added at the left-hand end of a box created for that purpose around Hondius's imprint in the bottom left vignette. High resolution scans (courtesy of Jeremy Pool) can be seen here: whole map and imprint with date

[Note the parallels with the Hondius/Janssonius 'NorthAmerica', one of whose versions was also identified by Jim Lorson in 2003.]

Reference:
Burden, Philip D., The Mapping of North America: A List of Printed Maps, 1511-1670 (Rickmansworth: Raleigh Publications, 1996) and the 'Corrigenda and Addenda' at the front of Vol . II (2007).

Updated September 2008

'Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Geographica Ac Hydpographica [sic] Tabula (Paris, 1640) [but here in State 3, 1649]. With the addition of the very small lettered imprint along the bottom, tentatively read as: 'Marcel Molinier, 18 rue des Saints Peres Paris'. Another source refers to Molinier as at '32 [rue] des St-Peres, Paris'. [September 2008 update, courtesy of Edward Dahl]: In May 2006, a message to the MapHist list from Charles O'Neill (who owned an example of this map) included the following: "There is a small engraved inscription at the bottom of the map about 1mm which reads Marcel Milinier 12 de rue st Paris" (note the different readings of the publisher's name and address). [Further update, January 2012: A good quality scan of the clumsy imprint could be clearly read as 'MARCEL MOLINIER 32 rue des Saints Pères PARIS'. At least one auction description read the street as 'Saints Peros'.]

Information from Jeremy Pool, October 2006, who reported three examples of this form, one with 'Arches' watermark, evidently late 19th or early 20th century French. Another report speaks of 'a strange-looking plate mark about ¾ inch [2 cm] outside the outer neatline'. The copies are hand-coloured. They have an additional scalloped border, not shown in Shirley's illustration. It is unclear if that is found on the original. The copies should perhaps be classed as facsimiles, although the imprint is so small that some have been deceived.

References:
Rodney W. Shirley, The Mapping of the World: Early Printed World Maps, 1472-1700 (Holland Press, 1983, and subsequent editions, some with Corrections and Additions), No. 354, Plate 270.

The so-called Hungarian Vinland Map: a preliminary report. Analyzed by L. Stegena and E. Timár (Eötvös University, Budapest); with the help of George D. Painter and Peter Hogg (British Museum, London) (Budapest: Department of Cartography, Eötvös University, 1974). [Paper presented to the 7th Conference, International Cartographic Association, Madrid, April-May 1974.]:
    "The so-called Hungarian Vinland map came to light in Hungary in the [nineteen-]sixties, under hardly controllable and rather queer circumstances. The measurement of the manuscript is 20.5 x 28.5 cm. In all probability both its drawings and text elements derive from the same hand. The map is evidently a copy, a derivate [!] of the Stefansson or Skaholt or Vinland map (Royal Library, Kopenhagen, G.K.S.2880, 4o). In proportion to the Skaholt map it contains some new, remarkable elements: the Norman's sea-routes towards England and the New World, as well as some settlements on the territory of Greenland and North America. Because of these and the fact, that the map was published many times and on [!] a great number of languages, its analysis is necessary."

Then follow sections/paragraphs on 'Projection', 'Geographical elements', 'The paper of the map', 'The ink of the map', 'The names in the map', 'Cartouche', 'Inscriptions on the edge of the map', and 'Summary'. [From the sci.tech-archive.net, in a post by Doug Weller on 18 April 2005 - the first section above is quoted from the report itself].

Other References:
Erdélyi, F. István, 'Hungary's Vinland map', Acta ethnographica academiae scientiarum Hungaricae, 21 (1972): 347-52 [The Newberry Library note reads: "Describes a manuscript map in the National Széchényi Library in Budapest, probably made by Jesuits in the old Hungarian (now Czechoslovakian) town of Nagyszombat in 1599"].

Messages to MapHist, January-February 2005, from Kirsten Seaver, James Enterline and Jørgen D. Siemonsen, combined here.

Zsolt Török to MapHist, 4 June 2007.

Dee Longenbaugh (via MapHist) and Rodney Shirley (privately) report what sound like similar fake maps and charts being offered in the Grand Bazaar (Kapali Carsi or Covered Market) in Istanbul. These were openly on sale as copies, apparently in 1999.

Shirley describes small sea charts for sale, beautifully executed by hand in Turkish script and some coloured with gold, in the style of Piri Re'is's 'Kitab-y-Bahiyre'. Some were on apparently old vellum and some on paper with earlier printed Ottoman text on the verso.

Longenbaugh was told it was common practice to reuse old vellum, draw a map on it, and then coat it with egg white.

Bruce Needham reported to MapHist on 11 August 2008 that he had "recently obtained what appears to be a print of the Janssonius, 1636, Nova Anglia Novum Belgivm et Virginia - but with some unique differences". A correspondence followed, under the heading 'Information on Print of Janssonius Map'.

What turns out to be a physically unimpressive fake is nevertheless an interesting example of a 'concoction', of which the only other known instances are the Albarel map, the De Bry map of America and a variant of the Plancius world map (Shirley No. 250). These fakes are printed by lithography, which means there is no plate-mark (see the relevant headings on How to tell a fake or forgery) and the printed impression is less sharp than the original engraving. However, lithography does allow elements from various originals to be combined so as to create what is apparently a new map.

Two different versions of this fake are known, dated respectively 1580 and 1595. There are two sub-variants of the latter. No online scans have yet been identified for any version, but illustrations have been supplied privately. Since the best images are of the 1595 form, that will be described first.

It is, in essence, the Janssonius map of the east coast of North America from Virginia to Nova Scotia. That was undated but appeared first in the 1636 edition of the Mercator-Hondius Atlas (Burden 247). The version used as the basis for the fake is the first state, which was altered in the second state (1647) by changing the title to 'Nova Belgica et Anglia Nova' (placed within a new rectangular cartouche). At the same time an Indian village and local fauna were added. Those details were taken from Blaeu's map with the same title (actually published earlier than the Janssonius first state, in 1635 - Burden 241). None of the added elements on the fake, described below, derives from the Blaeu or Janssonius maps.

Neither the 1580 nor 1595 date is remotely plausible, as was noted by earlier cataloguers. Among other anachronisms is the presence of 'Nieuw Nederland', Manbattes [Manhattan] and N. Amsterdam [New Amsterdam, later New York]. Founded in the mid-1620s, this settlement first appears in printed form on the model used by Janssonius, the 1630 de Laet map (Burden 231).

A. 1595

The following elements were added by the faker to the '1595' version:

• 'A^o 1595' below the title
• Vignettes of Indian life: (a) beneath the title, a village and a scene showing contact with Europeans (presumably taken from a John White or Jacques Le Moyne drawing, as published by De Bry), (b) another, under the name 'Novae Franciae pars' at the top, showing a group round a fire, and (c) a five- man canoe in the 'Grand Lac'
• Two small ship vignettes have been removed and replaced by two outsize versions and two large sea creatures. A boat and one of the sea creatures have been pasted so as to run into those ships
• The substitution of a larger compass rose for the smaller version on the original
• The replacement of the plain, horizontally arranged lettering for 'Mar del Nort' with an ornate vertical form, running down beside the ship
• The lower right quadrant, including the original scale and imprint, and Bermuda, is now covered by a large ship, flying the fleur de lys of France, with attendant sea creatures and numerous flying fish. René Tebel has identified this as an illustration, entitled 'Fliegende Fisch im Meer', found in Part IV of Theodore de Bry's Voyages (1594). This is perhaps what led the faker to date his map 1595.

If others wish to attempt to track down these illustrative elements (and all seem, separately, to be genuine), they should probably focus on De Bry for the Indian scenes.

The above is a description of the framed example acquired in Cape Cod this summer by Bruce Needham. It is disfigured by overall brown staining, perhaps added by the faker for supposed authenticity.

Variant of the '1595' version

In the William C. Wonders Map Collection of the University of Alberta, Edmonton is an example, described in their catalogue as a 'facsimile' [ID/DBCN 6941/AAA-7090; Location: UA Cameron Map Cabinets; Call Number - North America C-168]. It is thought to have been acquired in the 1970s or 1980s. The Map Librarian, David L. Jones, has pointed out that the colouring of their example is different to the Needham copy and that the paper and inks are modern. Perhaps the most obvious difference is that the heart-shaped centre of the Alberta copy is coloured green, where it has been left blank on the Needham map.

Intriguingly, the two 1595 examples are different in their colouring and other respects. Where the scan of the Edmonton example shows that the colouring was printed, using crude blocks of inappropriate colour (not always properly registered) the scans of the Needham example suggest that its colouring might have been done by hand, in much the same way, and with similar tones, as an original would have been treated.

David Jones also points out that the '9' in the supposed date 1595 is so faint on the University of Alberta example that it looks more like 1505. Surprisingly, the sizes of the two known examples are different.

Note that the sizes have been converted from inches so they should be treated as approximate; however the significant differences are clearly valid. Presumably the disparity between the versions can be explained by photo-mechanical enlargement or reduction.

B. 1580

Working from an indistinct photocopy of the Library and Archives Canada example, it is possible to identify the following differences between this and the '1595' form:

• The title lettering is left as it was in the original
• An imprint cartouche has been added bottom left, reading: 'Autore Ioanne With Sculptore Theodore de Bry M . D LXXX'. Ed Dahl identifies this as having presumably been taken from the identical cartouche beneath the royal arms on the 1585-90 de Bry map of Virginia (Burden 76), with the omission of the lettering that had originally completed that inscription, namely 'qui et excudit'. Translation of the original reads in full, 'Drawn by John White and engraved by Theodore de Bry who also published it'. The same map has a roman date M.D LXXXV (1585) in the right-hand cartouche; it seems that the V was omitted and the rest redeployed here, in place of that lettering
• The ship inset has been enlarged so as fill the space between the two (different) compass roses. This means that 'Mar del Nort' now appears, in the same florid lettering, crammed into the space above the ship, not alongside it
• Other illustrations have been moved and/or slightly enlarged. A new vignette (of uncertain subject) appears off the New England coast

• Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa (the Alexander E. Macdonald collection, purchased in 1981 - the original owner had noted it was a fake).
• Maryland Historical Society (noting that 'some place names on the map were not in use until 1602-1623')

• That one at least of these versions was in circulation no later than 1981 and perhaps somewhat earlier. Until/unless further acquisition dates can be established, there is no way of knowing when any of the fakes first appeared, or the sequence of variants
• Unless other examples can be identified in institutional or private collections (which seems possible, since Google does not index most library catalogues) their creator seems to have had little success, since the three known library examples were all correctly identified as fakes
• It remains to be seen what prices were paid for these unconvincing 'concoctions', in an age before anonymous selling on eBay. Perhaps the decision to produce two bibliographically distinct versions (anonymous 1595 and White/de Bry 1580) was an attempt to market TWO 'rarities' to unsuspecting customers.
• If scans of the two versions could be made available, those who wished to do so could attempt to identify the faker's other sources
• It is tempting to speculate whether the four known 'concoctions' - this, the Albarel map of North America, the De Bry map of America, and the Plancius-type world map of c. 1650 (Shirley No. 250) - might have the same creator. However, the Albarel and Plancius maps appear to have been hand-engraved (presumably in recent times), and the De Bry was hand-drawn, whereas this map is a photographic copy of an original engraving, with added elements pasted in from different sources

Burden, Philip D., The Mapping of North America: A List of Printed Maps, 1511-1670 (Rickmansworth: Raleigh Publications, 1996), No. & Pl. 247 [the Janssonius model].

Shirley, Rodney W., The Mapping of the World: Early Printed World Maps, 1472-1700 (Holland Press, 1983, and subsequent editions, some with Corrections and Additions).

David Allen to Maphist 22 June 2006:
'An alleged 1674 map of New France by Jolliet, which is also suspected of being a forgery (according to the Canadian Museum of Civilization). The page does not give any information about who questioned the Jolliet map or why, but it seems to be closely related to the "Marquette Autograph Map." The Jolliet map has an unusual appearance for a seventeenth century map, and it was also published in the Jesuit Relations. Since Jolliet and Marquette were closely associated, this makes me think there may be a link between the two purported forgeries'.

In a private message, David Allen relays the view of Carl Weber (who has investigated the related Marquette map) that the Jolliet map appeared in 1880. On this see Gravier's, Etude sur une carte inconnue, la première dressée par Louis Joliet en 1674, après son exploration du Mississipi avec le P. Jacques Marquette en 1673 (Paris: Maisonneuve et Cie., 1880).

For further material on the life and career of Jolliet, see online sources such as the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Wikipedia, etc.

'The legend of Captain Kidd's treasure maps can be traced back to a retired Eastbourne solicitor, Hubert Palmer (d.1950) who had a private museum of Captain Kidd relics and claimed to have acquired a number of trunks once owned by the Captain, in various concealed compartments of which he had discovered charts of the locations where he had deposited his treasure. He claimed to have found certain other items, including a mirror, a Bible and a box at the same time. The claims created a certain amount of press interest.

'According to a letter written by R.A. Skelton, the Head of the Map Room at the British Museum, in 1959 recalling events of 10 years previously (no copy survives of his original letter), one of the maps was brought in for inspection either by Mr Palmer or by his housekeeper. Skelton's language was extremely guarded and he commented only that the chart had been "drawn on the back of a perfectly genuine will of the late 17th century. The chart itself contained little evidence of the precise locality represented, although . . .it appeared to be somewhere in the China Sea. While the chart contained no features which would forbid us to suppose that it was drawn in the early 18th century, it had also nothing to associate it, so far as I could see, with Captain Kidd". The maps themselves, however, are dated 1669 (a period about which nothing is known of Kidd's career) and subsequent research has revealed that the cabinets in which Palmer claimed to have found the charts dated from the mid-eighteenth century and so could have had nothing to do with the Captain.

'Skelton's readiness to commit his views to paper using the extremely cautious and non-committal language characteristic of British Museum curators of his time became accepted by later writers, who may not have seen the actual document and were working on hearsay, as 'proof' that the British Museum had authenticated the maps.

'The story of the charts is further complicated by several factors:

1. At some point maps, approximately modelled on the charts 'discovered' by Hubert Palmer and in an unambiguously mid-twentieth century hand were created and one of them was photographed with a British Museum photographic scale next to it, apparently giving further weight to the belief that this particular map had been 'authenticated' by R.A. Skelton and even that the British Museum (now the British Library) actually possessed the charts.

2. A few years after Palmer's death his set of charts (or possibly the copies in a 20th century hand mentioned above) were sold to a Canadian syndicate and it seems that these are still in Canada and do occasionally surface.

3. Palmer's original charts with the mirror etc. seem still to be in England, perhaps having been inherited by the housekeeper's heirs. The mirror was presented to Prince Philip in 1955 and returned by him in 2001 to the heirs of the person who made the original presentation.

4. Various people, notably Rupert Furneaux (with whom Skelton was in correspondence in the 1960s - the correspondence is preserved with his papers in Canada), have searched for the treasure in various parts of the globe.

'For further details please consult the British Library Map Library where the relevant file is currently kept in Box File 6 in the Reading Room.'

Peter Barber MA, FSA, FRHistS, Head of Map Collections, Map Library, The British Library, 28 May 2008

The New Dictionary of National Biography gives Kidd's birth date as c.1645 and notes that "he does not appear in the historical record until 1689". Robert C. Richie also explains: "Kidd's treasure, said to be as much as £400,000, has led to many treasure hunts from Nova Scotia to the South China Sea. Kidd never captured that much: the manifests of his victims were sent to England and their value is nothing of this order."

The Wikipedia article on Kidd mentions hunts for his supposed treasure, variously in Nova Scotia, Long Island, Connecticut, Catalina Island (Dominican Republic) and the Japanese Tokara Islands.

'America siue India Nova. ad magnae Gerardi Mercatoris aui Vniversalis imitationem in compendium redacta. Per Michaelem Mercatorem Duysburgensem'.

A private collector in California has alerted me to a version of the map of America included in the first edition of Gerard Mercator's posthumous Atlas in 1595. Beneath the authorship statement of Mercator's grandson, Michael, is an added 'Anno 1597', not truly centred and in a different style. Burden describes a single state of this map, always undated, found in the Mercator, then Mercator-Hondius atlas up to 1639.

The scans provided show the map in its frame but it appears to be a photo-lithographic copy on modern paper, with recent hand-colouring. There is a slight, but not visually convincing, vertical fold. There is no sign of the original platemark, which can be made out in this scan of an original example from Monika Schmidt.

My informant acquired the map in the early 1980s, from the son of a Swiss bookseller who had emigrated to the USA. Intriguingly, the same added date '1597' appears on the fake/forgery of the Hondius map of America, even if the style of the addition is not identical. The two maps appeared next to one another in the Hondius atlases between 1606 and 1633 and it seems highly likely that the imitations were produced as a pair at the same time, perhaps around 1980 in Europe, even though each has surfaced only recently.

Reference:
Burden, Philip D., The Mapping of North America: A List of Printed Maps, 1511-1670 (Rickmansworth: Raleigh Publications, 1996) No. & Plate 87 [this fake is not recorded in the main entry, in the 'Corrigenda and Addenda' at the front of Vol . II (2007) or on the Addenda website].

11 June 2006:
Carl Weber, professor of history and the humanities at DeVry Institute in Chicago, claims that the hand-drawn Marquette map of 1673, which accurately details the Illinois' curving course, is "a historical fraud". His findings, announced at the Newberry Library last September, are based on the fact that the map "is too accurate" and contains information about the Illinois that didn't appear on other early exploration maps until decades later. "The likelihood of Marquette going up the (Illinois) river with Joliet is very slim." He believes that the map "supposedly discovered in 1844 among documents stored and virtually forgotten in a Jesuit mission in Canada - was created and forged with Marquette's signature by the Jesuit Order to strengthen its political position in France and The Vatican." [Editor's summary of an article by Michael Smothers in the Peoria Journal Star, entitled 'History professor says Marquette map a fraud. Believes sketch couldn't have been made before 1813' - originally at < http://www.pjstar.com/stories/061106/REG_BA246ESI.062.shtml > but since removed to the archive.]

15 October 2006:
A message to the MapHist list from Carl J. Weber draws attention to a range of articles on his website and to the response to his revisionism.

2 November 2006:
The Marquette Map Isn’t a Hoax?:
"Carl Weber’s thesis that the Marquette Map is a hoax received a rough reception at a history conference last month: apparently, many historians aren’t buying his claims or his evidence, suggesting that they can be refuted "in about five minutes." " [With 10 comments attached to that post.]

The 30 cm diameter Nebra sky disk "appeared as if from nowhere on the international antiquities market in 2001. Its seller claimed that it had been looted by illegal treasure hunters with a metal detector in 1999" (Wikipedia). Claims have been made that it is a fake but these seem now to be discounted.

References:
'Die Himmelsscheibe von Nebra: Einfürung das Universum ist eine Scheibe'

Wikipedia:'Nebra sky disk' - concluding (when seen 23 December 2007) that despite 'initial suspicions that the disk might be an archaeological forgery ... it is now widely accepted as authentic and dated to roughly 1600 BC on grounds of typological classification of the associated finds'.

Ernst Künzl, Himmelsgloben und Sternkarten. Astronomie und Astrologie in Vorzeit und Altertum (Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss Verlag, 2005) [see review by Elly Dekker in Imago Mundi, 58, 1 (2006): 110].

On 4 August 2006 Dorothy Prescott sent an alert to the MapHist list:
"This week I have had through my hands a very good digital reproduction of the second state of J.B. Nolin's great wall map 'Le Globe Terrestre', 1708. It is a particularly good copy. It came complete with damaged section upper right hand margin of the map where the paper has actually been torn off the backing canvas. The map sheets were cut into 36 panels and mounted on canvas which had been treated to make it appear aged. The edging vignettes, and tables of text found below the two hemispheres in the first state are missing. This reproduction has a pencilled number in the lower lefthand margin which could identify in which collection the original is."

The map described above, seen in Australia, 'was cut so close to the border that there was no room for a plate mark.' See also other messages via the MapHist archive for August 2006, under the headings 'Nolin fake' and 'Giclee sites'. The map was identified as 'a Giclee reproduction using digital technology', in other words a sophisticated form of ink-jet printing.

The 1708 version is state 2 of the four-sheet world map of 1700.

Reference:
Rodney W. Shirley, The Mapping of the World: Early Printed World Maps, 1472-1700 (Holland Press, 1983, and subsequent editions, some with Corrections and Additions), No. 605, Plate 417.