The native animals and plants of Egypt: first collected edition

Alpini, Prosper. Historiae Aegypti naturalis. (With: Plantis Aegypti).

€ 5,000.00

First collected edition of Alpini's major work on Egyptian plant and animal life. The first part, often referred to as "Rerum Aegyptiarum", is published here for the first time, while the second part, "Plantis Aegypti", first appeared in 1592 and is here supplemented with notes and observations by the author's successor, Johann Vesling.

Alpini (1553-1617) was trained in medicine in Padua and appointed physician to the Venetian Consul in Alexandria, Giorgio Eno, with whom he travelled through Greece, Crete, and Egypt from 1580 to 1583. During this time he made extensive studies of Egyptian and Mediterranean flora, and is reputed to be the first to have artificially fertilized date trees. Upon his return to Venice, in 1586, he became personal physician to Andre Doria, Prince of Melfi. He returned to Padua in 1593 and became a professor of botany and director of the botanical garden at the University of Padua, where he cultivated many of the plants referred to in "Plantis Aegypti". This, "the earliest treatise on the native plants of Egypt" and "the author's most important scientific work" (Hünersdorff), contains the first European recognition of the medicinal value of coffee (with the first European illustration of the coffee plant, labelled "Bon") and introduced bananas and baobab to Europe. Vesling took over the botanical gardens at Padua University upon Alpini's death, in 1617.