First and only Italian edition of a book attempting to determine the location of the Biblical Paradise (the Garden of Eden) through an extensive analysis of Biblical and other sources, by the Jesuit scholar and member of the Académie Française, Pierre Daniel Huet (1630-1721), Bishop of Avranches. Huet recounts the various earlier theories about the location of Paradise, which placed it everywhere from under the ground to on the moon. Huet's map, here copied from the French edition, shows the Middle East from the Red Sea and the Gulf in the south to the eastern Mediterranean (including Cyprus), Armenia and the Caspian Sea in the north. A dotted line indicates the borders of "Eden" or "Paradis Terrestre" in Babylonia, between the confluence of the Tirgris and Euphrates rivers (but it shows the confluence where they approach each other near today's Bagdad) and the Gulf. This places it near present-day Al Basrah in Iraq. The towns of "Aracca" and "Talatha" are shown inside the boundaries of Paradise.
With a small abrasion in the lower left corner of the frontispiece, but otherwise in very good condition. Binding with a couple small worm holes and with the endpapers browned, but otherwise also very good. A fascinating attempt to apply the emerging science of geography to a religious question. Mokre, Kartographie des Imaginären, in: Petschar, Alpha & Omega (2000), pp. 27-31; WorldCat (6 copies); cf. Laor 160 & 171.