1801 Francklin - PLAIN OF TROY - with MAP - DE

FRANKLIN, William

Title: William Franklins Bemerkungen über die Ebene von Troja. [William Francklin's Remarks on the Plain of Troy.]

Weimar: Industrie-Comptoirs, 1801. 8vo. 36 pages, plus a fold-out map measuring 7 inches x 10 inches (18cm x 26cm). Text is in German. This is a complete monthly issue, containing the above mentioned account. Attractively bound booklet style in recent blue paper covers with label. Very Good condition.

This issue contains a fascinating description of ancient Troy drawn from the scholarly observations of British writer and traveller William Francklin, who examined the ruins in 1799, also with commentary on Francklin's book which was then just recently published. Accompanied by a lovely map of Troas or The Troad, featuring the ruined city of Troy, Apollo’s Temple at Thymbra, and other historic and legendary sites, as well as principle rivers Simois and Scamander, and the massif that forms Mount Ida.

William Francklin's now exceedingly rare title, "Remarks and observations on the Plain of Troy: Made During an Excursion in June, 1799" was printed for R. Faulder, by C. Clarke, London, 1800.

These are the original pages printed in 1801, and NOT a reprint. This narrative is from a rare multi-volume geographical and scientific journal titled "Allgemeine Geographische Ephemeriden", which issued fifty volumes from 1798-1816 and which encompassed critical contemporary topics of geography and astronomy. Adam Christian Gaspari and Franz Xaver von Zach were editors of this important scientific journal.

Troas or The Troad is the historical name of the Biga peninsula on the northwest coast of Asia Minor, in present northwest Anatolia, Turkey. Troy is a legendary city and center of the Trojan War, as described in the Epic Cycle, and especially in the Iliad, one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer. Traversed by Mt. Ida (Kaz Dagi) and strategically located on the Hellespont (Dardanelles), it was involved in various struggles to control the straits. Troas was the scene of the events of the Iliad and was an ancient center of Aegean civilization. The region has yielded to archaeologists a wealth of antiquities. Trojan refers to the inhabitants and culture of Troy.