The map shows the South of Ukraine, the Crimea, and the Black Sea. Museum director Nadia Kapustina says that the map is a unique source of information relevant to the times of Zaporizhian Cossacks. “There are very few maps from that period, therefore this one is so valuable for the history of our region. It shows 13 rapids and tributaries of the Dnipro River, for example, Samara,” said the director. The museum currently stores 265 different maps and drawings from the period from the 18th to the 20th centuries, which can give an idea about the nature of the Dnipro region, the history of land ownership and the economy, as well as the local toponymy.
The new map in the collection is the oldest one, it has Latin name “Taurika Chersonesus” and once was a part of a German atlas “Geographia Universalis” – “Universal Geography.” Atlas was published in Nuremberg in 1681 by the publisher Johann Hoffmann, its author was a French cartographer Pierre Duval. It is known that Duval was born in Abbeville, lived and worked in Paris.
In 1650 he received the title of Royal geographer. The greatest work of Duval was the collection of maps “Cartes Geographiques Methodiquement…” pieced together from the maps of famous Dutch and French cartographers of the 17th century and a small number of maps created by Duval himself. In 1661 atlas “La Geographie Universelle…” (Paris, 1661) was published. It contained maps of European states and was republished many times until 1712. One of the maps, that once was a part of that atlas, is the one that was presented to the museum. It was made in the copper engraving technique with hand coloring. During the time of its functioning Dnipropetrovsk Historical Museum has repeatedly enlarged its collections with the assistance of patrons.
This time the old map was presented by a friend of the museum – Dnipropetrovsk businessman Dmytro Pirkl. Over five years he gave to the Dmytro Yavornytsky Museum more than 200 valuable historical monuments, which have nicely fit in the museum’s collection. Pirkl presented valuable items not only to Dnipropetrovsk museum workers, but also to Lviv Historic Museum, Museum of Ivan Honchar in Kyiv, Ukrainian Museum in New York, and also Chyhyryn National Preserve, for example, seven medals dedicated to Ukrainian hetmans. Museum workers in Dnipropetrovsk say that the total amount of money Pirkl spent on various historic items for museums is more than 120,000 hryvnias, though, as it is widely known, charity is not measured by money.
