Jerusalem

New edition, following the original published in 1766 in Berlin.

It is illustrated with a large folding plate containing 22 Masonic emblems. The first edition includes a frontispiece; it is possible that it is lacking in this later edition.
Contemporary half red shagreen binding, circa 1860, spine with flat false raised bands decorated with gilt fillets, red shagreen title label, some rubbing, particularly at the head.

Title page browned. Some foxing.
The work opens with a history of Freemasonry, followed by a detailed study of the seven following Scottish high degrees: Perfect Elected Mason, Elected of P., Elected of the Fifteen, Little Architect, Grand Architect, Knight of the Sword and Rose-Croix, Noachite or Prussian Knight.
The Noachite is the work of Karl Fr. von Köppen.

Very scarce first edition of the Armenian translation, illustrated with a lithographed frontispiece and title-frontispiece printed on tinted heavy stock by Weger (Leipzig), together with several in-text figures reproducing seals.

The CCFr records only copies of the French edition (indeed, the same year 1871 saw the publication of a first French translation; a second French edition was issued in Paris in 1888, at which time a German version was also printed at the Leipzig address).

Bradel binding in half brown percaline, smooth spine gilt-ruled and tooled with a gilt frieze, marbled paper boards, endpapers soiled, corners rubbed, edges sprinkled in blue.

Some minor foxing, chiefly at the beginning.

Apart from the frontispiece and title-frontispiece, the entire text is printed in Armenian. Fumagalli, Biblioteca Etiopica, 304.

Father Dimotheos Vartabet Sapritchian, an Armenian priest from Constantinople, travelled to Ethiopia in 1867 with one of his compatriots, Archbishop Isaac.

The travellers, who carried to King Theodore of Abyssinia a message from the Armenian patriarch, entered the country via Wahni in the west and crossed the regions of Bagemder and Tegré before embarking at Massawa.

The first part contains the narrative proper; the second offers observations on the country’s history, manners, and customs.

It also includes reflections on the Ethiopian Church, the clergy, baptism, confession, penance, marriage, funerary rites, festivals, and more.

A rare Jerusalem imprint: printing in the city is thought to date back to 1823.