How does the world fit between two book covers? In the years before 1570, this was a practical question in Antwerp: the shipowner Gillis Hooftman bought maps for his business, but the large rolls were unwieldy in the counting house. His young confidant Jan Radermacher later recalled that he himself had suggested standardizing the maps and having them bound into a book; he had entrusted the commission to a dealer he had known for years, Abraham Ortelius.
Ortelius was actually named Abraham Ortel and had Latinized his name in the scholarly fashion; he was a Fleming from Antwerp, born in 1527. His father, a merchant with roots in Augsburg, died around 1535; responsibility for his mother and sister fell to the son at an early age. In 1547, the Guild of Saint Luke, the painters' guild, registered him as a map colorist - he colored what others had engraved, traded in books, prints, and maps, and traveled regularly to the Frankfurt Fair. There, in 1554, he met the cartographer Gerard Mercator; during a journey together in 1560, his famous colleague is said to have urged him to make maps himself.
The answer to the problem from the counting house appeared in Antwerp on May 20, 1570: the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the Theater of the World. Fifty-three map sheets in a single format, each plate engraved specifically for the book, with an explanatory text on the reverse of every sheet - this is why the work is regarded as the first modern atlas, although the word atlas itself did not come into circulation until Mercator's map collection of 1595. Equally new was the bound-in Catalogus Auctorum, the catalog of authors, in which Ortelius named 87 authors, including the 33 cartographers whose maps he had used; in a trade where publishers copied one another without a word, this list of sources amounted to a revolution in honesty.
The first sheet in the book is the “World Map Typus Orbis Terrarum,” engraved by Frans Hogenberg. The Earth lies in an oval between bands of clouds; across the south stretches the merely conjectured southern continent, Terra Australis, and in the cartouche below, a sentence from Cicero asks, in essence, what could still seem great to a person who had the whole world before his eyes. The catalog also lists the same map in a hand-colored version under the title “Typus Orbis Terrarum, map of the world, from Ortelius's 'Theatrum Orbis Terrarum', Antwerp, 1570.” Coloring, Ortelius's first craft, was a luxury surcharge for the atlas. According to the account books of the Plantin printing house in Antwerp, a buyer paid 36 guilders for a colored and bound copy in 1588; the color could double the price of the book.
The Theater of the World grew from one edition to the next and appeared in seven languages; in the mid-1570s, Philip II of Spain, whose dominions then included Antwerp, appointed Ortelius his geographer. Yet Ortelius was most attached to the part he designed himself. From 1579 onward, the Theatrum included an appendix, the Parergon, Greek for supplementary work. This first historical atlas consisted of maps of the ancient world that the antiquarian and collector compiled from classical authors. On the “Map of Ancient Egypt,” based on his own map of Egypt from 1565, the Nile runs through yellow-tinted land like a densely inscribed ribbon; a meander border frames the sheet like an ancient ornament. For “The Expedition of Alexander the Great, from the 'Theatrum Orbis Terrarum', 1603” - the year belongs to a much later edition of the work - he traced Alexander's campaign according to the ancient accounts; an inset shows the walled sanctuary of the oracle of Ammon, while in the accompanying text Ortelius lamented that the ancient authors had been more interested in Alexander's habits than in the geography of his conquests.
The strangest insight of his life appears in a dictionary of ancient and modern place names, the Thesaurus Geographicus of 1596. America, Ortelius wrote, had been torn away from Europe and Africa by earthquakes and floods; the traces of the rupture became visible when the coastlines of the continents were compared on a world map. He himself was thinking of deluges. In doing so, he described the fit of the coastlines some 300 years before Alfred Wegener's theory of drifting continents. Two years later, in 1598, Abraham Ortelius died in Antwerp; his epitaph in the city's Abbey of Saint Michael calls him “Quietis cultor sine lite, uxore, prole,” a lover of peace, without quarrel, wife, or offspring. The copperplates passed in 1601 to the publisher Jan Baptist Vrients, who continued the Theater of the World; the year in the title of the Alexander map comes from his Latin edition of 1603.
What Jan Baptist Vrients took over in 1601 was more than a stack of copperplates - it was also Ortelius's fundamental idea that maps belong together. That idea resurfaces in our order books. The orders for Ortelius received by Meisterdrucke have so far included several of his maps with striking frequency. In a sense, the Theater of the World is thus returning to its original form; what began as a bound collection in 1570 is now reunited as a group on a wall. The lover of peace would probably have been delighted.
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.jpg "The Expedition of Alexander the Great, from the")
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.jpg "Map of Ancient Egypt, 1584 by Abraham Ortelius")
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 (for detail see 84597) - (MeisterDrucke-170581).jpg "Map of the Pacific, China and America, 1589, by Abrahamus Ortelius (1527-98) by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "World Map Typus Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of the Voyage of the Argonauts, from the “Theatrum Orbis Terrarum”, 1603 by Abraham Ortelius")
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 - (MeisterDrucke-56912).jpg "Typus Orbis Terrarum, map of the world, from Ortelius")
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.jpg "Celebrated places in Judea and Israel, from the")
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.jpg "Geography map of Egypt with the cities of the Nile and Carthage (Tunisia) from")
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.jpg "A. Velleius. Islandia by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Pontus Euxinus by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of the world: “Typus Orbis Terrarum”, from Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of Tartary, Northern-Central Asia, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of Ancient Egypt - by Abraham Ortelius, Antwerp by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of Europe by Abraham Ortelius")
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 - (MeisterDrucke-91164).jpg "Map of the Middle East, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1570 by Abraham Ortelius")
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 - (MeisterDrucke-95288).jpg "Map of Palestine, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1570 by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "The Peregrinations of Abraham, from the")
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 - (MeisterDrucke-85321).jpg "Map of Zeeland, c. 1560 by Abraham Ortelius")
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 og viser Verdenskart - (MeisterDrucke-542945).jpg "The Map is Published in (1579) and Shows the World Map by Abraham Ortelius")
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_south_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina_south_Serbia_sou_-_(MeisterDrucke-1527557).jpg "Croatia (County: Dubrovnik-Neretva), southern Bosnia and Herzegovina, southern Serbia, southern Bulgaria, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Greece, Western Turkey by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Geography map of the territory of the Kingdom of Naples in Italy from")
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.jpg "Magellan")
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.jpg "Description of the Asian continent, Geography map from")
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.jpg "Cyprus Insula - Candia, olim Creta Geography map of the Mediterranean islands of Cyprus and Crete in Greece from")
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.jpg "Geography Map of the Territory of Asia Minor from")
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 - (MeisterDrucke-164074).jpg "A Sailing Ship Firing Its Cannon, Detail from a Map of the Pacific, China and America, 1599 by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of Salzburg diocese, Austria, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of India to New Guinea, c.1570-1603 by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Hekla volcano in Iceland (Atlas of Abraham Ortelius, Amsterdam 1588) by Abraham Ortelius")
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_-_(MeisterDrucke-1112398).jpg "World Map by Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598) by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Geography map of the territory of Bohemia from")
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.jpg "Geography map of Greece from")
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.jpg "Map of the Nile Delta and Ancient City of Carthage, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Croatia, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, southern Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, United by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Turcici imperii descriptio Geography map of the territory of the Ottoman Empire taken from")
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.jpg "Map of Africa, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of Russia From: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of Alexandria by Abraham Ortelius, Antwerp by Abraham Ortelius")
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_title_page_Antwerp_-_(MeisterDrucke-1115376).jpg "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Title Page by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of Turkey, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Geography Map of Baden-Wuerttemberg Territory of Germany Taken from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Typus Vindeliciae Ssive Utriusque Bavariae: Secundum Antiquam & Recentiorum Situm, ab Joanne Aventino Olim Descriptus... Geography Map of the Territory of Bavaria in Germany from")
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.jpg "Galliae regni potentiss. nova descriptio. Ioanne Ioliveto auctore Geography map of the territory of Gaul (France) from")
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.jpg "America, or the New World: From the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius, 1570 by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Geography Map of the Territory of Burgundy and Savoy from")
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 - (MeisterDrucke-209680).jpg "Map of Florida, c.1584 by Abraham Ortelius")
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_-_(MeisterDrucke-1499153).jpg "Map of the East Indies by Ortelius, c.1570 by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Descriptio Germaniae Inferioris Geography map of the territory of the Netherlands Germanic from")
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.jpg "Map of Flanders, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of Europe by Abraham Ortelius by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of Netherlands, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Geography map of the territory of Hungary from")
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.jpg "Larii Lacus Vulgo Tertorii Romani Fori Iulii. Geography Map of Northern Italy from")
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.jpg "Map of Northern Europe, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Typus Orbis Terrarum, World Map, 1577 by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Geography map of the territory of Bavaria in Germany from")
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.jpg "The Baltic Sea From: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Geography Map of the Territory of Palestine from")
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.jpg "Geography Map of the Territory of the Netherlands from")
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_Sea_monsters_attacking_a_ship_-_(MeisterDrucke-1453221).jpg "(Detail) Sea Monsters Attacking a Ship by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "India by Abraham Ortelius")
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_from_Hernando_de_Sotos_expedition_in_1570_-_(MeisterDrucke-1467974).jpg "Map of the Gulf of Mexico from Hernando de Soto")
_from_Hernando_de_Sotos_expedition_in_1570_-_(MeisterDrucke-1467974).jpg)
.jpg "Europae From: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius")
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_from_Theatru_-_(MeisterDrucke-971514).jpg "Geography map of Transylvania from")
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.jpg "Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, west Libya, western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Niger by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Representation of a marine monster half horse half sea snake. Plate from an edition of")
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.jpg "Map of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Abraham Ortelius Typus Orbis Terrarum Publication Antwerp 1598 by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of Europe, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of the Duchy of Milan, Italy, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Geography map of East India and South East Asian territory from")
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.jpg "Map of Iceland by Abraham Ortelius in 1570 by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "1591 Map of Iceland by Abraham Ortelius")
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_Theatrum_Orbis_Te_-_(MeisterDrucke-973107).jpg "Triton playing lute near the island of Saint Brendan (Brandan). “Theatrum Orbis Terrarum” by Abraham Ortelius, Antwerp 1584 by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "The Americas or the New World, Newly Described by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of the Iberian Peninsula, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Geography Map of the Territory of Narbonne from")
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.jpg "Hollandiae Antiquorum Catthorum Sedis Nova Descriptio, Auctore Lacobo a Daventria. Geography Map of the Territory of the Netherlands with the Cities of Amsterdam and Haarlem... Taken from")
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.jpg "Map of Tuscia from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of Switzerland, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of Greece, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Geography Map of the Territory South of the Netherlands from")
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.jpg "Geography map of the Loire territory with the castles and towns bordering the river (Beaumont, Aigueperse, Clermont and Montferan, Beauregard, Cignac, Montaigu, Puy Guillaume) taken from")
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.jpg "Map of Savoie, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Detail of a sea monster, from")
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.jpg "Description of the European Continent. Geography Map from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Geography map of the territory of the Arabian Peninsula from")
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.jpg "Geography Map of the Tartar Territory from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of Bavaria, Germany, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Map of the Kingdom of Naples, Italy, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Geography map of Saxonia and Thuringia from")
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.jpg "Map of the Turkish Empire by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Geography map of Scandinavia and Northern Europe from")
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.jpg "Map of Prussia, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "The Mediterranean region by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Portuguese Geography Map from")
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.jpg "Triton and Sirene in the Mediterranean Sea.")
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.jpg "Map of the Roman Empire, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Abraham Ortelius, Antwerp by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Port of Palos in Andalusia, from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius by Abraham Ortelius")
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.jpg "Europae by Abraham Ortelius")
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