Lexicon Heptaglotton
Lexicon Heptaglotton, Hebraicum
Lexicon heptaglotton, Hebraicum Chaldaicum, Syriacum, Samaritanum, AEthiopicum, Arabicum, conjunctim : et Persicum, separatim... Cui accessit brevis, & harmonica... grammaticae omnium praecedentium linguarum delineatio / Authore Edmundo Castello (Castell).
Castell devoted 18 years of his life to his great Lexicon, “filled with unremitting toil of seldom less than 16 or 18 hours a day, with constant vigils, with bodily suffering, with loss of fortune, and finally all but the loss of sight” (DNB). The Lexicon grew out of Castell’s work in assisting Brian Walton in the preparation of his renowned Biblia Polyglotta, “in which Castell was especially responsible for the Samaritan, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions, as Walton himself admits; though it appears that Castell was credited by Walton with a much smaller share in the work than he really accomplished. While the Lexicon’s appearance “marks an epoch in Semitic scholarship” (DNB), it was never destined to be a popular work. At the time of Castell’s death about 500 copies remained unsold; these were put in storage, but carelessly, “where for some years the rats played such havoc with the learned pages that when the stock came to be examined scarcely a single copy could be made up from the wreck of the sheets” (DNB)—making complete copies very scarce today. Originally issued as a single, very thick folio volume, this copy has been bound in two, with no title page in Volume II (none issued). Castell’s Lexicon is at times found paired with Walton’s six-volume Polyglot Bible, which was also published by Roycroft, but issued separately 12 years prior, in 1657.
Castell devoted 18 years of his life to his great Lexicon, “filled with unremitting toil of seldom less than 16 or 18 hours a day, with constant vigils, with bodily suffering, with loss of fortune, and finally all but the loss of sight” (DNB). The Lexicon grew out of Castell’s work in assisting Brian Walton in the preparation of his renowned Biblia Polyglotta, “in which Castell was especially responsible for the Samaritan, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions, as Walton himself admits; though it appears that Castell was credited by Walton with a much smaller share in the work than he really accomplished. While the Lexicon’s appearance “marks an epoch in Semitic scholarship” (DNB), it was never destined to be a popular work. At the time of Castell’s death about 500 copies remained unsold; these were put in storage, but carelessly, “where for some years the rats played such havoc with the learned pages that when the stock came to be examined scarcely a single copy could be made up from the wreck of the sheets” (DNB)—making complete copies very scarce today. Originally issued as a single, very thick folio volume, this copy has been bound in two, with no title page in Volume II (none issued). Castell’s Lexicon is at times found paired with Walton’s six-volume Polyglot Bible, which was also published by Roycroft, but issued separately 12 years prior, in 1657.
Language Hebrew [heb]
Alphabet Hebrew
Copyright Public Domain