the tribe of Naphtali.^66 There is much in support of the idea that Ortelius
had Benjamin in mind as he wrote about the Hephthalites and the tribe of
Naphtali. Among Ortelius’s close associates in Antwerp was Benito Arias
Montano, the translator of Benjamin of Tudela into Latin. His “sacred history”
maps, depicting the itineraries of such holy men as Abraham, Moses, and Paul,
were inspired by Montano’s work.^67 Montano, who spent several years in
Antwerp, published a translation of Benjamin in 1575.^68
Whether he consulted Benjamin or not, Ortelius’s explanation seems to be
a compromise among various conflicting issues: the facticity and the wealth of
information about the Hephthalites, the power of the traditions that placed the
ten tribes in Central Asia, combined with the nagging similarity he detected
between the names “Hephthalites” and “Naphtali.” The result is an apparent
attempt to organize the stories into a coherent narrative: the one-time rulers of
an empire stretching between eastern Iran and northern India are linked to the
ten tribes, but are not themselves the ten tribes. Ortelius next discusses the real
ten tribes, providing two locations. The first, supposedly their original, is in a
place called “Turcestan,” east of the Caspian Sea. Dutifully placed beyond a
mountain range, Ortelius mentions that the tribes had been living there when
they were “allies” in the war against the “Ishmaelites” some “ 900 years ago.”
Their “current” location, however, is way up in a northeasterly direction.
Underneath the word “Arsareth,” and on other maps next to it, Ortelius adds
the following notation: “ 4 Esdras v. 13 : Arsareth. Here the ten tribes retreated,
and changed from the Tatar or Tartar area to Scythia. Since then they are called
Gauths or Gauthens, confirming God’s highest glory.”^69
The map provides a full narrative and visual account of the ten tribes’
wanderings. The map’s viewer can even measure the way and examine their
route from their original location beyond the Caspian Sea to the northeastern
corner of Asia, just as “a merchant could certainly use the maps of the
Theatrumto trace the route of his goods, and a scholar could study the move-
ments of mankind over the physical earth.”^70 Arzareth’s location, at the edge of
the Asian land mass, surrounded by seas on three sides and by hordes and a
river on the fourth, suggests a commitment to scripture.^71 Ortelius was com-
mitted; at the foot of his map, he quotes Cicero, “What of human affairs can
seem great to him who knows all eternity and the entire universe?”^72
We can read Ortelius’s inclusion of Arzareth in more than one way. On one
hand, the map is a quintessential instance of early scientific approval of
Arzareth as a real geographical location. There can be no doubt that Ortelius
copied the location of Arzareth from Mu ̈nster, whoseCosmographiawas one of
the inspirations for theTheatrum.^73 Here is the transformation of Arzareth
from a mere word on a 1544 map in Basel into an elaborate story on another
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