Veterum Persarum et Parthorum et Medorum Religionis historia. Contemporary calf - 1760

PIONEERING WORK ON ZOROASTRIAN RELIGION second edition 4to. [4], 580pp., 21 engraved plates (of which 5 folding), contemporary sprinkled pale calf, sides with a double gilt filler border, sometime rebacked with a new matching calf spine, spine panelled by raised bands, panels tooled in blind, handsome red and dark green morocco labels gilt, original endpapers reused, few minor scrapes on sides, nice fresh and handsome copy. Thomas Hyde (1636 - 1703), English Orientalist and divine, pioneered the serious study of the Zoroastrian religion in the west. He was in 1658 appointed reader in Hebrew at Queen's College, Oxford, and in 1659 was appointed under-keeper of the Bodleian Library where he organised and published the third published catalogue of the their collections. He was a notable linguist with a mastery of Turkish, Arabic, Syriac, Persian, Hebrew, Malay and Chinese (learned from a Chinese Jesuit). He used Greek, Latin and Arabic, as well as what few Zoroastrian sources he could locate for this his magnum opus which was first published in 1700. His work, while correcting errors of the Classical historians on ancient Persian religions, was itself open to the criticism of later scholars but it remains a notable pioneering effort. This second edition is significantly expanded by the inclusion of two appendicies: Magorum Liber Sad-der, Zoroastris Praecepta et Canones (p.441-512) and Historiae Religionis Veterum Persarum Appendix (p.513-580).