POLAND

POLAND / POLSKA.

International Philatelic Exhibition POLSKA'93 in Poznań. 
Amber Road. Poland map in the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum atlas by Abraham Ortelius (1570). 
Miniature sheet issued on 29.01.1993.
Face value: 20,000 Polish złotych.
Design: Andrzej Jeziorkowski.
Print: 995,000 copies.
Size: 83 x 90 mm.

Catalogues
- Michel No. BL 121.
- StampWorld No. 3436.
- Stanley Gibbons No. MS 3457.
- Yvert et Tellier No. BG 131.

Abraham Ortelius (Antwerp, April 14, 1527 - June 28, 1598), also written as Oertel, Orthellius or Wortels, was a Flemish geographer and cartographer. Together with Mercator, he is the father of Flemish cartography. In 1575 he was appointed geographer to Felipe II of Spain, a position that allowed him access to the knowledge accumulated by Spanish and Portuguese explorers. His best known work is the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (published in Antwerp on May 20, 1570), considered the first modern atlas. Its first version contained 70 maps: 56 for areas of Europe, 10 for Asia and Africa, and one for each continent.

The Amber Road was an ancient trade route for the transport of amber, a precious material known as “northern gold”, from the coastal areas of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. Transportation was done for centuries by land and by waterway through the Vistula and Dnieper rivers to Italy, Greece, the Black Sea and even Syria and Egypt, as evidenced by archaeological finds. In Roman times, a main route ran south from the coast of present-day Lithuania, through present-day Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia to the Adriatic Sea.

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Thanks to Kazimierz R. Leszczyński for his contribution (http://leszkarozdub.blogspot.com).