8vo. 112 p. Modern tastless and dull boards 17.5 cm (Ref: STCN ppn 832451045) (Condition: Hinges weak. Bookplate on the front pastedown) (Note: The goddess Nehalennia is known since the 5th of january 1647, when a heavy winterstorm washed away part of the dunes near Domburg, a small city on the island of Walcheren, part of the Dutch province Sealand, and revealed the remains of stone monuments, votive altars and statues which until then had lain hidden under the dunes. In later years more remains were found, up to 40, of which 28 bore inscriptions or had statues of one Nehalennia, a deity that was until then completely unknown. Our knowledge of this goddess and her cult is solely based on these monuments. Her cult flourished the second/third century A.D. The goddess was revered for bringing prosperity and offering protection against dangers at sea. After the Romans left the Low Countries in the 4th century A.D. her temple and its monuments passed into oblivion. In 1970/71 many more remains, altars, ceramics and fragments of a temple building were fished out of the water of the Oosterschelde, near Colijnsplaat (Noord-Beveland). 104 altars and statues were recovered, 41 of them were almost complete. Nehalennia is now thought to be a Germanic Mother goddess, and principal goddess of the Frisiavones. Her worshippers were probably merchants who traded with Britain. The attributes of the goddess are connected with the shipping trade and fertility, a rudder, stem or stern, cornucopiae, a basket full of apples, a loaf of bread, and also a greyhoud. § In 1647, immediately after the discovery of the remains of Nehalennia, the Dutch linguist and Leiden professor of Rhetoric Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn, 1612-1653, published his 'Bediedinge van de tot noch toe onbekende afgodinne Nehalennia, over de dusent ende ettelicke hondert jaren onder het sandt begraven, dan onlancx ontdeckt op het strandt van Walcheren in Zeelandt', in which he tried to interpret the meaning and the importance of the inscriptions, and to throw light upon the name of the goddess. 'His conjectures were received with interest as well as opposition and Boxhorn was urged to elaborate on his findings. In the same year he therefore published a set of questions, followed by a treatise (Antwoord van Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn etc.) containing the answers to his own questions'. (C. Dekker, 'The Origins of Old Germanic Studies in the Low Countries', Leiden 1999, p. 209) Boxhorn was the first to launch in these two treatises the theory that almost all European languages, including the Celtic and Baltic languages, and also including Persian, were related to each other, and were,'Van een ende de selve afcomste', i.e. 'From one and the same origin'. He called this language family Scythian. Later in his career Boxhorn added Sanskrit to this family, after the resemblances of that old Indian language were called to his attention by his friend and colleague Claudius Salmasius. Boxhorn developed in the 'Bediedinge' and this following 'Antwoord', the existence of a primitive common language, once spoken by the Scythians, a nomadic people known from ancient Greek sources. He tried to prove the common origin of those languages by comparing their vocabulary and grammar. Boxhorn stated that the similarities between languages must be systematic and plausible. He is considered one of the founding fathers of modern comparative language studies. Boxhorn was married to Susanna Duvelaar, daughter of the Burgomaster of Middelburg Petrus Duvelaar. Middelburg was the capital of Walcheren, where the first Nehalennia remains were found) (Provenance: The bookplate: 'Ex libris J.J. Poley, F. Poley-Scheele'. The motto of the bookplate is: 'De wetenschap is den verstandige licht') (Collation: A-O4) (Photographs on request)