General

Title

Munich, BSB, Cod.hebr. 450

Manuscript name

Hammerschlag's Ilan de-Adam Kadmon

Summary

This manuscript, known as the Ilan of Adam Kadmon, the creation of the kabbalist, cantor, and scribe R. Natan Neta Hammerschlag, is a scroll comprising five parchment membranes, serving as the earliest witness to incorporate the Pu module (the single-column redesign of Poppers P) alongside the N module (Ilan of Expanded Names). The ilan is characterized by groundbreaking visual innovation: it departs from traditional columnar arrangement in favor of a serpentine layout, and reverses the left-right perspective in its depiction of the head of Adam Kadmon. Iconographically, the striking anthropomorphic figure of Adam Kadmon is adorned with a Habsburg imperial crown, fusing the images of the monarch, Adam Kadmon, and Shabtai Ẓevi. The inscriptions and illustrations are saturated with encrypted Sabbatean allusions, unique gematrias, and pseudo-citations attributed to Oẓrot Ḥayyim.

Support material

parchment

Identifier

Cod.hebr. 450

NLI identifier

990001285000205171

Repository

Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

Country

Germany

Settlement

Munich

Research literature

J. H. Chajes, The Kabbalistic Tree (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022), 226-240.

Creation time

Date

1691