The Sotah Tractate - Venice [1520] - Bomberg Printing Press - First Edition - Ancient Scholarly Glosses

The Sotah Tractate - Venice [1520] - Bomberg Printing Press - First Edition - Ancient Scholarly Glosses
Babylonian Talmud, the Sotah tractate. With the Rashi commentary and Tosfot. At the end of the tractate, rulings of the Tosfor were printed and Maimonides' commentary on the Mishnayot. Venice, [1520]. Daniel Bomberg printing press. The first complete edition of the Babylonian Talmud in general, and the first edition of this tractate in particular.
This edition determined the shape of the Talmudic leaf for all generations to come (subsequent editions made only minor changes) and to a large extent, it determined the Talmudic text as well.
This Talmud "is almost completely clean of the damage of the censor" (R.N.N. Rabinowitz, an article about the printing of the Talmud, pp. 41).
On the last page, a list of the Kuntrasim the volume consists of was listed and the beginning of the leaves of each Kuntras.
Today, there are manuscripts of Rahsi's commentary on the Babylonian Talmud that were written before the invention of the printing press; however, there are no such manuscripts for the Sotah tractate (according to Dr. Ezra Shavit of the National Library of Israel, the Institute of Microfilmed HebrewManuscripts). Thus, before us is the earliest version of the Rashi commentary on this tractate.

The rareness of the tractate before us
This edition of the Talmud is extremely rare and of great historical value. As noted above, this was the first edition of the Sotah tractate. In general, the Sotah tractate was one of the rarest tractates of the Talmud that were printed at the time.

The rare illustration
On leaf 43a, there is a printed illustration for demonstrating Rashi's commentary. The illustration depicts the place of five fruit trees. This is the only printed illustration that appears in the Bomberg edition of the Talmud. In other places where an illustration was supposed to appear, the printer left an empty space to be drawn on after the printing. Various articles were written on the subject. See for example, the article by Reb Eli Ganor, "Roshmo shel Tarshim", on the internet.
In all editions of the Talmud starting with the Bomberg edition of 1520 and ending with the Berman edition of 1690, there are no illustrations on the leaves of the Talmud. The printers omitted them leaving an empty space where they should have been.

Signatures and Glosses
Throughout the leaves of the tractate, there is novellae written on the margins of the leaves in ancient script, as well as Talmudic references, written by at least two writers, on eof them - who wrote most of the glosses - most likely lived during the time of printing, the early 16th century. On the last page, ownership inscriptions. In addition, there is an ancient unique inscription announcing that the writer has finished studying the Sotah tractate and is about to begin studying the Kiddushin tractate.
Some of the glosses are corrections, according to the glosses of the "Rashal". The Maharshal was the first proofreaders of the printed editions of the Talmud in his book "Chochmat Shlomo".
53 leaves. Complete copy, with the title page.
Condition: Good. Some of the leaves are restored. Stains. Wear. Small tears. All these with almost no damage to text. An impressive printing on high-quality leaves.