“Meinen Namen habe ich folgendermaßen inskulpiert”

Abstract In 1684, Engelbert Kaempfer engraved his name and the Latin motto Virtuti nihil invium on a cornice in a caravanserai located somewhere between Salyan and Baku. Some 112 years later, Levin August Theophil Freiherr von Bennigsen discovered Kaempfer’s inscription. Despite the intense scrutiny of Kaempfer’s career and his many contributions over the past three centuries, this unique record appears to have gone unnoticed. Kaempfer’s reputation as a Neo-Latinist has attracted considerable attention, and the creation of the motto—echoing Ovid, Tacitus, and Quintus Curtius—has sometimes been attributed to him. Evidence is presented here, however, demonstrating that the motto was coined several decades before Kaempfer was born.