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Stephen of Pisa and Antioch: Liber Mamonis in astronomia

(Caliph Ma’mun’s book about Astronomy) (1127) (Italy)

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He translated in Italy and Antioch Arab works in Latin including the Almagest of de Ptolemy version of Caliph al-Ma’mun. The Liber Mamonis was written as a call to replace the ideas of Macrobius then current in the Latin world.

 

 

 

P113

This is as follows. It is a fact to be read in Lucan’s epic (1) that the ancient Egyptians tried with greatest effort to find and witness by human sight the source of the Nile and then, by knowing the place of the spring, fully understand the reason of the flooding. But after many frustrated failures they gave up; those who were sent out for exploration, exhausted by the long way through the huge desert, were finally prevented from following the river’s origin any further due to the heat of the burnt zone. Thus unable to continue the journey, they scarcely made it back home.

 

P115

…… the Nile’s course crosses the burnt middle and has its origin in the southern temperate zone. And this makes it irrigate Egypt and its neighbour regions with great masses of excessive water during the summer in the north.

 

…… As the Nile has its source there, it collects massive rainfalls in its riverbed, then crosses the burnt zone and reaches Egypt more exuberant than usual. Enhanced to its maximum by the ample richness of the southern winter, it takes possession of the flooded land. But when it is winter in our part of the world while the southern temperate zone gets hot and torrid by summer heat, the Nile, with its conceited donors now dismissed, discolours the coastal blue of the sea more gently. Hence it is clear that, having its source in the southern temperate zone, the Nile runs through the burnt central zone to the north. For this reason the ocean cannot flow around the burnt zone completely. For the Nile loses not the sweetness that has gone into its water.

 

P278

However, we know that the whole region from the equator until the northern ice is inhabitable, as there is a certain island in the sea beyond Ethiopia that is only two degrees remote from the equator and that is densely peopled and also bears a great mass of animals and plants.

 

(1) Lucan’s epic: the Pharsalia (61AD), is a Roman epic poem written by the poet Lucan, detailing the civil war between Julius Caesar and the forces of the Roman Senate led by Pompey the Great.

This desire you have to know the Nile’s source,

Roman, was shared by Pharaohs and the kings

of Macedonia and Persia; no age but wished to

hand this knowledge to futurity; yet Nature’s

powers of concealment have held sway till now.

Alexander, greatest of men, begrudged Memphis

its worship of the Nile, and sent picked men into

the furthest reaches of Ethiopia; but they were

thwarted by the burning zone of parching skies;

and only saw the Nile steam with heat. Sesostris

reached the western limits of the world, drove

his chariot with kings under the yoke, drank of

the Rhone and Po, yet never the sources of Nile.

Cambyses, that madman, penetrated the eastern

lands of the long-lived Macrobii; ran short of

food and ate his own dead, but returned with no

more knowledge of you, Nile. Even mendacious

legend has not ventured to speak of your source.

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