a very old Egyptian giraffe

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Joannes Philoponus (549)
Comments on the Cosmography of Mozes.
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Taken from: Youssouf Kamal: Monumenta Cartographica Africae et Aegypti

What says Ptolemy: To the west of the Ethiopian cannibals is the mountain of the moon from where the sources of the Nile receive its water. This made certain authors to make errors. They have thought that in Ptolemy’s thinking that it is those lakes that feed the Nile but that is not true. Those lakes are not the sources. And also Ptolemy does not say those lakes are filled with the water of the mountains nor that the Nile receives that water of the lakes. It is the opposite the lakes are made by the river. Ptolemy says these lakes are lakes of the Nile which also forms a big amount of others and that the snow of the mountains of the moon, if there is at that southern latitude, the Nile receives them and that the land behind is unknown. Ptolemy did not report of the existence of another habitat to the south of this country nor did he say which are the sources of the Nile or where they are.