Some Medieval Theories about the Nile

This paper deals with some of the theories about the course of the Nile which were held during the late medieval and early modern period. The title needs amplification; it was difficult to find one that would be both concise and at the same time adequately descriptive. The idea of writing the paper came from Dr. Mannoni's publication of the mid-fifteenth-century map of Abyssinia called Egyptus Novelo; J and that led to an examination of Fra Mauro's almost contemporary world-map covering the same region. No detailed examination of the places marked on Egyptus Novelo has been published; one such was begun just before the war by a German scholar, but he died during the war, and his notes cannot now be found. Fra Mauro's map is better known; an excellent facsimile is published in De la Ronciere's * Decouverte de l'Afrique au Moyen Age'; but when I came to examine his identifications I found so many errors that it seemed desirable to start afresh. De la Ronciere's book is a most useful compendium, but the subject is vast and the treatment superficial; one gets the impression that the author has lost his way among his notes. The facsimile reproductions of old maps (with the exception of that of Fra Mauro's) suffer from the fact that the names are often tantalizingly illegible, and they are not printed in the text. Such repro? ductions seem to be a waste of money. I propose therefore to consider in some detail the topography of the Upper Nile region as shown on these two maps, showing later how obstinately the Ptolemaic system resisted the incorporation of new facts. If I had time I should like to enlarge upon this topic, for the medieval cartography of Africa illustrates admirably the power of an established system to retard the advancement of knowledge. In the realms of astronomy and geology that retardation is well known; but in cartography the roles were reversed, for it was the Christian Church which led the way. So far as the interior of eastern Africa was concerned, it was chiefly the missionaries who made the discoveries? or at any rate they were the chief recorders; and it was the cartographers who adhered to the older ideas long after they had become obsolete. The carto? graphers tried to make the best of both worlds, incorporating new discoveries without omitting the Ptolemaic detail. All the maps are of course based ultimately on travellers' tales, and the sources can often be detected from internal evidence. The cartographer questioned returning travellers, no doubt wrote down their replies, and made some rough preliminary sketch-maps. Some of these travellers* itineraries have survived, and I shall refer to them again in a few miuutes; others must have existed and perished. The Zorzi itineraries, compiled in 1524 and the

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• A letter dated 1577 from Mercator to John Dee

  E G R Taylor•Imago Mundi•1956

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