Ptolemy's Mountains of the Moon

Around 150 CE the geographer Ptolemy placed the source of the Nile in snow-fed lakes below the 'Mountains of the Moon' in the heart of Africa, a report that tantalised explorers for 1,700 years.

150 CE · 0.39, 29.87 · status: legend

The account

Ptolemy relied on a Greek merchant, Diogenes, who said he had travelled inland from the East African coast. Medieval Arab geographers kept the mountains on their maps. In 1888 Henry Morton Stanley identified them with the Rwenzori range on the Uganda–Congo border, whose glaciers do feed the Nile system.

The sceptical view

Whether Ptolemy's source really saw the Rwenzori, Kilimanjaro or nothing at all is unknown.

Sources

1. Wikipedia: Mountains of the Moon (Africa)
2. Wikipedia: Rwenzori Mountains