THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON OF PTOLEMY’S 
GEOGRAPHY AND THE RUWENZORI RANGE. 
In Claudius Ptolemy’s Geography (Book IV, 
chap. 8) we read as follows: “ At the 
southern latitude of 12° 30', and between 
the longitudes of 57° and 67°, there rises the 
Mountain of the Moon, whose snows feed the 
lakes, sources of the Nile.” 
As under the latitude specified by the 
Geographer there is no high land in equatorial 
Africa that is elevated enough to be described 
as snowy, and still less as rising above the 
line of perpetual snows, and as, moreover, 
a latitude lying so far to the south would 
place such a high land quite beyond the 
upper basin of the Nile, the suspicion is not 
without justification that several geographers have raised that the mention of 
the Mountain (or of the Mountains) of the Moon does not come directly from 
Ptolemy, but is an interpolation foisted into his Geography by some Arab 
writer. This view is held by Cooley, who, in his Ptolemy and the Nile, published 
in 1854, thus expresses himself: “Ptolemy is a very methodical writer, and 
divides his Geography into chapters, each describing some natural zone or 
region, and containing connected information. Had he known that the lakes 
of the Nile were filled from the snows of mountains further south, he would, in 
conformity with his general method, have included these ultimate sources in his 
account of the river. Now the Mountains of the Moon are not mentioned in 
the chapter which treats of the Nile ( 1 ), but in a separate and, as it were, 
supplementary chapter, containing matters avowedly obscure and little known, 
and even there they are mentioned not directly, but in an oblique manner, and 
with a very suspicious gloss.” ( 2 ) 
Note. — The figures in brackets in the text refer to the notes printed at the end of 
this Appendix. 
289 
u 
