Mountains of the Moon

The Mountains of the Moon were identified by two second century CE Roman Geographers as being near the Source of the White Nile.
The Source of the White Nile was not found again until 1858.

Marinus of Tyre recorded in his World Chart (114 CE) that during the first century CE, a Greek Merchant called Diogenes, returning from India, landed near Rhapta on the east coast of Africa, known as Azania.
After travelling inland for 25 days, he arrived at two great inland lakes and, at what the locals called the ‘Mountains of the Moon’, because their peaks were covered in snow. and described this area as the source of the river Nile.

Ptolemy the Greco-Roman Cartographer c. 150 CE, then placed the source of the Nile next to the two great lakes in his map of the world.
He described the ‘Mountains of the Moon’ in Greek as the ‘Selenes Oros’, and in Latin as the ‘Lunae Montes’.
He also placed Rhapta on the exact location of the River Rufiji, opposite Mafia Island, Tanzania.

The Mountains of the Moon are usually considered to be the snow capped Ruwenzori Mountains in Uganda.
Alternatively, they may also refer to Mount Kilimanjaro in northeastern Tanzania, the highest Mountain in Africa, which is also covered in snow all year round.
In addition, the largest river feeding Lake Victoria is the Kagera River, which could also be interpreted as the source of Nile. The source of the Kagera river is Lake Rweru in Burundi.
Lake Victoria then drains via the Nile river at Jinja, Uganda.

The Source of the White Nile was not rediscovered until 1858 by two British officers, Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke, who arrived in Zanzibar and travelled inland, in almost exactly the same way Diogenes had done nearly 2,000 years earlier.
The Source of the Blue Nile was discovered earlier in Ethiopia during the 1630’s by two Portuguese missionaries, Paez and Lobo.

Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania