- Rhapta was an ancient port on the East Coast of Africa, which was known in Classical Antiquity as Azania, modern Tanzania.
- Rhapta’s location is unknown but one possible candidate is Dar es Salaam.
Possible Location for Rhapta
- Rhapta is mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, written in the first century CE, which describes the port as being two days south of the Menouthias Islands, and as the last port of Azania.
- If the Menouthias Islands are the Zanzibar Archipelago, which is at Latitude 5° South, then vessels would have had to have crossed the Equator to reach it.
- The Location of Rhapta is unknown, but a possible candidate is Dar es Salaam.
The Source of the Nile
- Ptolemy's Geographia (c.150 CE) is a Roman chart of the world produced by the Geographer Ptolemy which he based on an earlier chart by Marinus of Tyre.
- Marinus of Tyre recorded 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.
Mountains of the Moon
- The Mountains of the Moon are usually considered to be the snow capped Ruwenzori Mountains in Uganda.
- Alternatively, they may refer to Mount Kilimanjaro in northeastern Tanzania, the highest Mountain in Africa, which is also covered in snow all year round.
Dar es Salaam may have been Rhapta