Uploaded January 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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A land containing not only powerful imperial dynasties and massive historical armies, but also tribes of dog-headed men, hungry cannibals and looming giants...
Here we have Pliny The Elder's description of the lands south of Egypt - as far south into Ancient Africa as Rome had ventured at the time. Whether searching for the source of the Nile, or in attempts to conquer the ancient Kingdom of Kush, Rome's knowledge of the region was surprisingly detailed - and unsurprisingly outlandish.

Translated by John Bostock and HT Riley.

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Thanks to:

Fabrizio Demartis
Dbxsoul [CC BY 3.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]
Valerian Guillot
Bardo National Museum [CC BY-SA 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]
Sven-Steffen Arndt [CC BY-SA 2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]
Rod Waddington