River
Flumen Ganges
Ganges
Listen to the story
Flumen Ganges is the Ganges of India, and the map gives it an enormous length, naming it three times: at its source, near its mouth, and once more as a stop on a road. The drawing seems to have been garbled by the copyist around 1200, who apparently tangled the upper course of the Indus, or perhaps even the Eulaeus, with the Tigris, and then joined the whole muddle to the Ganges. The river amazed the ancients as well. The Greek geographer Strabo thought it the greatest river of the three continents he knew, and the Roman writer Pliny told of snakes thirty feet long living in its waters.