Region
Hii montes subiacent paludi simili Meotidi per quem Nilus transit
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Hii montes subiacent paludi simili Meotidi per quem Nilus transit is not a name but a whole sentence set into the Cyrenaica: these mountains lie beneath a marsh like the Maeotis, the Sea of Azov, through which the Nile passes. It belongs to a cluster of captions describing the ancient, partly mythical lakes and lagoons of this region or further west towards Numidia and Mauretania. An almost identical sentence appears in the Beatus manuscript of Saint-Sever, from the middle of the eleventh century. Behind it lies the idea of rivers as borders between continents: the Nile parted Asia from Libya, as the Don parted Europe from Asia.