Agisymba


Agisymba was an unidentified country in Africa mentioned by Ptolemy in the middle of the 2nd century AD.

Data

According to Ptolemy's writings, it was a 4 months journey south of Fezzan and contained large animals, such as rhinoceroses and elephants, as well as many tall mountains. Agisymba was located near Lake Chad which in those centuries was much larger than what it is today.
Ptolemy's account is based on that written by Marinus of Tyre between 107 AD and 115 AD. Between the years 83 AD and 92 AD, the king of the Garamantes claimed that the Agisymba population were his subjects.
Modern historians suggest that Agisymba was probably somewhere to the north of Lake Chad as the Chad area is populated with many mountains. One theory is that Agisymba was an antecedent of the Kanem Empire located on the northern shore of Lake Chad.
Indeed Ptolemy wrote that around 90 AD Julius Maternus did a mainly commercial expedition. From the Sirte gulf he reached the Oasis of Cufra and the Oasis of Archei, then arrived -after 4 months traveling with the king of the Garamantes- to the river Bahr Salamat and Bahr Aouk, near the current Central African Republic in a region then called Agisymba. He went back to Rome with a rhinoceros with two horns, that was shown in the Colosseum.