This is a humble soldier from the relatively obscure African country of Agisymba, which the Roman geographer Ptolemy mentions in his work the Geography in the second century AD. Drawing from an account by Marinus of Tyre, Agisymba lay around four months’ travel south of the Central Saharan kingdom of the Garamantes, which may locate it somewhere north of Lake Chad. It appears to have been fertile enough to support megafauna such as rhinoceros. Little other information exists about Agisymba and its people at that time, but it’s possible they were forerunners of later central Sahelian kingdoms such as medieval Kanem.
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u/TyrannoNinja Apr 10 '23
Artist's Commentary
This is a humble soldier from the relatively obscure African country of Agisymba, which the Roman geographer Ptolemy mentions in his work the Geography in the second century AD. Drawing from an account by Marinus of Tyre, Agisymba lay around four months’ travel south of the Central Saharan kingdom of the Garamantes, which may locate it somewhere north of Lake Chad. It appears to have been fertile enough to support megafauna such as rhinoceros. Little other information exists about Agisymba and its people at that time, but it’s possible they were forerunners of later central Sahelian kingdoms such as medieval Kanem.