On certain of the Beatus maps a “sandy desert” is shown between Egypt, western Africa, and Ethiopia;[1415] and on the Psalter map it appears as a well-defined strip of territory labeled “sandy and sterile land.”[1416] This of course is no other than the Sahara,[1417] of which little or nothing was known, except that the Henry of Mayence map shows,[1418] far back in the desert, the Temple of Jupiter (Ammon), in the oasis of that name, known since antiquity, and the St. Sever Beatus map represents certain immense _salinae_, or salt pits (the two squares west of the Nile on Fig. 2, p. 69, above), said to wax and wane with the moon.[1419] ETHIOPIA South of Egypt and the Sahara lies Ethiopia. In the minds of medieval writers this name was not restricted to the region beyond Upper Egypt but was applied to the entire southern part of the known world, just as “India” sometimes was applied to the entire Far East. Indeed, from early classical times Ethiopia had itself been confused with India, and some of the writers whose works we are studying believed that the two regions were coterminous. Nearly all the maps of the period carried the extremities of Ethiopia far to the east and minimized the size of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean in such a way as to bring Central Africa within no great distance of India. On the Jerome map of Palestine two tracts called “India Egyptii” and “India Ethiopie” were placed along the shores of the Red Sea opposite the mouths of the Indus.[1420] Gervase of Tilbury speaks of three peoples inhabiting Ethiopia: the Hesperi in the west, the Garamantes in the center, and the “Indians” in the east,[1421] and adds that there are one hundred and twenty provinces “from India into Ethiopia.”[1422] The _De imagine mundi_ places Saba, the city of the Queen of Sheba, in the easterly part of Ethiopia.[1423] It was conceded that Ethiopia is terribly hot on account of the proximity of the sun and that the soil there for the most part is dry and desert. Gervase speaks of the mighty Mount Climax of Ptolemy, Orosius, and other ancient writers in the midst of Ethiopia, a home of bearded women and similar marvels.