Riphean Mountains

Ancient geographers considered the Ripheans the source of Boreas (the north wind) and several large rivers (the Dnieper, the Don, and the Volga).

[6] Late antique and early medieval writers, like Solinus, Martianus Capella, Orosius, and Isidore of Seville, ensured the Ripheans' continued place in geographic writing during the Middle Ages.

[10] In late 15th-century western Europe, new access to Claudius Ptolemy's Geography led to many new maps of "Sarmatia," which notably featured the Riphean Mountains.

In tandem with new contacts with the Grand Duchy of Moscow, Renaissance humanists and ambassadors debated the existence of the Riphean Mountains in the first half of the sixteenth century.

[11] Others, like the ambassadors Francesco Da Collo [it] and Sigismund von Herberstein, argued that the ancient Ripheans referred to the Ural Mountains, then recently explored by Muscovy.

Franco-Flemish map of the world (ca. 1277) depicting global climate zones. The Riphean Mountains ( riphei montes ) appear in the far north (left).
A Renaissance map of Eastern Europe, according to Ptolemy's Geographia . The Riphean (and "Hyperborean") Mountains appear in the upper right. Bernardo Silvano (Venice, 1511).