Whilst perusing Jean Maley's "Histoire lac Tchad durant le dernier millénaire" online recently, we noticed that the author proposed an early map depicting Lake Chad from medieval Europe. The Beatus map follows the conventions of medieval European cartography inspired by Ptolemy, but does depict a large lake south of the Sahara (Deserta arenosa, or sandy desert?) in what would roughly be the Lake Chad region. The connection to the Nile does match the incorrect view of Islamic geographers that Lake Chad and the Nile were connected. It probably resulted from a mistaken belief that the Bahr el Ghazal and the Nile were one and the same. But is it possible this map only placed Lake Chad in its correct location through chance or error? It's clearly based on ancient maps since it still refers to the "Isle of Meroe" and does not name specific places in the Lake Chad Basin. Yet unlike Isidore of Seville, the large lake believed to be the source of the Nile is not named Nilides, nor does this match show the river turning south before rising north to Egypt.
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