Apart from circumlocutions like 'The Dark Continent' there really is nothing else. And you have to realise that, before the continent was completely explored, 'Africa' itself was a word full of mystery, speculation and romance, like (for example) 'Timbuktu', 'Shangri-La', 'Outer Mongolia' or 'Kafiristan'. It didn't need a more lyrical romantic name.
Think Karen Blixen starting her memoir with the sentence: 'I had a farm in Africa'. Even in the mid-20th century there was all the lyricism, romance and strangeness you could want.
Would people have thought 'Shangri-La', 'Outer Mongolia' or 'Kafiristan' were in Africa? Or do you mean 'Africa' as a collective term for a deamy 'far, far away' land?
Neither - I just meant that these are names with inherent romance. You might know that Timbuktu was a flyblown, rundown mud town, and that Outer Mongolia was a dreary post-Soviet chunk of steppe, but the names tell you otherwise.
This is true. The Romans called it Africa (what they knew of it, of course); there was a general nicknamed Africanus because of a major battle he won there. Egypt may not have covered by the term in the Middle Ages, however--I couldn't find out. If you want something a little different, you might look up historical names for the different countries/regions. Some of those varied quite a bit from modern ones.
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Think Karen Blixen starting her memoir with the sentence: 'I had a farm in Africa'. Even in the mid-20th century there was all the lyricism, romance and strangeness you could want.
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*sniffle*
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