Nile
For alternative meanings of "Nile," see Nile (disambiguation)The
Nile (
Arabic: النيل
an-nīl, Egyptian
iteru), in
Africa, is generally regarded by most authorities as the longest
river on
Earth.
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hieroglyphs spelling out "itrw", transliterated as iteru. |
The word "Nile" ('nīl) comes from the word
Neilos (Νειλος), a Greek name meaning river valley.
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East Africa, showing the course of the River Nile, with the Blue and White Nile marked in those colours |
The
drainage basin of the Nile River covers 3,254,555 km², about 10% of the area of Africa [
1].
There are two great branches of the Nile: the White Nile, from equatorial East Africa, and the
Blue Nile, from
Ethiopia. Both branches formed on the western flanks of the East African Rift, which is the southern African part of the
Great Rift Valley.
White Nile
The source of the Nile is sometimes considered to be
Lake Victoria, but the lake itself has feeder rivers of considerable size. The most distant stream emerges from
Nyungwe Forest in
Rwanda, via the Rukarara, Mwogo, Nyabarongo and
Kagera rivers, before flowing into Lake Victoria in
Tanzania near the town of
Bukoba.
The Nile leaves Lake Victoria at Ripon Falls, near to
Jinga,
Uganda as the
Victoria Nile. It flows further for approximately 500 km (300 miles), through
Lake Kyoga, until it reaches
Lake Albert. After leaving Lake Albert, the river is known as the
Albert Nile. It then flows into
Sudan, where it becomes known as the
Bahr al Jebel. At the confluence of the Bahr al Jebel with the
Bahr el Ghazal, itself 720 km (445 miles) long, the river becomes known as the Bahr al Abyad, or the
White Nile, from the clay suspended in its waters. From there, the river flows to
Khartoum.
Blue Nile
Meanwhile, the
Blue Nile or
Bahr al Azraq to Sudanese;
Tiqur (Black)
Abbay to
Ethiopians, springs from
Lake Tana in the Ethiopian Highlands. The Blue Nile flows about 1,400 km (850 miles) to
Khartoum, where the Blue Nile and White Nile join to form "the Nile." Most of the water carried by the Nile (about 80-85%) originates from Ethiopia, but this runoff happens only in summer, when the great rains fall on the Ethiopian Plateau; the rest of the year, the great rivers draining Ethiopia into the Nile (Sobat, Blue Nile, and Atbara) flow weakly or are dry.
The Nile River
After the Blue and White Niles merge, the only remaining major tributary is the
Atbara River, which originates in Ethiopia north of Lake Tana, and is approximately 800 km (500 miles) long. It joins the Nile approximately 300 km (200 miles) past Khartoum. The Nile is also unusual in that its last tributary (the Atbara) joins it approximately halfway to the sea. From that point north, the Nile diminishes because of evaporation.
The Nile in Sudan is distinctive for two reasons: 1) it flows over
6 groups of cataracts, from the first at Aswan to the sixth at Sabaloka (just north of Khartoum); and 2) it reverses direction for much of its course, flowing back to the SW before returning to flow north again to the sea. This is called the `"Great Bend of the Nile."'
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The Great Bend of the Nile in Sudan, looking north across the Sahara Desert towards Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt. Photograph ISS006-E-43181 taken from the International Space Station, courtesy of NASA. |
The Nile (
iteru in
Ancient Egyptian) was the lifeline of the
ancient Egyptian civilization, with most of the population and all of the cities of
Egypt resting along those parts of the Nile valley lying north of
Aswan. The Nile has been the lifeline for
Egyptian culture since the
Stone Age. Climate change - or perhaps
overgrazing - around
8000 BC desiccated the
pastoral lands of Egypt to form the
Sahara, and the tribes naturally migrated to the river, where they developed a settled
agricultural economy and a more-centralized
society.
Sustenance played a crucial role in the founding of Egyptian civilization. The Nile was an unending source of sustenance. The Nile made the land surrounding it extremely fertile when it flooded or inundated annually. The Egyptians were able to cultivate wheat and crops around the Nile, providing food for the general population. Also, the Nile's water attracted game such as
water buffalo; and after the Persians introduced them in the 7th century BC,
camels. These animals could be killed for meat, or could be captured, tamed and used for ploughing — or in the camels' case, travelling. Water was vital to both people and livestock. The Nile was also a convenient and efficient way of transportation for people and goods.
Egypt's stability was one of the best structured in history. In fact, it might easily have surpassed many modern societies. This stability was an immediate result of the Nile's fertility. The Nile also provided
flax for trade. Wheat was also traded, a crucial crop in the Middle East where famine was very common. This trading system secured the diplomatic relationship Egypt had with other countries, and often contributed to Egypt's economic stability. Also, the Nile provided the resources such as food or money, to quickly and efficiently raise an army, whether the army was to take on a defensive or offensive role.
The Nile played a major role in politics and social life. The Pharaoh would supposedly flood the Nile, and in return for the life giving water and crops, the peasants would cultivate the fertile soil and send a portion of the resources they had reaped to the Pharaoh. He/ she would in turn use it for the wellbeing of Egyptian society.
The Nile was a source of spiritual dimension. The Nile was so significant to the lifestyle of the Egyptians, that they created a god dedicated to the welfare of the Nile's annual inundation. The god's name was
Hapi, and both he and the Pharaoh were thought to control the flooding of the Nile River. Also, the Nile was considered as a causeway from life to death/afterlife. The east was thought of as a place of birth and growth, and the west was considered the place of death, as the god
Ra, the
sun, underwent birth, death, and resurrection each time he crossed the sky. Thus, all the tombs were located west of the Nile, because the Egyptians believed that in order to enter the afterlife, they must be buried on the side which symbolized death.
The Greek historian,
Herodotus, wrote that ‘Egypt was the gift of the Nile', and in a sense that is correct. Without the Nile River, Egyptian civilization would probably have been short lived. The Nile provided the elements that make a vigorous civilisation and contributed much to its lasting three thousand years.
The
Ishango bone, which could be the earliest known indication of
Ancient Egyptian multiplication, was discovered along the headwaters of the
Nile River (near
Lake Edward, northeastern
Congo), dating to
20,000 BC.
Despite the attempts of the
Greeks and
Romans (who were unable to penetrate the
Sudd), the upper reaches of the Nile remained largely unknown. Various expeditions had failed to determine the river's source, thus yielding classical Hellenistic and Roman representations of the river as a male god with his face and head obscured in drapery.
Agatharcides records that in the time of
Ptolemy II Philadelphus a military expedition had penetrated far enough along the course of the
Blue Nile to determine that the summer floods of the Nile was caused by heavy seasonal rainstorms in the
Ethiopian highlands, but no Classical period European is known to have reached
Lake Tana, let alone retraced the steps of this expediton further than
Meroe.
The White Nile was even less well understood, and the ancients mistakenly believed that the
Niger River was the upper reaches of the White Nile; for example,
Pliny the Elder wrote that the Nile had its origins "in a mountain of lower
Mauretania", flowed above ground for "many days" distance, then went underground, reappeared as a large lake in the territories of the
Masaesyles, then sank again below the desert to flow underground "for a distance of 20 days' journey till it reaches the nearest Ethiopians" (
N.H. 5.10). A merchant named
Diogenes reported that he has traveled inland from
Rhapta in
East Africa for twenty-five days and had found the source of Nile in the
Mountains of the Moon, but some scholars suspect he invented the story.
Europeans learned little new information about the origins of the Nile until the 15th and 16th centuries, when travelers to Ethiopia visited not only Lake Tana, but the source of the Blue Nile in the mountains south of the lake. Although
James Bruce claimed to have been the first European to have visited the headwaters, and modern writers with better knowledge give credit to the
Jesuit Pedro Páez, Europeans had been resident in the country since the late 15th century, and it is entirely possible one of them visited the headwaters but was never able to report his discoveries.
Meanwhile, the source of the White Nile was unknown until the 19th century, when
John Hanning Speke was the first to identify it as
Lake Victoria. Speke was part of a 1856-1858 expedition led by
Richard Francis Burton to search for the source of the Nile by entering Africa from
Dar-es-Salaam (modern Tanzania). Burton was convinced that
Lake Tanganyika was the source, but it was Speke who, leaving a sick Burton behind, found the large body of water now known as Lake Victoria and convinced himself that this was the Nile's true source. Speke returned with
James Augustus Grant in 1860-1863 for further explorations around Lake Victoria and traced the Nile northwards to Gondokoro, on the southern boundary of the Sudd.
The White Nile Expedition, led by South African national Hendri Coetzee, was to become the first to navigate the Nile in its entire length. The expedition took off from The Source of the Nile in Uganda on
January 17,
2004 and arrived safely at the Mediterranean in
Rosetta, 4 months and 2 weeks later.
National Geographic released a feature film about the expedition towards in late 2005 entitled
The Longest River.
On
April 28 2004, geologist Pasquale Scaturro and his partner, kayaker and documentary filmmaker
Gordon Brown became the first people to navigate the Blue Nile, from
Lake Tana in
Ethiopia to the beaches of
Alexandria on the
Mediterranean. Though their expedition included a number of others, Brown and Scaturro were the only ones to remain on the expedition for the entire journey. They chronicled their adventure with an
IMAX camera and two handheld video cams, sharing their story in the IMAX film
"Mystery of the Nile," and in a book of the same title. Despite this attempt, the team was forced to use outboard motors for most of their journey, and it was not until
January 29,
2005, when
Canadian Les Jickling and
New Zealander Mark Tanner reached the Mediterranean Sea, that the river had been paddled for the first time under human power.
On
30 April 2005, a team led by South Africans Peter Meredith and Hendri Coetzee became the first to navigate the most remote headstream, the true source of the Nile, the Akagera river which starts as the Rukarara in Nyungwe forest in Rwanda.
On
March 31 2006, three explorers from Britain and New Zealand claimed to have been the first to travel the river from its mouth to a new "true source" deep in
Rwanda's Nyungwe rainforest.[
2]
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View of the Nile from a cruiseboat, between Luxor and Aswan in Egypt |
The Nile still supports much of the population living along its banks, with the Egyptians living in otherwise inhospitable regions of the
Sahara. The river flooded every summer, depositing fertile soil on the fields. The flow of the river is disturbed at several points by
cataracts, which are sections of faster-flowing water with many small islands, shallow water, and rocks, forming an obstacle to navigation by
boats. The sudd in the Sudan also forms a formidable obstacle for navigation and flow of water, to the extent that Egypt had once attempted to dig a canal (the Jongeli Canal) to improve the flow of this stagnant mass of water (also known as Lake No).
The Nile was, and still is, used to transport goods to different places along its long path; especially since winter winds in this area blow up river, the ships could travel up with no work by using the sail, and down using the flow of the river. While most Egyptians still live in the Nile valley, the construction of the
Aswan High Dam (finished in 1970) to provide hydroelectricity ended the summer floods and their renewal of the fertile soil.
Cities on the Nile include
Khartoum,
Aswan,
Luxor (
Thebes), and the
Giza–
Cairo conurbation. The first cataract, the closest to the mouth of the river, is at
Aswan to the north of the
Aswan Dams. The Nile north of Aswan is a regular tourist route, with cruise ships and traditional wooden sailing boats known as
feluccas. In addition, many "floating hotel" cruise boats ply the route between
Luxor and
Aswan, stopping in at
Edfu and
Kom Ombo along the way. It used to be possible to sail on these boats all the way from
Cairo to
Aswan, but security concerns have shut down the northernmost portion for many years.
The annual cycles of the Nile were very important to the lives of ancient Egyptians. During inundation the Nile 'mysteriously' but predictably rose each summer to flood and fertilize the land, without rain and in the hottest time of the year. A good flood and Egypt's wealth was assured; a poor flood or too great of a flood and Egypt would suffer.
The cyclic mystery created awe and stimulated worship, and the job of recording the history of Nile flooding, when the Nile was expected to flood, and the locations of farmers' plots after the floodwaters receded stimulated creation of the first scientific instrument (the
Nilometer), astronomy, and surveying. The concerns of ancient Egyptians for a good flood were justified. The failure of the Nile floods and the generally low level of the river is thought to have been responsible for the collapse of the Old Kingdom about 4200 years ago. These concerns are captured in the Bible, where Joseph correctly interpreted Pharaoh's dreams of 7 years of abundance and 7 years of poverty in Egypt to relate to good and then bad Nile floods.
Ledyard, in his
Travels, speaks contemptuously of this celebrated wonder:""This is the mighty, the sovereign of rivers"the vast Nile that has been metamorphosed into one of the wonders of the world! Let me be careful how I read, and, above all, how I read ancient history. You have heard, and read too, much of its inundations. If the thousands of large and small canals from it, and the thousands of men and machines employed to transfer, by artificial means, the water of the Nile to the meadows on its banks"if this be the inundation that is meant, it is true; any other is false; it is not an inundating river."
More recently, drought during the 1980s led to widespread starvation in Ethiopia and Sudan but Egypt was protected from drought by water impounded in Lake Nasser. Beginning in the 1980s techniques of analysis using
hydrology transport models have been used in the Nile to analyze water quality.
The present Nile is at least the fifth river that has flowed north from the Ethiopian Highlands.
Satellite imagery was used to identify dry watercourses in the desert to the west of the Nile. An Eonile canyon, now filled by surface drift, represents an ancestral Nile called the
Eonile that flowed during the later
Miocene. The Eonile transported
clastic sediments to the Mediterranean, where several gas fields have been discovered within these sediments. South of Cairo, the sand-filled canyon can reach a depth of up to 1400 meters.
During the late-Miocene
Messinian Salinity Crisis, when the
Mediterranean Sea was a closed basin and sealevel in the sea dropped approximately 1500 m, the Nile cut its course down to the new base level until it was several hundred feet below world ocean level at
Aswan. This huge canyon is now full of later sediment.
Formerly,
Lake Tanganyika drained northwards into the Nile, until the
Virunga Volcanoes blocked its course in
Rwanda. That would have made the Nile much longer, with its longest headwaters in northern
Zambia.
New Valley Project*
Photographs of the Nile in Uganda*
Bibliography on Water Resources and International Law See
Nile River. Peace Palace Libray
*
Information and a map of the Nile's watershed*
Geology and History of the Nile*
Map of the Nile River basin at Water Resources eAtlas*
Facts About The Nile River*
Nile Delta from Space*
Photo Gallery from a cruise between Luxor and Aswan*
Essay: The Inscrutable Nile at the Beginning of the New Millennium*
Nile paleogeography*
Link to Google Maps to see the Nile
