The the Nile (rear dir=rtl texte= '' النيل '' trans= '' Arab An-Nil '' in ) with a length from approximately 6650 [[kilometer km]] is the longest river of the world, the second being the the Amazon (6400 km). It is resulting from the meeting of the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The White Nile ( Bahr-el-Abiad ) takes its source with the Lake Victoria (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania); the Blue Nile ( Bahr-el-Azrak ) is resulting from the Lac Tanned (Ethiopia). Its two branches linking itself with Khartoum, capital of the current Sudan, the Nile is thrown in the the Mediterranean by forming a delta in the north of the Egypt. While counting its two branches, the Nile crosses the Rwanda, the Burundi, the Tanzania, the Uganda, the Ethiopia, the Sudan and the Egypt. It also skirts the Kenya and the Democratic republic of Congo (respectively with the lakes Victoria and Albert), and its catchment area relates to also the Érythrée thanks to its affluent the Tekeze.
The Nile is the way which the Egyptians borrowed to move. It brings the life by fertilizing the ground and guarantees abundance. He played a very important part in the ancient Egypt, from an economic standpoint, social (it was around him that were more the big cities), agricultural (thanks to the invaluable silt of raw) and religious. Feeder river of large people, it was divinisé under the name of Hâpy, divine personification of the Nile in the Egyptian Mythologie.
The rising of the Nile, which took place each summer and which brought the black silt allowing the culture of its banks, remained a long time an unexplained phenomenon. It is of this black silt that comes the ancient name from the Egypt, Kemet , which wants to say “the black cotton soil”.
Nowadays, muddy water of the Nile is collected and redistributed on the arable lands thanks to the Barrage S of Ziftah, Assiout, Hammadi, Esna and especially of the two giant stoppings of Assouan, the old and the dam, whose construction in the Années 1970 required the displacement of several Temple S, of which that of Abou Simbel, which would have been drowned in the reserve of the Lac Nasser.
Seen since space, the Nile is characterized clearly by its green valley in the middle of the desert.
Etymology
The word “the Nile” ( nīl ), comes from the Greek el texte=Νειλος trans=Neilos, meaning the “valley”. The old Egyptians called on the right it iteru meaning the large river, represented by the hiéroglyphes (literally itrw ).
Affluents
The catchment Area of the Nile covers 3254555 km2, about 10% of the surface of Africa.
The two large affluents of the Nile are: the White Nile whose source is at the equator, and the Blue Nile whose source is in Ethiopia. Each one of these branches is on the western side of the East-African Rift. Atbara is also another less important affluent of the Nile, which runs only when it rains in Ethiopia and which is drained quickly.
The White Nile
The source of the Nile is sometimes regarded as being the Lake Victoria, but the lake itself has rivers of considerable size which feed it. The most distant river emerges from the forest of Nyungwe to the Rwanda, via Rukarara, of Mwogo, Nyabarongo and the Kagera, before running in Lake Victoria in Tanzania close to the town of Bukoba.
The Nile leaves Lake Victoria with the falls of Ripon, close to Jinja, Uganda; it bears the name of " The Nile Victoria". It runs during roughly 500 km, by the Lac Kyoga, until reaching the Lac Albert. After having left this lake, the river is known under the name of " The Nile Albert". It runs then in Sudan, where it is known like Bahr Al Jabal (" river of the montagne"). With the confluence of Bahr Al Jabal and Bahr Al Ghazal (720 km length), the river is known under the name of Bahr Al Abyad, or White Nile, this name coming to him from the Argile blanchâtre in suspension in its water. From there, the river runs towards Khartoum.
The Blue Nile
The Blue Nile (Ge' ez ጥቁርዓባይ Ṭiqūr ʿĀbbāy , black river Abay for the Ethiopian ones; Bahr Al Azraq for the Sudaneses) spouts out Lac Tanned in the Ethiopian mountains. The Blue Nile runs approximately 1400 km towards Khartoum, where the Blue Nile and the White Nile meet to form the Nile itself. 90% of water and 96% of the sediments transported by the Nile come from Ethiopia, but this flow occurs only in summer, when the large rains fall on the Ethiopian plate; the remainder of the year, the large rivers draining Ethiopia towards the Nile (Sobat, Blue Nile, and Atbarah) run slightly.
Hydrology
The flow of the Nile Albert in Mongalla is almost constant during all the year, of an average of 1048 m3 a second. After Mongalla the Nile (Bahr Al Jebel) enters immense marshes to the South of Sudan. More half of water of the Nile are lost in this marsh by evaporation. The medium flow of Bahr Al Jebel, of Bahr at the end of the marshes, is approximately 510 m3 a second. At the exit of the marshes, this river joined Sobat quickly and forms the White Nile.
The average flow of the White Nile with Malakal is of 924 m3 a second, the maximum capacity is roughly of 1218 m3 a second at the beginning of March and the minimum is approximately 609 m3 a second in August. The fluctuation here is due to the substantial variation of the flow of Sobat which has a minimum flow of approximately 99 m3 a second in August and a maximum capacity of more than 680 m3 a second at the beginning of March.
The White Nile runs then towards Khartoum where it joined the Blue Nile to form the Nile.
The White Nile contributes roughly to 31% of the annual throughput of the Nile. However, during the dry season (from January to June), the White Nile contributes to a total value of 70% even 90% of all the flow of the Nile. For this period, the flow of the Blue Nile can go down up to 113 m3 a second, although the stoppings upstream regulate the flow of the river. For the period the flow of the river of Atbara dries is practically null.
The Blue Nile contributes roughly to 70% of the flow of the Nile. The flow of the Blue Nile changes considerably during the year. It is what causes mainly the great variations of the flow of the Nile. During the rain season, the maximum capacity of the Blue Nile often exceeds 5663 m3 a second at the end of August (multiplication by 50 of the normal flow).
Before the construction of stoppings on the river, the annual throughput could pass from one to fifteen to Assouan. The maximum flows of more than 8212 m3 a second occur at the end of August - at the beginning of September and the flows minima of approximately 552 m3 a second take place towards the end of April - at the beginning of May. The basin of the Nile is complex, and for this reason the flow in any point along the river depends on many factors including/understanding meteorology, the deviations, evaporation or the evapotranspiration, and the subterranean water flow.
In 1958, research with radioisotopes allowed the discovery of an underground river, which runs under the Nile. The flow of this river is very important; estimates evaluate its annual throughput around 566 km 3. This is equivalent to a medium flow of almost 18000 m3 a second. The flow of this underground river represents approximately six times the annual throughput of the Nile.
Arms of the Nile
After the junction of the Blue Nile and the White Nile, only flow principal remainder is the Atbara river, which comes from the north of Ethiopia of the lake Tana, and runs on roughly 800 km. It joined the Nile approximately 300 km after Khartoum. The Nile thus has like characteristic the fact that its last affluent joined it halfway sea. After this place, the flow of the Nile decreases because of very important evaporation at the time of the crossing of the the Sahara.
The Nile in Sudan is made conspicuous for two reasons:
- it runs through six groups of cataracts, of Sbakola (in the North of Khartoum) until Assouan;
- it takes an opposite direction, turning over towards south-west before running more directly towards the sea. This is called the large meander of the Nile.
At the beginning of the delta, in the north of the Cairo, the Nile is divided into two principal arms, the arm of Rosette in the west and that of Damiette in the east.
History
The Nile ( iteru in Egyptian old) was the heart of the civilization of the ancient Egypt, with the majority of the population and all the cities of the Egypt being located along this part of the Nile at the north of Aswan. The Nile was the spinal column of the Egyptian culture since the Stone Age. The change of climate, and perhaps a too great use of the grounds like pastures, desiccated the pastoral grounds of Egypt to form the desert of the the Sahara, probably towards -8000, and the inhabitants then probably emigrated towards the river, where they established a sedentary agricultural economics and more centralized company.
During thirty centuries, only of the Felouque S and Cange S with oars sailed on the Nile of High-Egypt. It was necessary only fifty years so that a armada of floating de luxe hotels upsets the thousand-year-old river traffic.
The role of the Nile in the foundation of Egyptian civilization
Food played a crucial role in the foundation of the Egyptian Civilization. The Nile was an inexhaustible source of food. The Nile makes the grounds surrounding very fertile at the time of its Crue S annual. The Égyptiens could cultivate corn, rice, and of harvests around the Nile, providing food for all the population. Moreover, the water of the Nile attracts game such as the Buffle of Africa, and after their introduction by the Persans to the VII E, of the Dromadaire S. These animals could be killed for the meat, or captured, tamed and employed to plow - or in the case of the dromedaries to travel. Water was vital for the human ones as for the cattle. The Nile was also a convenient and effective means of transport for the people and the goods.
The age of Egypt one of best was structured history. This stability was the immediate consequence of the fertility of the Nile. The Nile also provided the flax for the trade. The corn was also exchanged, a crucial harvest in the Middle East where the famine often prevailed. This commercial system fixed the diplomatic relationships of Egypt with other countries, and often contributed to the economic stability of Egypt. Moreover, the Nile provided resources such as food or the money, to raise quickly and effectively of the armies.
The Nile played a big role in the policy and the social life. The Pharaon made overflow the Nile, and in exchange of fertile water and harvests, the peasants cultivated the ground and sent part of the resources which they had collected with the Pharaon. N the other hand, this last used these resources for the wellbeing of the Egyptian company.
The Nile had a spiritual dimension. The Nile meant as well in the life of the Egyptians, as they created a god devoted to the wellbeing brought by the annual flood of the Nile. The name of this god was Hâpy and as much him that Pharaon were judicious to control the rising of the Nile. The Nile was also regarded as a threshold between the life and death, beyond. The East was regarded as the growth and birthplace and the West that of death, like the god Re, the sun, which undergoes these three states: birth, died and resurrection to each time it crosses the sky. Thus, all the tombs were placed at the West of the Nile, because the Egyptians believed that to enter beyond, it was necessary to be buried side symbolizing death.
The Greek historian Hérodote wrote that " Egypt was a gift of Nil" , and in a direction that is true. Without water of the Nile for the irrigation, Egyptian civilization would probably not have lasted also a long time. The Nile provided the elements which allowed the formation of a civilization during nearly three thousand years.
The trade of great scale along the Nile since ancient times can be proven starting from the Os of Ishango, probably the first known indication of the multiplication, which was discovered close to the source of the Nile (close to the Lac Edouard, in the North-East of the Congo), bone which was dated with the Carbon-14 with close to: 23000 years before our era.
The research of the sources of the Nile
In spite of the attempts of the Greeks and Romans (who could not cross the marshes of the Sudd), the upstream of the Nile is remained mainly unknown. Various forwardings had not succeeded in determining the source of the river. The hellenistic and Roman representations traditional of the river thus represented a male god with his face and its head hiding in draperies. Agatharchide reports that during the period of Ptolémée {{II}} Philadelphe, a military forwarding had penetrated along the course of the Blue Nile to determine rather far that the risings of the summer were caused by the storms of seasonal rains in the Ethiopian mountains. But no European in antiquity is known to have reached the Lac Tanned, even less to have recalled the stages of this forwarding after Méroé.
Europeans knew only few things on the origins of the Nile until, when travellers going to Ethiopia visited not only the lake Tana, but went until the source of the Blue Nile in the mountains to the south of the lake. Although James Bruce claims to have been the first European to have seen the source, the modern authors consider (with more sources) than the first is rather the father Jésuite Pedro Páez. Europeans had settled in Ethiopia since the end of the 15th century, and it is possible that they explored the river closest to his source, but they could not consider its course beyond Ethiopia. It is very probable that one of them visited the sources without to have been able to communicate a report/ratio on its discovery.
The White Nile was even more unknown. The old ones in an erroneous way thought that the river Niger was one of the higher extensions of the White Nile. For example, Pline Old the wrote that the Nile would have its source in a mountain of Mauritania of the South , that it runs at a distance several days, then is prolonged under ground, and that it reappears on the territory of the Massaessyles, then turns over under the desert to run during 20 days until it reaches Ethiopian the closest .
The Lake Victoria was seen for the first time by an European in 1858 when the Explorateur Britannique John Hanning Speke reached his southernmost shore during its voyage with Richard Francis Burton to explore central Africa and to locate the Big lakes. Believer to have found the source of the Nile by seeing this " vast extended from eau" for the first time, Speke called the lake of the name of the queen of the United Kingdom. Burton, which had recovered its disease and rested in the south on the shores of the Lac Tanganyika, was indignant owing to the fact that Speke claimed that he had discovered the true source of the Nile. Burton considered that was not regulated yet. A public quarrel followed, which caused not only intense discussions within the scientific community, but also much of interest in the other explorers wishing to confirm or refute the discovery of Speke. The explorer and British missionary David Livingstone failed in his attempt to check the discovery of Speke, while too going towards the West and entering the system of the Fleuve Congo. It is finally the American explorer Henry Morton Stanley which confirmed the veracity of discovered of Speke, while sailing around Lake Victoria and while realizing of the existence of the falls of Rippon on northern bank of the lake. It is during this voyage which it is known as that Stanley would have greeted the British explorer with the famous sayings " Do Dr. Livingstone, I suppose? " by discovering the Scot sick and discouraged in his camp on banks of the lake Tanganyika.
The forwarding of the White Nile, carried out by the South-African Hendri Coetzee, was the first to be sailed over the entire length of the Nile. It left the source of the Nile to Uganda on January 17th, 2004 and arrived without concern at the Mediterranean at Rosette, four months and two weeks later. National Geographic presented a film on forwarding to the end of the year 2005: in '' The Longest To rivet ''.
April 28th, 2004, the geologist Pasquale Scaturro and his associate, the kayaker and realizer of documentary Gordon Brown became the first people to be sailed on the Blue Nile, of the Lac Tanned in Ethiopia with the beaches of Alexandria on the Mediterranean. However, their forwarding included/understood many of other people, but Brown and Scaturro were the only ones to remain during all the voyage. They recorded the chronicle of their adventure with a camera IMAX and two cameras with hand in film IMAX entitled the Mystery of the Nile and in a book éponyme. Despite everything, the team was forced to use motor boats for the major part of their voyage, and it is only on January 29th, 2005 that the Canadian Jickling and the Néo-zélandais Mark To tan reached the Mediterranean. For the first time, the men had sailed on the totality of the course of the Nile.
April 30th, 2005, a team carried out by the South-Africans Peter Meredith and Hendri Coetzee became the first to be sailed until the most remote source of the Nile: the river Akagera which starts like the Rukarara river in the forest of Nyungwe in Rwanda.
March 31st, 2006, three explorers of Great Britain and New Zealand claimed to have been the first to go up the river of its delta to the true source which is in the tropical forest of Nyungwe to the Rwanda.
The highest source of the Nile is born in the mountains from the Ruwenzori. This name wants to say maker of rain in the language of the Ugandan tribes of altitude. Into this solid mass, the water of the sky falls more than 300 days per annum. Its forests are an inflated sponge of moisture. The torrents which flow in cataract on the strong slopes of this vegetable cemetery enlarge the river Semliki which feeds the Lac Albert, large outfall of the Nile.
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The river, today
The Nile always allows most of the population living along its banks, to remain there, like with the Egyptians living in inhospitable areas of the the Sahara. The river overflows each summer, depositor of the fertile silt on the fields. The flow of the river is opposed in several points by cataracts, which are places where the speed of water intensifies, with many small islands, of not very deep water, and the rocks, forming an obstacle with navigation by boats. The marshes of the Sudd in Sudan also form an obstacle for the navigation and the water run-off. Egypt had in the past tried to dig a channel (the channel of Jongeli) to improve the flow of this stagnant water mass (also known under the name of lake No).
The Nile, is always used to transport goods to various places of its long course; the winds of winter support this navigation: the boats can thus travel upstream while using only the sail, and while employing towards the downstream the flow of the river. While the majority of the Egyptians always live in the valley of the Nile, the construction of the High stopping of Aswan (finished in 1970) to provide hydroelectricity put an end downstream to the renewal of the fertile silt at the time of the risings of the summer.
The cities on the Nile include Khartoum, Assouan, Louxor (Thèbes), and the agglomeration of the Cairo. The first cataract, nearest to the mouth of the river, is in Assouan in the north of the stoppings. Starting from Aswan, towards North, the Nile is an important tourist route, where sail of the boats of cruising like traditional boats out of wooden, Felouque S and Dahabieh S. Moreover, much of " boats-hôtels" make the way between Louxor and Assouan, stopping meanwhile with Edfou and Kôm Ombo. It was still possible recently to sail on these boats of Cairo to Assouan, but the authorities prohibited most of this route for safety reasons.
Eonile
The current Nile is at least the fifth river which ran in the north of the Ethiopian mountains. Thanks to satellite images, one could locate rivers drained in the desert in the west of the Nile. A canyon, now filled by the external drift, represents the ancient Nile called the Eonile which ran towards the end of the Miocène (23-5,3 million years). Eonile transported clastic rocks in the Mediterranean; several gas layers were discovered in these sediments. In the south of Cairo, a throat filled with sand reaches a depth of: 1400 meters.
During the crisis of the Méssinien at the end of Miocène, when the Mediterranean was a closed basin and that the sea level had lowered roughly 1500 m, the Nile was then on the level of this sea, at the point to be with Assouan a few hundred meters lower than the level of the oceans. This immense Canyon is now filled of sediments.
Formerly, the Lac Tanganyika flowed in north in the Nile, until the volcanos of Virunga blocked its course with the Rwanda. That would have made the Nile much longer, with its source in the North of the Zambia.
Appendices
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