Nile River is the longest river in the world, which crosses multiple countries, such as Egypt and Sudan.
Let’s find out more about the Nile River!
- The Nile is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa.
- It flows into the Mediterranean Sea.
- It’s the longest river in Africa.
- It has historically been considered the longest river in the world.
- It has been contested by research suggesting that the Amazon River is slightly longer.
- The Nile is amongst the smallest of the major world rivers by measure of cubic metres flowing annually.
- About 6,650 km (4,130 mi) long, its drainage basin covers eleven countries.
- More specifically it crosses Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Republic of the Sudan, and Egypt.
- In particular, the Nile is the primary water source of Egypt and Sudan.
- Additionally, the Nile is an important economic river, supporting agriculture and fishing.
- The Nile has two major tributaries – the White Nile, which begins at Lake Victoria, and the Blue Nile.
- The White Nile is considered to be the headwaters and primary stream of the Nile itself.
- The Blue Nile, however, is the source of most of the water, containing 80% of the water and silt.
- The White Nile is longer and rises in the Great Lakes region of central Africa, with the most distant source still undetermined but located in either Rwanda or Burundi.
- It flows north through Tanzania, Lake Victoria, Uganda and South Sudan.
- The Blue Nile begins at Lake Tana in Ethiopia, and flows into Sudan from the southeast.
- The two rivers meet just north of the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.
- The northern section of the river flows north almost entirely through the Sudanese desert to Egypt, where Cairo is located on its large delta and the river flows into the Mediterranean Sea at Alexandria.
- Egyptian civilization and Sudanese kingdoms have depended on the river since ancient times and its annual flooding.
- Most of the population and cities of Egypt lie along those parts of the Nile valley north of Aswan.
- Nearly all the cultural and historical sites of Ancient Egypt developed and are found along river banks.
- The standard English names “White Nile” and “Blue Nile”, to refer to the river’s source, derive from Arabic names formerly applied only to the Sudanese stretches that meet at Khartoum.
- In the ancient Egyptian language, the Nile is called (Hapy) or Iteru, meaning “river”. In Coptic, the word ⲫⲓⲁⲣⲟ, pronounced piaro (Sahidic) or phiaro (Bohairic), means “the river”.
- In Nobiin the river is called Áman Dawū, meaning “the great water”.
- In Luganda the river is called Kiira or Kiyira.
- In Egyptian Arabic, the Nile is called en-Nīl, while in Standard Arabic it is called an-Nīl. In Biblical Hebrew.
- The English name Nile and the Arabic names en-Nîl and an-Nîl both derive from the Latin Nilus and the Ancient Greek Nilos.
- Beyond that, however, the etymology is disputed.Homer called the river Aiguptos, but in subsequent periods, Greek authors referred to its lower course as Neilos. This term became generalised for the entire river system. Thus, the name may derive from Ancient Egyptian expression nꜣ rꜣw-ḥꜣw(t) (lit. ‘the mouths of the front parts’), which referred specifically to the branches of the Nile transversing the Delta, and would have been pronounced ni-lo-he in the area around Memphis in the 8th century BCE.
- Hesiod at his Theogony refers to Nilus as one of the Potamoi (river gods), son of Oceanus and Tethys
- Another derivation of Nile might be related to the term Nil, which refers to Indigofera tinctoria, one of the original sources of indigo dye. Another may be Nymphaea caerulea, known as “The Sacred Blue Lily of the Nile”, which was found scattered over Tutankhamen’s corpse when it was excavated in 1922.
- Another possible etymology derives from the Semitic term Nahal, meaning “river”.Old Libyan has the term lilu, meaning water
- People spent centuries searching for its source. This fed the river’s mystique, and it’s why classical Greek and Roman art sometimes portrayed it as a god with a hidden face.
- The Blue Nile gave up its secrets first, and an expedition from ancient Egypt may have even traced it back to Ethiopia.
- The White Nile’s source proved much more elusive, though, despite many efforts to find it — including those by Scottish explorer David Livingstone, who was rescued from one mission in 1871 by Welsh journalist Henry Morton Stanley, via the famous quote “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” European explorers had only recently found Lake Victoria.
- After Livingstone’s death in 1873, Stanley was one of many who helped confirm its link to the Nile, along with the prolific East African guide and explorer Sidi Mubarak Bombay.
- After stubbornly pushing north for most of its course, the Nile takes a surprising turn in the midst of the Sahara. With its main tributaries finally united, it continues north through Sudan for a while, then abruptly turns southwest and starts flowing away from the sea.
- It goes on like this for about 300 km (186 miles), as if it’s heading back to Central Africa instead of Egypt.
- As it winds into Egypt, the Nile transforms a swath of Sahara desert along its banks. This contrast is visible from space, where a long, green oasis can be seen hugging the river amid the bleakly tan landscape around it.
- The Nile also brought a secret ingredient: all the sediment it collected along the way, mainly black silt eroded by the Blue Nile and Atbara from basalt in Ethiopia. Those silty floodwaters would surge into Egypt each summer, then dry up and leave behind a miraculous black mud.
- One of the most notable Nile plants is papyrus, an aquatic flowering sedge that grows as tall reeds in shallow water.
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