The average flow of the White Nile at Lake Kawaki Malakal, just below the Sobat River, is 924 m3/s (32,600 cu ft/s); the peak flow is approximately 1,218 m3/s (43,000 cu ft/s) in October and minimum flow is about 609 m3/s (21,500 cu ft/s) in April. Though their expedition included others, Brown and Scaturro were the only ones to complete the entire journey. Their journey of over 5,000 kilometres (3,100 mi) took five months. [48] Its remains are known as the Wadi Howar. Steam navigation remained integral to the two countries as late as 1962. Ancient Egypt Nile River What did the ancient Egyptians use to get across the Nile River? More than half of the Nile's water is lost in this swamp to evaporation and transpiration. The present Nile is at least the fifth river that has flowed north from the Ethiopian Highlands. On 29 January 2005 Canadian Les Jickling and New Zealander Mark Tanner completed the first human powered transit of Ethiopia's Blue Nile. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. In Egypt, the River Nile creates a fertile green valley across the desert. View of the River Nile, from a cruiseboat, between Luxor and Aswan in Egypt. The mighty Nile river allowed people and goods to travel long and short distances. Morrice and W.N. Abridged illustrated edition, as The Story of the Blue Nile (Harper & Row, 1966). "Nile" . [57] At Khartoum the river is joined by the Blue Nile. Security concerns have limited cruising on the northernmost portion for many years. The Amazon River runs a very close second, although it has been difficult to determine which is actually longer. [30] The two feeder rivers meet near Rusumo Falls on the Rwanda-Tanzania border. Each computer run postulated a set of reservoirs and operating equations for the release of water as a function of the month and the levels upstream. The Nile River is actually 6695 kilometers(4184 miles) long. While most Egyptians still live in the Nile valley, the 1970 completion of the Aswan High Dam ended the summer floods and their renewal of the fertile soil, fundamentally changing farming practices. 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 flows through Cairo, here contrasting ancient customs of daily life with the modern city of today. 3. It rises south of the Equator and flows northward through northeastern Africa to drain into the Mediterranean Sea. 300. The Nile River was extremely important to settlement patterns in Egypt. Updates? Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. Today, the river continues to serve as a source of irrigation, as well as an important transportation and trade route. Nile River, Arabic Baḥr Al-Nīl or Nahr Al-Nīl, the longest river in the world, called the father of African rivers. The wadi passes through Gharb Darfur near the northern border with Chad and meets up with the Nile near the southern point of the Great Bend. *Response times vary by subject and question complexity. It is the longest river on Earth (about 6,650 km or 4,132 miles), and flows into the Mediterranean Sea near Alexandria. It was published in full only in the early twentieth century, although it was featured in works of Páez's contemporaries, including Baltazar Téllez,[66] Athanasius Kircher[67] and by Johann Michael Vansleb.[68]. The River Nile. These seasons, each consisting of four months of thirty days each, were called Akhet, Peret, and Shemu. The Nile was also an important part of ancient Egyptian spiritual life. 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 which meet at Khartoum. The Sudd wetlands in Sudan also forms a formidable navigation obstacle and impede water flow, to the extent that Sudan had once attempted to canalize (the Jonglei Canal) to bypass the swamps.[71][72]. The Nile river flows into South Sudan just south of Nimule, where it is known as the Bahr al Jabal ("Mountain River"[34]). Roughly 4,258 miles long What is the longest river in the world? [36] During the dry season (January to June) the White Nile contributes between 70 percent and 90 percent of the total discharge from the Nile. In 2010, an exploration party[31] went to a place described as the source of the Rukarara tributary,[32] and by hacking a path up steep jungle-choked mountain slopes in the Nyungwe forest found (in the dry season) an appreciable incoming surface flow for many kilometres upstream, and found a new source, giving the Nile a length of 6,758 km (4,199 mi). [80], The White Nile Expedition, led by South African national Hendrik Coetzee, navigated the White Nile's entire length of approximately 3,700 kilometres (2,300 mi). It takes approximately three months for the waters near the town of Jinja, Uganda (the point where the Nile leaves Lake Victoria), to reach the Mediterranean Sea. [76], The Nile's water has affected the politics of East Africa and the Horn of Africa for many decades. The Nile River is 6,650 kilometers long. As a result of this, the Blue Nile was known as far as its exit from the Ethiopian foothills and the White Nile as far as the mouth of the Sobat River. Laird Shipyard of Liverpool sent an iron steamer to the Nile in the 1830s. According to the United States Geological Survey, the Nile is about 100 miles longer than the Amazon. From here it soon meets with the Sobat River at Malakal. paper 12", "Late Pleistocene and Holocene environmental and climatic change from Lake Tana, source of the Blue Nile", "Did the Nile River flow to the Gulf of Sirt during the late Miocene? Europeans had been resident in Ethiopia since the late fifteenth century, and one of them may have visited the headwaters even earlier without leaving a written trace. Improvements in air, rail, and highway facilities beginning in the 20th century, however, greatly reduced dependency on the waterway. Nile cities include Khartoum, Aswan, Luxor (Thebes), and the Giza – Cairo conurbation. In Coptic, the word ⲫⲓⲁⲣⲟ, pronounced piaro (Sahidic) or phiaro (Bohairic), means "the river" (lit. The Nile River is also a vital waterway for transport, especially at times when motor transport is not feasible—e.g., during the flood season. The availability of water from the Nile throughout the year, combined with the area’s high temperatures, makes possible intensive cultivation along its banks. The Nile is formed by three principal streams: the Blue Nile (Arabic: Al-Baḥr Al-Azraq; Amharic: Abay) and the Atbara (Arabic: Nahr ʿAṭbarah), which flow from the highlands of Ethiopia, and the White Nile (Arabic: Al-Baḥr Al-Abyad), the headstreams of which flow into Lakes Victoria and Albert. https://www.britannica.com/place/Nile-River, Nile River - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11), Nile River - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). During the dry season the natural discharge of the Blue Nile can be as low as 113 m3/s (4,000 cu ft/s), although upstream dams regulate the flow of the river. 200. The Roman Kiosk of Trajan (left) on Agilkia island in the Nile River, near Aswān, Egypt. The Amazon River might be considered as the second largest river on earth, although it has been difficult to … An unending source of sustenance, it played a crucial role in the development of Egyptian civilization. Nile River The Nile River flows over 6,600 kilometers (4,100 miles) until emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile leaves Lake Victoria at Ripon Falls near Jinja, Uganda, as the Victoria Nile. Along the stretch of the Nile north of Khartoum, which is sometimes called the United Nile, two parts can be distinguished. [76] From the 70 incidents of drought which took place between 1900 and 2012, 55 incidents took place in Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya and Tanzania. The Nile River has an average depth of 26 to 36 feet. The basin is bordered on the north by the Mediterranean; on the east by the Red Sea Hills and the Ethiopian Plateau; on the south by the East African Highlands, which include Lake Victoria, a Nile source; and on the west by the less well-defined watershed between the Nile, Chad, and Congo basins, extending northwest to include the Marrah Mountains of Sudan, the Al-Jilf al-Kabīr Plateau of Egypt, and the Libyan Desert (part of the Sahara). [17][18] Beyond that, however, the etymology is disputed. With British Forces in Egypt in the First World War and the inter-war years, river steamers provided both security and sightseeing to the Pyramids and Thebes. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that "Egypt was the gift of the Nile". It is approximately 8 km (5 miles) wide. A computer simulation study to plan the economic development of the Nile was directed by H.A.W. Far-reaching trade has been carried on along the Nile since ancient times. The Nile no longer floods in Egypt since the completion of the Aswan Dam in 1970. The expedition began at the White Nile's beginning at Lake Victoria in Uganda, on 17 January 2004 and arrived safely at the Mediterranean in Rosetta, four and a half months later.[81]. [54] At some point the sediments raised the riverbed sufficiently for the river to overflow westward into a depression to create Lake Moeris. Then again Gramma could be mistaken. An anabranch river, the Bahr el Zeraf, flows out of the Nile's Bahr al Jabal section and rejoins the White Nile. When the Nile floods it leaves a rich silty deposit which fertilizes the soil. In Egyptian Arabic, the Nile is called en-Nīl while in Standard Arabic it is called an-Nīl. The Sudd swamps which form the central part of the basin may still be subsiding. The Nile River is actually 6695 kilometers (4184 miles) long. British explorer and missionary David Livingstone pushed too far west and entered the Congo River system instead. Due to the tectonic uplift of the Nubian Swell, the river is then diverted to flow for over 300 km south-west following the structure of the Central African Shear Zone embracing the Bayuda Desert. The Nile River’s basin spans across the countries of Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania. The following bridges cross the Blue Nile and connect Khartoum to Khartoum North: The following bridges cross the White Nile and connect Khartoum to Omdurman: the following bridges cross from Omdurman: to Khartoum North: The following bridges cross to Tuti from Khartoum states three cities, Murchison Falls in Uganda, between Lake Victoria and Lake Kyoga. These animals were killed for meat, and were domesticated and used for ploughing—or in the camels' case, carriage. Better find a map of Africa and check it out for yourself. On the banks of the river dwelled people who were among the first to cultivate the arts of agriculture and to use the plow. With the completion of the Suez Canal and the British takeover of Egypt in the 1882, more British river steamers followed. However, the Nile used to run much more westerly through what is now Wadi Hamim and Wadi al Maqar in Libya and flow into the Gulf of Sidra. 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 were caused by heavy seasonal rainstorms in the Ethiopian Highlands, but no European of antiquity is known to have reached Lake Tana. 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. There is some debate over this title, though – some scientists argue that the Amazon river in South America is longer. According to one theory on the evolution of the Nile system, about 25,000 years ago the East African drainage to Lake Victoria developed an outlet to the north, which sent its water into Lake Sudd. 2. The drainage basin of the Nile covers 3,254,555 square kilometers (1,256,591 sq mi), about 10% of the area of Africa. 1) Found in northeast Africa, the Nile has long been recognised as the longest river in the world – stretching a massive 6,695km! Recommendations were made to the Sudanese authorities. Lake Tanganyika drained northwards into the Nile until the Virunga Volcanoes blocked its course in Rwanda. Cambridge University Press. It flows north for some 130 kilometers (81 mi), to Lake Kyoga. The dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the $4.5 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has become a national preoccupation in both countries, stoking patriotism, deep-seated fears and even murmurs of war. Their approximately 5,230-kilometre (3,250 mi) journey took 114 days, from 25 December 2003 to 28 April 2004. The Bahr al Ghazal, itself 716 kilometers (445 mi) long, joins the Bahr al Jabal at a small lagoon called Lake No, after which the Nile becomes known as the Bahr al Abyad, or the White Nile, from the whitish clay suspended in its waters. One is that the integrated drainage of the Nile is of young age and that the Nile basin was formerly broken into series of separate basins, only the most northerly of which fed a river following the present course of the Nile in Egypt and Sudan. The name Nile is derived from the Greek Neilos (Latin: Nilus), which probably originated from the Semitic root naḥal, meaning a valley or a river valley and hence, by an extension of the meaning, a river. The Nile is composed of two tributaries: the White Nile and the Blue Nile. Without a better understanding about the availability of the future water resources of the Nile, it is possible that conflicts could arise between these countries relying on the Nile for their water supply, economic and social developments. The length of the Nile is usually said to be about 6,650 km (4,130 mi), The river's outflow from that lake occurs at. It was ultimately Welsh-American explorer Henry Morton Stanley who confirmed Speke's discovery, circumnavigating Lake Victoria and reporting the great outflow at Ripon Falls on the lake's northern shore. The Amazon might also be the world’s longest river—depending on whom you ask. p. 693. The Blue Nile connected to the main Nile during the 70,000–80,000 years B.P. ", "The origin of the word INDIGO and ANILA", EarthTrends: The Environmental Information Portal, "Bridging the Gap in the Nile Waters Dispute", Next on Egypt's to-do: Ethiopia and the Nile, "The Nile Basins |volume 1 The Hydrology of the Blue Nile and Akbara and the Main Nile to Aswan, with some Reference to the Projects Nile control Dept. The White Nile Rift System, although shallower than the Bahr el Arab rift, is about 9 kilometers (5.6 mi) deep. The Nile runs for 4,258 miles throughout Africa. Delta . The Nile River is a famous river that is located in Northeastern Africa. ", "Remarkable Events in the Life of the River Nile", Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, "Big Canal To Change Course of Nile River", "For Thousands of Years, Egypt Controlled the Nile. 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