Nile River (and White Nile)

The nile river is the longest river in the world and flows northward from its sources in eastern Africa toward the Mediterranean Sea. It spans 4,000 miles (6,700 kilometers), beginning at Lake Victoria, which is perched in the highlands of east Africa on the equator and is just one of the three sources of the Nile. The branch of the river that starts from Lake Victoria is known as the White Nile. This branch provides the greatest volume of water to the Nile River as it flows year round. However, not much of the Nile's waters reach Egypt due to evaporation across the desert.

As the Nile passes through the Sudan, the gradient, or slope, becomes so gradual that the water spreads out to form swamps called sudd. Millions of years ago, long before the Nile found its way out to the Mediterranean Sea, it is believed that there was an inland lake in the Sudan into which the White and Blue Nile used to flow. However, once this lake filled up, the Nile found itself flowing north on its present course to the Mediterranean Sea.

For Egypt, the most important tributary is the Blue Nile, whose source is Ethiopia's Lake Tana. This tributary, swollen by monsoon rains in the highlands of Ethiopia, has for centuries been the main source of floods to the surrounding valley of the Nile every year between June and September. These floods were heralded by the people along the Nile in Egypt as they brought in rich silt and water for irrigation. It is due to these floods and rich soils that the ancient Egyptian civilization achieved its grandeur. A lesser tributary of the Nile is the Atbara River, which flows from a source in the Ethiopian highlands; it joins the Nile in the vicinity of Khartoum, like the Blue Nile. The Atbara flows only when there is rain in Ethiopia and dries very fast.

The word nile comes from the Greek word neilos, which means “river valley.” The ancient Egyptians called the Nile iteru, meaning “big river.” Indeed, its large size is signified by the expanse of its drainage basin, which covers an area of 1.26 million square miles (3.25 million square kilometers), about 10 percent of the area of Africa. On its flow from Khartoum northwards, the river experiences a series of rapids, or cataracts, as it meets hard igneous rock beyond Aswan in Egypt.

Nubia, the region from Khartoum to Aswan, was the home of the Nubian civilization, which rose thousands of years ago alongside the Egyptian Pharaonic civilization. In Egypt, the river divides the country into two sections, Upper and Lower Egypt. Upper Egypt, also known as southern Egypt, is in the desert plateau from Aswan to Qena. Here, the Nile has dug a deep, wide gorge in the desert [Page 1245]plateau. Downstream from Qena the Nile flows northward into the Nile Delta on the Mediterranean Sea. This upstream region (the northern portion of Egypt) is known as Lower Egypt. The Nile Valley's floodplain covers a total area of 4,250 square miles in a wide canyon before it reaches the Nile Delta, which itself measures some 8,500 square miles.

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