Nile River

The Nile[b] is a prime north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The longest river in Africa, it has traditionally been considered the longest river within the global,[6][7] though this has been contested by means of studies suggesting that the Amazon River is slightly longer.[8][9] The Nile is amongst the smallest of the essential international rivers with the aid of degree of cubic metres flowing annually.[10] About 6,650 km (four,130 mi)[a] long, its drainage basin covers 11 nations: Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Republic of the Sudan, and Egypt.[12] In particular, the Nile is the primary water source of Egypt and Sudan.[13] Additionally, the Nile is an crucial economic river, supporting agriculture and fishing.

Nile

Evening, Nile River, Uganda.Jpg

The river in Uganda

inner river Nile map

Location

Countries

Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi

Major towns

Jinja, Juba, Khartoum, Cairo

Physical traits

Source

White Nile

 • area

Burundi[1] or Rwanda[2]

 • coordinates

02°16′fifty six″S 29°19′fifty three″E

 • elevation

2,400 m (7,900 toes)

2d supply

Blue Nile

 • place

Lake Tana, Ethiopia

 • coordinates

12°02′09″N 037°15′53″E

Mouth

Mediterranean Sea

 • region

Nile Delta, Egypt

 • coordinates

30°10′N 31°09′E

 • elevation

Sea level

Length

6,650 km (4,one hundred thirty mi)[a]

Basin size

three,four hundred,000 km2 (1,300,000 sq.Mi)

Width

 

 • most

2.8 km (1.7 mi)

Depth

 

 • average

eight–11 m (26–36 ft)

Discharge

 

 • region

Aswan

 • average

2,830 m3/s (one hundred,000 cu feet/s)

Discharge

 

 • region

Cairo

 • common

1,four hundred m3/s (forty nine,000 cu feet/s)[3]

The Nile has two foremost tributaries – the White Nile, which starts at Lake Victoria,[14] 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 supply of maximum of the water, containing eighty% of the water and silt. The White Nile is longer and rises inside the Great Lakes place of valuable Africa, with the maximum remote supply still undetermined but located in either Rwanda or Burundi. It flows north via Tanzania, Lake Victoria, Uganda and South Sudan. The Blue Nile starts at Lake Tana in Ethiopia[15] and flows into Sudan from the southeast. The two rivers meet simply north of the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.[16]

The northern phase of the river flows north nearly totally thru the Sudanese wasteland to Egypt, wherein Cairo is located on its massive delta and the river flows into the Mediterranean Sea at Alexandria. Egyptian civilization and Sudanese kingdoms have trusted the river considering that ancient instances and its annual flooding. Most of the population and cities of Egypt lie alongside the ones elements of the Nile valley north of Aswan. Nearly all of the cultural and historic web sites of Ancient Egypt advanced and are discovered alongside river banks.

Etymology and names

The general English names "White Nile" and "Blue Nile", to consult the river's supply, derive from Arabic names previously carried out most effective to the Sudanese stretches that meet at Khartoum.[17]

In the ancient Egyptian language, the Nile is called Ḥ'pī (Hapy) or Iteru, which means "river". In Coptic, the word ⲫⲓⲁⲣⲟ, suggested piaro (Sahidic) or phiaro (Bohairic), method "the river" (lit. P(h).Iar-o "the.Canal-first-rate"), and is derived from the same historic name.[18]

In Nobiin the river is referred to as Áman Dawū, that means "the remarkable water".[5]

In Luganda the river is referred to as Kiira or Kiyira.

In Egyptian Arabic, the Nile is known as en-Nīl, even as in Standard Arabic it's far known as an-Nīl. In Biblical Hebrew, it's miles הַיְאוֹר‎, Ha-Ye'or or הַשִׁיחוֹר‎, Ha-Shiḥor.

The English call Nile and the Arabic names en-Nîl and an-Nîl each derive from the Latin Nilus and the Ancient Greek Νεῖλος.[19][20] Beyond that, but, the etymology is disputed.[20][21] Homer called the river Αἴγυπτος, Aiguptos, but in next periods, Greek authors noted its decrease route as Neilos; this term have become generalised for the entire river machine.[22] Thus, the call may additionally 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 might were reported ni-lo-he inside the place around Memphis in the 8th century BCE.[22] Hesiod at his Theogony refers to Nilus (Νεῖλος) as one of the Potamoi (river gods), son of Oceanus and Tethys.[23]

Another derivation of Nile might be associated with the term Nil (Sanskrit: नील, romanized: nila; Egyptian Arabic: نيلة‎),[18] which refers to Indigofera tinctoria, one of the original sources of indigo dye.[24] Another can be Nymphaea caerulea, known as "The Sacred Blue Lily of the Nile", which changed into discovered scattered over Tutankhamen's corpse while it turned into excavated in 1922.[25]

Another feasible etymology derives from the Semitic term Nahal, which means "river".[26] Old Libyan has the term lilu, that means water (in modern Berber ilel ⵉⵍⴻⵍ means sea).[27]

Courses

See also: White Nile

The Nile's drainage basin[28]

With a complete period of approximately 6,650 km (4,one hundred thirty mi)[a] among the region of Lake Victoria and the Mediterranean Sea, the Nile is the longest river on Earth. The drainage basin of the Nile covers 3,254,555 rectangular kilometers (1,256,591 sq.Mi), about 10% of the location of Africa.[29] Compared to different main rivers, even though, the Nile carries little water (5% of the Congo River, for example).[30] The Nile basin is complicated, and due to this, the release at any given factor along the mainstem depends on many factors together with climate, diversions, evaporation and evapotranspiration, and groundwater float.

Above Khartoum, the Nile is also known as the White Nile, a time period extensively utilized in a restricted sense to explain the segment among Lake No and Khartoum. At Khartoum, the river is joined with the aid of the Blue Nile. The White Nile begins in equatorial East Africa, and the Blue Nile starts in Ethiopia. Both branches are at the western flanks of the East African Rift.

Sources

Source of Nile, Spring at Jinja, Lake Victoria.Jpg

The Nile River machine[31] has  important tributaries which mixed make the present Nile river, the White Nile, which components a great deal much less water to Nile's waft, and the Blue Nile. The source of the White Nile[32] is the Luvironza River,[31][32] the supply of the Blue Nile is Lake Tana[33] within the Gilgel Abbay watershed[34] in the Ethiopian Highlands.[32]

In 2010, an exploration party[35] went to a place described because the supply of the Rukarara tributary,[36] and with the aid of hacking a direction up steep jungle-choked mountain slopes inside the Nyungwe forest discovered (within the dry season) an considerable incoming surface go with the flow for lots kilometres upstream, and found a brand new source, giving the Nile a length of 6,758 km (4,199 mi).

The most remotely located source from the Mediterranean outflow is discovered at the Luvironza River in Tanzania which is 6,825 km (4,241 mi) from the ocean.[31]

Gish Abay is reportedly the vicinity where the "holy water" of the primary drops of the Blue Nile develop.[37]

In Uganda

White Nile in Uganda

The Nile leaves Lake Victoria at Ripon Falls close to Jinja, Uganda, as the Victoria Nile. It flows north for a few 130 kilometers (81 mi), to Lake Kyoga. The last part of the about 200 kilometers (a hundred and twenty mi) river segment starts offevolved from the western shores of the lake and flows before everything to the west until just south of Masindi Port, in which the river turns north, then makes a remarkable half of circle to the east and north until Karuma Falls. For the remaining part, it flows simply westerly through the Murchison Falls until it reaches the very northern shorelines of Lake Albert wherein it bureaucracy a significant river delta. The lake itself is at the border of DR Congo, but the Nile isn't a border river at this point. After leaving Lake Albert, the river keeps north thru Uganda and is known as the Albert Nile.

In South Sudan

The Nile river flows into South Sudan just south of Nimule, wherein it's miles called the Bahr al Jabal ("Mountain River"[38]). Just south of the metropolis it has the confluence with the Achwa River. The Bahr al Ghazal, itself 716 kilometers (445 mi) long, joins the Bahr al Jabal at a small lagoon referred to as Lake No, after which the Nile becomes called the Bahr al Abyad, or the White Nile, from the whitish clay suspended in its waters. When the Nile floods it leaves a wealthy silty deposit which fertilizes the soil. The Nile no longer floods in Egypt for the reason that finishing touch of the Aswan Dam in 1970. An anabranch river, the Bahr el Zeraf, flows out of the Nile's Bahr al Jabal segment and rejoins the White Nile.

The go with the flow charge of the Bahr al Jabal at Mongalla, South Sudan is sort of constant in the course of the year and averages 1,048 m3/s (37,000 cu toes/s). After Mongalla, the Bahr Al Jabal enters the extensive swamps of the Sudd location of South Sudan. More than half of of the Nile's water is lost in this swamp to evaporation and transpiration. The average glide price of the White Nile on the tails of the swamps is about 510 m3/s (18,000 cu toes/s). From right here it quickly meets with the Sobat River at Malakal. On an annual foundation, the White Nile upstream of Malakal contributes about fifteen percentage of the total outflow of the Nile.[39]

The average glide of the White Nile at Lake Kawaki Malakal, just underneath the Sobat River, is 924 m3/s (32,600 cu ft/s); the height drift is about 1,218 m3/s (forty three,000 cu feet/s) in October and minimum flow is ready 609 m3/s (21,500 cu toes/s) in April. This fluctuation is because of the big version within the glide of the Sobat, which has a minimum drift of about 99 m3/s (3,500 cu feet/s) in March and a height flow of over 680 m3/s (24,000 cu feet/s) in October.[40] During the dry season (January to June) the White Nile contributes between 70 percent and 90 percentage of the entire discharge from the Nile.

In Sudan

Below Renk the White Nile enters Sudan, it flows north to Khartoum and meets the Blue Nile.

The course of the Nile in Sudan is one-of-a-kind. It flows over six groups of cataracts, from the sixth at Sabaloka simply north of Khartoum northward to Abu Hamed. Due to the tectonic uplift of the Nubian Swell, the river is then diverted to waft for over 300 km south-west following the shape of the Central African Shear Zone embracing the Bayuda Desert. At Al Dabbah it resumes its northward course in the direction of the primary Cataract at Aswan forming the 'S'-shaped Great Bend of the Nile[41] already cited by way of Eratosthenes.[42]

In the north of Sudan, the river enters Lake Nasser (acknowledged in Sudan as Lake Nubia), the bigger part of that is in Egypt.

In Egypt

Below the Aswan High Dam, at the northern restriction of Lake Nasser, the Nile resumes its ancient direction.

North of Cairo, the Nile splits into  branches (or distributaries) that feed the Mediterranean: the Rosetta Branch to the west and the Damietta to the east, forming the Nile Delta.

Sediment transport

Nile Delta from area

The annual sediment delivery via the Nile in Egypt has been quantified.[43]

At Aswan: 0.14 million tonnes of suspended sediment and an additional 28% of bedload

At Qena: zero.27 million tonnes of suspended sediment and a further 27% of bedload

At Sohag: 1.Five million tonnes of suspended sediment and a further thirteen% of bedload

At Beni Sweif: 0.5 million tonnes of suspended sediment and a further 20% of bedload...