The Nile, with a length of about 6,650 km is the longest river in the world, the second being the Amazon (6,400 km) 1. It comes from the meeting of White
Nile and Blue Nile.
The White Nile (Bahr-el-Abiad) has its source in Lake Victoria (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania); the Blue Nile (Bahr-el-Azrak) comes from Lake Tana (Ethiopia).
With its two branches uniting with Khartoum, capital of present-day Sudan, the Nile flows into the Mediterranean Sea forming a delta in the north of Egypt. Including its two branches, the Nile
crosses Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt. It also runs along Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo (respectively with Lakes Victoria and Albert), and its
watershed also affects Eritrea through its tributary Tekeze. The Nile is the way that the Egyptians used to travel.
He brings life by fertilizing the land and guarantees abundance. He played a very important role in ancient Egypt, from the economic point of view, social
(it was around him that were the largest cities), agricultural (thanks to the precious mud of the floods) and religious. Nurturing river of a great people, it was divinized under the name of
Hâpy2, divine personification of the Nile in the Egyptian mythology. The flood of the Nile, which took place each summer and which brought the black loam allowing the culture of its banks,
remained for a long time an unexplained phenomenon. It is from this black loam that comes the ancient name of Egypt, Kemet, which means "black earth". Nowadays, the silty waters of the Nile are
captured and redistributed on agricultural lands thanks to the dams of Ziftah, Assiut, Hammadi, Esna and especially the two giant dams of Aswan, the old and the big a dam, built in the 1970s,
necessitated the relocation of several temples, including that of Abu Simbel, allegedly drowned in the Lake Nasser reservoir. Seen from space, the Nile is clearly distinguished by its green
valley in the middle of the desert.
The ancient Egyptians called iteru meaning the great river.
In Arabic, one writes النيل (An-Nil). ( WIKIPEDIA )
