Introducation of Red Sea

The Red Sea is a gulf or basin of the Indian Ocean between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb sound and the Gulf of Aden. In the north is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba and the Gulf of Suez (leading to the Suez Canal). The sea is roughly 1,200 miles (1,900 km) long and at its widest is over 190 miles (300 km).

The sea floor has a maximum depth of 8,200 feet (2,500 m) in the central median trench and an average depth of 1,640 feet (500 m), but it also has extensive shallow shelves, noted for their marine life and corals. The sea has a surface area of roughly 174,000 square miles (450,000 km²). The sea is the habitat of over 1,000 invertebrate species and 200 soft and hard corals. The sea occupies a part of the Great Rift Valley. The Red Sea is the world’s most northern tropical sea.

Egypt’s Red Sea coast runs from the Gulf of Suez to the Sudanese border. Its mineral-rich red mountain ranges inspired the mariners of antiquity to name the sea Mare Rostrum, or the Red Sea.

Hermits seeking seclusion founded early Christian monasteries here, sharing the wilderness with camel-trading Bedouin tribes. Today, the crags and limestone wadis of the Eastern Desert remain relatively unexplored, home to ibex and gazelle. But the Red Sea itself, dotted with coral reefs, fringed by ancient ports, teeming with underwater life, has a rich maritime history which stretches back to Pharaonic times.

The thermal winds that once sped clippers to the East still bring thousands of migrating birds to the shores of the Red Sea, making it a paradise for bird-watchers. Today, the ancient ports are better known as some of the best diving and fishing resorts in the world.

Here, you will find over 800 fish species, including the deadly stone-fish, the equally dangerous butterfly-fish, as well as surgeon fish, jellyfish such as the cassiopei, crabs that sometimes overrun the shore in the evening and some species of shark. Sunbathers relax on white sand beaches, or find shade in the mangrove lagoons that line the coast, while snorkellers explore the reefs. And the underwater wonder of the Red Sea remains a living tapestry of vibrant corals and exotic fish, waiting for you to discover its secrets.

Culture of Nile Valley

Around 105 million people live along the Nile, most of these in Egypt. The Nile has been the source of civilization for more than 5,000 years. The greatest of these civilizations belongs to Ancient Egypt. More recent, and less impressive, but still important was Nubia, belonging to the region of modern Sudan. This period lasted until about 0 CE.

Following that period, important cultures arose in Egypt. First was the Roman and Coptic periods, followed by a number of strong Muslim states. These include the Fatimids, the Ayyubids and finally the Mamluks. Since the 16th century, the cultures around the Nile have been weak and poor.

Modern Egypt and Sudan are the poorest countries in North Africa and the Middle East, with enormous problems. Uncontrolled population growth of these two countries provide for bleak future prospect, even if the Egyptian economy has shown growth in the late 1990’s.

Geography of Nile Valley

The Nile can be divided into three zones: The tributaries, the many rivers that make up the stream of the Nile. The White and Blue Niles join near Khartoum in Sudan, and other tributaries join the White Nile further south.

The second zone is the stretch between Cairo and Khartoum. The third and last zone is the delta, where the Nile divides into several branches, of which Rosetta (Rashid) and Damietta (Dumyat) are the main ones. The Nile Delta is the widest habitable area of the Nile, and it even includes several lakes, like Manzala, Buruillus and Edku.

Modern times have added more division lines, like the two dams at Aswan. South of this the river valley opens up, allowing rich agriculture and high population density. The width of the Nile below Aswan - it’s most important stretch in terms of inhabitants and economy - is 2.8 km in average. The greatest width is at Edfu, with 7.5 km, the smallest at Silwa Gorge, near Aswan, with 350 metres.
There are also minor dams in Sudan, aiding agriculture and protecting against large floods.

About 83% of the total water of the Nile comes from Lake Tana, 1,800 metres above sea level in the Ethiopian mountains. The lake flows over every summer providing for the flood that today is tamed by the barrages of Sudan and southern Egypt. This water flows through the Blue Nile until it joins the White Nile at Khartoum, Sudan to form the Nile. The other main source is the White Nile originating in Uganda and Burundi.

It contributes with 16%, but this is a more steady flow. Without it, the river Nile would run dry in May. As there are many single contributors to the White Nile, it is a question of definition on where the Nile really starts. The longest stretch of the Nile comes with the start of Kyaka river in Burundi, close to large Lake Tanganyika. This passage goes through Lake Victoria, then Victoria Nile, Lake Albert, Albert Nile, which in Sudan is called Mountain Nile. Mountain Nile joins other rivers of Sudan to form the White Nile.

Facts About The Nile River

The Nile is famous as the longest river in the world. The river got its name from the Greek word Neilos, which means valley. The Nile floods the lands in Egypt, leaving behind black sediment. That’s why the ancient Egyptians named the river Ar, meaning black.

Some more river Nile facts.

How long is the Nile River? - The Nile River is actually 6695 kilometers (4184 miles) long. With such a long length, the Nile River is speculated to be the longest river in the world. The Amazon River runs a very close second, although it has been difficult to determine which is actually longer. River Nile facts state it winds from Uganda to Ethiopia, flowing through a total of nine countries. While the Nile River is often associated with Egypt, it actually touches Ethiopia, Zaire, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Sudan, as well as Egypt. It’s only recent that the first known navigation team successfully followed the river from beginning to its end.

The banks of the Nile

How did the ancient Egyptians use the Nile River? - The Nile River has played an extremely important role in the civilization, life and history of the Egyptian nation. One of the most well known river Nile facts is the river’s ability to produce extremely fertile soil, which made it easy for cities and civilizations to spring up alongside the banks of the Nile. The fertile soil is contributed by the annual spring floods, when the Nile River overflows onto the banks. Much of the Egyptian nation consists of dry desert land.

The Eonile of Nile River

The present Nile is at least the fifth river that has flowed north from the Ethiopian Highands. Satellite imagery was used to identify dry watercourses in the desert to the west of the Nile. An Eonile canyon, now filled by surface drift, represents an ancestral Nile called the Eonile that flowed during the later Miocene.

The Eonile transported clastic sediments to the Mediterranean, where several gas fields have been discovered within these sediments. South of Cairo, the sand-filled canyon can reach a depth of up to 1400 meters.

During the late-Miocene Messinian Salinity Crisis, when the Mediterranean Sea was a closed basin and sealevel in the sea dropped approximately 1500 m, the Nile cut its course down to the new base level until it was several hundred feet below world ocean level at Aswan. This huge canyon is now full of later sediment.

Formerly, Lake Tanganyika drained northwards into the Nile, until the Virunga Volcanoes blocked its course in Rwanda. That would have made the Nile much longer, with its longest headwaters in northern Zambia.

Flooding of the Nile

The annual cycles of the Nile were very important to the lives of ancient Egyptians. The Nile ‘mysteriously’ but predictably rose each summer to flood and fertilize the land, without rain and in the hottest time of the year. A good flood and Egypt’s wealth was assured; a poor flood or too great of a flood and Egypt would suffer.

The cyclic mystery created awe and stimulated worship, and the job of recording the history of Nile flooding, when the Nile was expected to flood, and the locations of farmers’ plots after the floodwaters receded stimulated creation of the first scientific instrument (the Nilometer), astronomy, and surveying.

The concerns of ancient Egyptians for a good flood were justified. The failure of the Nile floods and the generally low level of the river is thought to have been responsible for the collapse of the Old Kingdom about 4200 years ago. These concerns are captured in the Bible, where Joseph correctly interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams of 7 years of abundance and 7 years of poverty in Egypt to relate to good and then bad Nile floods.

Ledyard, in his Travels, speaks contemptuously of this celebrated wonder:-"This is the mighty, the sovereign of rivers-the vast Nile that has been metamorphosed into one of the wonders of the world! Let me be careful how I read, and, above all, how I read ancient history. You have heard, and read too, much of its inundations. If the thousands of large and small canals from it, and the thousands of men and machines employed to transfer, by artificial means, the water of the Nile to the meadows on its banks-if this be the inundation that is meant, it is true; any other is false; it is not an inundating river.”

More recently, drought during the 1980s led to widespread starvation in Ethiopia and Sudan but Egypt was protected from drought by water impounded in Lake Nasser.

History of the Nile River

The Nile (iteru in Ancient Egyptian) was the lifeline of the ancient Egyptian civilization, with most of the population and all of the cities of Egypt resting along those parts of the Nile valley lying north of Aswan. The Nile has been the lifeline for Egyptian culture since the Stone Age. Climate change - or perhaps overgrazing - about 8000 BC desiccated the pastoral lands of Egypt to form the Sahara, and the tribes naturally migrated to the river, where they developed a settled agricultural economy and more-centralized society.

The Ishango bone, the earliest known indication of Ancient Egyptian multiplication, was discovered along the headwaters of the Nile River (near Lake Edward, northeastern Congo), dating to 20,000 BC.

Despite the attempts of the Greeks and Romans (who were unable to penetrate the Sudd), the source of the Nile was unknown until the 19th century, when John Hanning Speke was the first to identify it as Lake Victoria. Various earlier expeditions since ancient times had failed to determine the river’s source, thus yielding classical Hellenistic and Roman representations of the river as a male god with his face and head obscured in drapery.

Speke was part of a 1856-1858 expedition led by Richard Francis Burton to search for the source of the Nile by entering Africa from Dar-Es-Salaam (modern Tanzania). Burton was convinced that Lake Tanganyika was the source, but it was Speke who, leaving a sick Burton behind, found the large body of water now known as Lake Victoria and convinced himself that this was the Nile’s true source. Speke returned with James Augustus Grant in 1860-1863 for further explorations around Lake Victoria and traced the Nile northwards to Gondokoro, on the southern boundary of the Sudd.

The White Nile Expedition, led by South African national Hendri Coetzee, was to become the first to navigate the Nile in its entire length. The expedition took off from The Source of the Nile in Uganda on January 17, 2004 and arrived safely at the Mediterranean in Rosetta, Egypt, 4 months and 2 weeks later. National Geographic is releasing a feature film about the expedition towards the end of 2005, to be entitled The Longest River.

On April 28, 2004, geologist Pasquale Scaturro and his partner, kayaker and documentary filmmaker Gordon Brown became the first people to navigate the Blue Nile, from Lake Tana in Ethiopia to the beaches of Alexandria on the Mediterranean. Though their expedition included a number of others, Brown and Scaturro were the only ones to remain on the expedition for the entire journey.

They chronicled their adventure with an IMAX camera and two handheld video cams, sharing their story in the IMAX film “Mystery of the Nile,” and in a book of the same title. Despite this attempt, the team was forced to use outboard motors for most of their journey, and it was not until January 29, 2005, when Canadian Les Jickling and New Zealander Mark Tanner reached the Mediterranean Sea, that the river had been paddled for the first time under human power.