(ORDO NEWS) — Where is the source of the Nile River? While it may seem like a simple question, the origin of the longest river on the planet has baffled many researchers for millennia.
Even today, in an age of abundance of satellites and geophysical technologies, the mystery of the location of the source of the Nile has not been solved.
The simple answer is that the Nile River has two main sources: the Blue Nile from Ethiopia, which accounts for two-thirds of the total flow of the Nile, and the White Nile from the African Great Lakes and beyond.
However, if we take a few steps back in history, we will see that things become more hazy.
The ancient Romans had a proverb “Nili caput quaerere”, which in Latin means “to look for the source of the Nile”. It has been used to describe insane striving, striving for the unattainable or impossible.
The Romans did try to find the source of the Nile during the reign of Emperor Nero in 60-61 AD.
With the help of Ethiopian guides, a small group of the emperor’s personal guards went through Africa along the Nile to unknown lands.
It is not clear where they ended their investigation, although they are said to have reached a significant body of water which they believe was the source.
Some say it was a gorge near Juba in present-day South Sudan, while others believe it reached further south in Uganda around the Murchison Falls.
In the end, they failed to solve the mystery. Nero committed suicide in 68 CE and the search seems to have been largely off the agenda after they ruled out the possibility of an invasion of Africa outside of Roman Egypt.
Before the Romans, the ancient Egyptians sought to find the source of the Nile, not least because civilization relied on its waters to feed its soil and serve as a transportation route.
They are believed to have traced the Nile to Khartoum in Sudan, explaining its origin as the Blue Nile from Lake Tana (Ethiopia).
It is reported that an expedition organized by Pharaoh Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who ruled Egypt in the 3rd century BC, established that the source of the Blue Nile may originate in the mountains of Ethiopia.
The discovery of the Blue Nile was on the right track, but there is no evidence that the ancient Egyptians ever explored another key piece of this puzzle, the White Nile.
Today, it is generally accepted that the Nile has two sources: the Blue Nile and the White Nile, which meet in the capital of Sudan, Khartoum, and then continue north into Egypt.
The Blue Nile flows out of the east from Lake Tana in Ethiopia, while the White Nile flows out of Lake Victoria, flowing out of Jinja (Uganda).
This is why Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake by area, is often considered the source of the Nile. However, even this moment is more complicated than it seems at first glance.
In an article published in Geographic magazine in 2016, renowned traveler Christopher Ondatier explains that Lake Victoria itself is a reservoir fed by other rivers.
In 1996, Ondatier went on an expedition to Africa to find the source of the Nile River and discovered that the waters of Lake Victoria flow into Lake Albert.
The White Nile does not flow directly from Lake Albert, but from the Kagera and Semliki rivers, which originate in the Rwenzori mountains in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Ultimately, he argues, the White Nile can be directly traced to the Kagera River and the Semliki River.
“Rwenzori is as important a source of water in the Nile as Lake Victoria,” he writes.
Overall, it is clear that the Nile River has no single origin and is fed through a complex system of rivers and other bodies of water.
Despite the fact that the source, as it seems, can be accurately identified on the map, everything is actually not so simple.
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