The
Blue Nile (
Amharic ????; transliterated ?
Abbai, but pronounced
Abbai;
Arabic ????? ???????;
transliterated an-Nil al-Azraq) is a
river originating at
Lake Tana in
Ethiopia. With the
White Nile, the river is one of the two major tributaries of the
Nile. Sometimes in Ethiopia the river—especially the upper reaches—is called the Abbai.
The Abbai portion of the river is considered holy by many in Ethiopia, and is believed to be the Gihon river mentioned as flowing out of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2.[1] The Abay portion of the Blue Nile rises at Lake Tana and flows for some thirty kilometers before plunging over the Tis Issat Falls. The river then loops across northwest Ethiopia through a series of deep valleys and canyons into Sudan, by which point it is only known as the Blue Nile.
Although there are several feeder streams that flow into Lake Tana, the sacred source of the river is generally considered to be a small spring at Gish Abbai at an altitude of approximately 2,744&_160;meters (9,003&_160;ft). The Blue Nile much later joins the White Nile at Khartoum, Sudan and, as the Nile, flows through Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea at Alexandria. The Blue Nile is so-called because during flood times the water current is so high, it changes color to an almost black; since in the local Sudanese language the word for black is also used for the color blue.
The distance from its source to its confluence is variously reported as 1460 and 1600&_160;km (907 and 1000 mi). The uncertainty over its length might partially result from the fact that it flows through virtually impenetrable gorges cut in the Ethiopian highlands to a depth of some 1500 m (4950 ft)—a depth comparable to that of the Grand Canyon in the United States.
