Nilus
(
Νεῖλος). The Nile, a great river of Egypt. The name is
probably cognate with the Semitic
Nahar or
Nahal,
“river.” Homer calls it
Αἴγυπτος (
Od. iv. 477); and the name
Νεῖλος
occurs first in Hesiod (
Theog. 338) and Hecataeus (
Frag. 279).
The Jews called it Nahal-Misraim, “River of Egypt.” The Nile takes its
rise in the two lakes Victoria Nyanza and Albert Nyanza, which are themselves fed by various
streams. For three hundred miles after leaving the former, it flows with a swift current in
rapids and cataracts and between high walls of rock. It leaves the northern end of Lake Albert
Nyanza, where it is known as the Bahr-el-Jebel, and flows in a northerly course towards the
Mediterranean Sea. The first six score miles are through a level country, then for another
equal distance is contracted into a narrow stream (in places not more than a quarter of a mile
in width), and then, being forced over the Yarbovah Rapids, it enters the plains and flows in
a sluggish stream to Khartoum, distant some 800 miles. In
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Temple of Niké Apteros. (Acropolis at Athens.)
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7¡ 30' north latitude it divides into two streams, the so-called White Nile
(Bahr-el-Abiad) and the Bahrel-Jebel. In 9¡ 30' north latitude the latter receives
the Bahr-el-Ghazal from the west. At Khartoum (15¡ 37' north latitude) the White
Nile and the Blue Nile (Bahr-el-Azrak) unite, and the great stream then flows on, taking up
the Black Nile (Bahr-elAswad), whose black sediment makes the Delta so remarkable for its
fertility. The point of junction is the apex of the island Meroë, where the river has
a breadth of two miles. Thence it flows through
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View on the Nile. (From a photograph.)
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Nubia in a rocky valley, falling over six cataracts, the northernmost being known as the
First Cataract, and marking now, as in antiquity, the southern boundary of Egypt. See
Aegyptus.
The Nile emptied into the Mediterranean by three channels, parted into seven, of which,
according to Herodotus, two were artificial and five natural. From these seven channels come
the names applied to it by Moschus (
ἑπτάπορος), Catullus
(
septemgeminus), and Ovid (
septemplex). Most of
the seven mouths had names derived from their cities (i. e. the Canopic,
Bolbitic, Sebennytic, Pathmetic or Bucolic, Mendesian, Tanitic or Saïtic, and
Pelusiac). At the present time there are only two principal mouths, known as the Rosetta on
the west and the Damiat on the east. From the dark sediment deposited by the river came the
native name of Egypt—Chemi or Kemi, “the black land.” A great
artificial canal (Bahr-Yussouf, i. e. “Joseph's Canal”) runs parallel to
the river, at the distance of about six miles, from Diospolis Parva in the Thebais to a point
on the west mouth of the river about half-way between Memphis and the sea. Many smaller canals
were cut to regulate the irrigation of the country A canal from the east mouth of the Nile to
the head of the Red Sea was commenced under the native kings, and finished by Darius, son of
Hystaspes. There were several lakes in the country, respecting which see
Buto,
Mareotis,
Moeris, Sirbonis, and
Tanis. For the use of the Nile in irrigation, see
Aegyptus, p. 24.
The ancients knew little of the Nile beyond the First Cataract at Meroë. It was
generally believed that the great river originated in Mauretania and flowed for a long
distance underground until it
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The God of the Nile. (Vatican.)
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came to the southern part of Aethiopia, whence it flowed northward as the Astapas.
The emperor Nero undertook to discover its sources, and sent out two expeditions for that
purpose, which succeeded only in reaching the confluence of the Sobat and the White Nile, some
thirty miles beyond the junction of the White Nile with the Bahr-el-Zereb. Ptolemy, however,
speaks of the river as issuing from two great lakes six and seven degrees respectively south
of the equator, and fed by the melting snows of the Mountains of the Moon, lately identified
by Stanley with Gordon Bennett, Ruwenzovi, and adjacent peaks. This is about as much as any
one had learned until the present century, when the discoveries of Speke
(1858 and
1862), Baker
(1864), Schweinfurth
(1868-71), and Stanley
(1875 and 1889) solved bit by bit the mystery of the ages.
The Nile was deified by the Egyptians and worshipped as a god. A famous statue in the
Vatican at Rome represents the river deity as a reclining figure pillowed on a sphinx and
holding a cornucopia (typical of the fertility caused by the river's overflow), while sixteen
children, representing the affluents of the Nile, play about. The work belongs to the
Graeco-Egyptian period.
See Herod. ii. 19-26; Pliny ,
Pliny H. N. v.
51Pliny H. N., 58; viii. 77; Dio Cass. lxxv. 13; Solin.
35; and on the deification of the river by the Egyptians,
Herod.ii.
101;
Diod.i. 6-26. See also
Budge, The
Nile (1890).