Mapping the Source Region of the Abbay/Blue Nile

The Nile, which traverses about 6,825 kilometres, from its farthest and most remote source in southern Rwanda to the Mediterranean Sea, is the longest river system on earth. It comprises two major tributaries, the White Nile and the Abbay, also called Blue Nile. The Abbay contributes the lion’s share to the Nile’s annual water flow (Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia 1999: 11). Similarly, the dominance of the Ethiopian rivers in the main Nile River system can also be described in terms of their silt contribution. The rich Ethiopian soil that has been eroded and washed away for millennia by the Ethiopian rivers to Egypt is estimated to have left 9 to 10 meters deep deposits along the Nile banks (Waterbury 1979: 25). Indeed, it was the silt and the water of Ethiopian rivers that greatly contributed to making Egypt habitable and productive.

The Abbay is called the Blue Nile outside Ethiopia because of the soft and sticky wet earth it carries from the mountains of Ethiopia. Its source is situated at a height of 2,900 meters above sea level at Mount Gesh,¹ in the district of Sakala, Gojjam province (Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia 1999: 11). This first section of the river, named Gilgel or Bikolo Abbay, flows down from Mount Gesh about 100 kilometers to join Lake Tana, the heart-shaped largest freshwater lake of the Ethiopia. Leaving its prefix Gilgel/Bikolo in the lake, the Abbay flows for 35 kilometers to form the famous Tis-Isat Falls. Then the river cuts a circuitous deep canyon through the highland by flowing from south-east to the south, then west, and finally north (Moorehead 1974: 14). In its peregrination of 922 kilometres within Ethiopian territory (Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia 1999: 15), over ninety tributaries rise from the high plateau and flow into the deep canyons to join the Abbay. The river flows through huge and deep gorges and valleys with a strong force until just before it crosses the Ethiopian-Sudanese boundary (Clark/Greenhalgh 1952: 4f.).

The Nile Quest in the Ancient World

For centuries, the Nile and its sources had been a mystery for the ancient Egyptians and other civilizations. In their quest to locate the sources of the Nile, they conducted many expeditions. Historical records show that Cyrus the Great, the king of Persia, and his son Cambyses II, who both reigned in the 5^th century BCE, as well as Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Claudius Nero dispatched unsuccessful expeditions heading south into central Africa, searching for the source of the Nile (Boavida et al. 2011: 244). Thus, ancient Romans are said to have used the Latin proverb caput Nili quaerere (“to search for the source of the Nile”) to express unsolvable problems or impossible undertakings (Bruce 1790: 614).

The first known attempt to locate the source of the Nile River through a map was made by the classical Egyptian geographer Claudius Ptolemy in the second century CE. Ptolemy’s map proposed that the Nile River springs from two parallel massive lakes, named Zaire and Zaflan, which in turn were fed by streams from the legendary Mountains of the Moon, which were thought to be located in East Africa. This map accurately showed the river’s two main tributaries, the White Nile and the Blue Nile, which started from Lake Zaire and Lake Zaflan. However, the two parallel lakes had been located to the south of the actual locations of Lake Victoria and Lake Tana.

First European Visits of the Abbay Sources

Although the explorations for the source of the Abbay could not follow the Nile up from Egypt via the Sudan to Ethiopia until the 18^th century, European visits coming from the direction of the Red Sea are recorded as early as in the 16^th century. It is noteworthy that Francisco Álvares, a Portuguese envoy who arrived in Ethiopia in 1520, gave a general description about the source and course of the Nile as follows: The Nile “rises in the Kingdom of Goyame [Gojjam] […] and thence it begins its course and goes towards Egypt” (quoted from Beckingham/Huntingford 1961: 517). Nevertheless, despite Álvares’ correct report about the source region of the Abbay, no European map is known to have supplanted the Ptolemaic model until the last quarter of the 17^th century.

The map of Ethiopia by the Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius, which was published in Antwerp in 1603, clearly showed that the actual source and course of the Abbay was not accurately depicted in the first decade of the 17^th century. The map shows that the Abbay flows out of the north end of Lake Zaflan, placed to the south of the Equator, even though Álvares and several other Europeans had visited Ethiopia and returned to Europe with new geographic information about the source region of the Abbay in the 16^th century. Álvares was well aware that the Abbay flowed out of the south end of Lake Tana. Nevertheless, it seems that the European cartographers continued with the Ptolemaic model, rather than making new maps of the source of the Abbay River based on available new geographic information.

On 21 April 1618 the Spanish Jesuit priest Pedro Páez was the first European to visit, together with Emperor Susenyos I (r. 1607–1632), the Sakala district, from where the little Abbay rises. Páez, who claimed that he drank some water from the source, wrote a vivid description about the source of the little Abbay: “I cannot express my delight in seeing that which Cyrus, Cambyses, Alexander and Julius Caesar so strongly and so unavailingly desired to know” (Boavida/Ramos 2011: 244). A more detailed description about the source than Páez had given was written in the 1620s, by the Portuguese traveller Manuel de Almeida (Beckingham/Huntingford 1967: 22f.). Yet, this geographic information would remain equally unpresented in European cartography for decades.

The last quarter of the 17^th century may be regarded as an important landmark in the mapping of the source region of the Abbay River. Thanks to the geographic information obtained from the accounts of the Portuguese missionaries, mainly Pedro Páez and Jerónimo Lobo, series of maps that accurately indicate the source of the Abbay were published in Europe. One of the maps, which marked a big step in the evolution of the maps of the source of the Abbay, was Hiob Ludolf’s map of 1683. Based upon the information obtained from Abba Gorgoryos and the travels of Portuguese Jesuits, Ludolf almost correctly located the source of the Abbay south-west of Lake Tana (Ludolf 1682: 36f.). The map focuses on the headwaters of the Abbay and correctly indicates that the river flows out from the south-east corner of Lake Tana. It also shows the clockwise unfolding of the river before heading north.

Maps Based on Expeditions to the Abbay

An explorer who set out deliberately for the sake of the “discovery” of the source of the Nile was the Scottish traveller James Bruce. In 1768, Bruce first travelled to Egypt and then, having gained the support of the Coptic Patriarch and Ali Bey al-Kabir, Mamluk ruler of Egypt (r. 1760–1772) (Bruce 1790: 40), set out on his journey to Ethiopia. Finally, he succeeded in visiting the source of the Abbay on 4 November 1770 (ibid.: 590). Bruce wrote an account of his voyage to locate the source of the Abbay in his famous five-volume work entitled: Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in the Years 1768–1773. Bruce claimed to be the first European to visit the Gesh Abbay spring, the primary source of the Abbay, although the Jesuit missionaries were actually there more than 150 years earlier.

A map of Bruce’s travels, published in 1790, is the first known map directly based on the observations of a person who actually visited the country. This map provides detailed geographic information about the source region of the Abbay. It shows that the river springs from Mount Gesh and passes through Lake Tana as an unbroken stream before it finally flows out from the south-east corner of the lake.

Although the travels of Bruce aroused an interest in Ethiopia among European scholars, more than ninety years elapsed until the first reliable map of Lake Tana was made. It was based on information collected by the German explorer Anton Stecker, who stayed for two years in the country from 1881 to 1883 and made a detailed examination of the lake. To conclude, European written accounts and maps served to bring to an end to the mysteries surrounding the source of the Abbay and to introduce the little-known Ethiopia to the outside world.

References

1 Gishe Abbay is considered by the local people as well as by early European travellers as the source of the Abbay. However, it is important to note that hydrologists often cite Lake Tana as the source of the river.

Further Reading

Boavida, Isabel, Hervé Pennec, Manuel Joao Ramos (eds.): Pedro Páez’s History of Ethiopia, 1622, vol. 1, London 2011.

Beckingham, Charles F. , George W. B. Huntingford (eds.): The Prester John of the Indies. True Relation of the Lands of the Prester John, Being the Narrative of the Portuguese Embassy to Ethiopia in 1520, Written by Father Francisco Alvares, vol. 2, Cambridge 1961.

Id. (eds.): Some Records of Ethiopia. Being Extracts from the History of High Ethiopia or Arbassia by Manoel de Almeida; Together with Bahrey’s History of the Galla, 1593–1646, London 1967.

Bruce, James: Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, vol. 3, Edinburgh 1790.

Clapham, Christopher: The European Mapping of Ethiopia, 1460–1856, in: Journal of Ethiopian Studies 40 (2007), pp. 293–307.

Clark, T. A., W. H. Greenhalgh: Reconnaissance Report on the Water Resources of the Blue Nile River Basin within Ethiopia, Washington 1952.

Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Ministry of Water Resources: Abbay River Basin Integrated Development Master Plan Project Phase 2, Addis Ababa 1999.

Johnston, Harry H.: The Nile Quest. A Record of the Exploration of the Nile and its Basin, London 1903.

Ludolf, Hiob: A New History of Ethiopia, London 1682.

Moorehead, Alan: The Blue Nile, London 1974.

Waterbury, John: Hydropolitics of the Nile Valley, New York 1979.

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