The Blue Nile (Amharic: ዓባይ?; transliterated: ʿAbbai, but pronounced Abbai, Arabic: النيل الأزرق An Nīl al Āzraq) 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. The upper reaches of the river is called the Abbay in Ethiopia, where it is considered holy by many, and is believed to be the River Gihon mentioned as flowing out of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2.
Read more about Blue Nile: Course, Water Flow, European Exploration
Famous quotes containing the words blue and/or nile:
“That air would disappear from the whole earth in time, perhaps; but long after his day. He did not know just when it had become so necessary to him, but he had come back to die in exile for the sake of it. Something soft and wild and free, something that whispered to the ear on the pillow, lightened the heart, softly, softly picked the lock, slid the bolts, and released the prisoned spirit of man into the wind, into the blue and gold, into the morning, into the morning!”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“Hard by the lilied Nile I saw
A duskish river dragon stretched along.
The brown habergeon of his limbs enamelled
With sanguine alamandines and rainy pearl:
And on his back there lay a young one sleeping,
No bigger than a mouse;”
—Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849)