Lake Tana

The White Nile is longer and is considered to be the headwaters, yet the Blue Nile contributes over twice the water volume of the White Nile.

The White Nile begins near Lake Victoria and flows through Uganda and South Sudan, while the Blue Nile begins near Lake Tana in Ethiopia and flows into Sudan from the southeast.

The two rivers meet at the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.

From there, the Nile flows north through the Nubian Desert to Egypt's capital, Cairo, and finally empties into the Mediterranean Sea near Alexandria, where it has formed a large river delta.

The Blue Nile springs from hills in Ethiopia, where it originates as a stream named Abai near the town of Gish Abai.

Gish is the Amharic word meaning source, and Abai is the name of the stream.

Gish Abai flows into Lake Tana, a large shallow lake which has a single outflow where it adopts the Blue Nile name.

The river then makes a wide loop, first south, then west through a spectacular gorge 2 kilometers or 6,600 feet deep, then north passing through South Sudan into Sudan, where it joins with the White Nile at Khartoum to form the main Nile.

He says, "You know, maybe we could run away.

Maybe we could get to Lake Tana." But his men say to him, "No, we're not gonna flee with you.

Your own- You've got to make peace now.

We will stay with Your Majesty till death, but you must listen to our advice and come to terms with the ferenjis, with the foreigners." And Tewodros is devastated by this.

He says to him, "Well, when I get back to London with the hostages, I will talk to Her Majesty's government, and I'm sure they'll look kindly on Your Majesty's proposal." Tewodros says, "Oh, great.

Thank you." They reach a place called Lake Tana.

Here they part.

Tewodros is going off to attack some rebels, and Rassam's gonna wait for the hostages.

This is where we were with a, a trusted friend there, Misgana.

And there's a documented tradition that the Ark of the Covenant went to Elephantine Island in six forty-two BC and then to Tana Kirkos Island at Lake Tana in Egypt.

This is, this is documented in Second Chronicles thirty-five, really, and I won't get into all that here other than from there it went to Axum and is presently at St. Mary's Zion Church.

And because of all this, uh, and they believe that their, their-- this is their commitment to present this to the Messiah when he rules on Mount Zion.

It was an early advanced outpost.

I won't go through all the background here, but we do have archeological evidence that a tabernacle was set up there, uh, from five twenty-five to four oh four BC in that, in that time prior to the Persian occupations.

But we went then from there up to Lake Tana on to Tana Kirkos Island, where it remained for about eight hundred years.

And it's that visit that I wanna touch on because as we-- And they're still using the same kind of canoe construction that is described in Isaiah eighteen, by the way.

it's really interesting because you know don't they say that that they have like the um the ark of the covenant or something those people yeah they do

they do say that jeremiah if you go and you look at the uh the literature in ethiopia which is really quite incredible there's a place called lake tana And the Lake Tanna, there was an island in the middle of Lake Tanna where they claimed the Ark of the Covenant was kept in a tent for some 400 years before they moved it into a church.

By the way, there's one guy that is allowed to go in and look at the Ark of the Covenant.

Yeah, that's the crazy part.

Yeah.

And so anyway, but go back to this Ark of the Covenant and this whole Ethiopian thing.

Yeah, there's all of this discussion about Lake Tana and all this where this all happened.

So the Ethiopians have been, they claim that they put their Bible together around 200 AD.

Trust is the only system.

After settling up, I walked down to the Lake Tana Transport Authority compound.

It doubles as a birdwatching platform, and I wanted one last look at the birds before I left.

The Waterhyacinth has been a problem here since twenty eighteen, but this year, with the lake at its seasonal high, it seems less aggressive, pushed back by the sheer volume of water.