“Lucan makes Cæsar say in his ‘Pharsalia,’ that he would readily abandon the design of warring against his country could he be happy enough to see the primal fountains of the Nile:
“‘Nihil est quod noscere malim,
Quam fluvii causas per sæcula tanta latentes,
Ignotumque caput: spes sit mihi certa videndi
Niliacos fontes; bellum civile relinquam.’”
“Nero was animated by the same thirst for glory, for he despatched armies to make this discovery, but the report submitted to him removed all hope of success.”
“The ancients therefore, searching in vain for the sources of the Nile, attempted to conceal their ignorance by mysteries, and they related them in fables. Even the interpreters of Holy Scripture were not exempt from this defect, as they knew no other lands on Ethiopia than that of Africa; they thought that Gihon, mentioned in Genesis, was the Nile, not being able to go against the Scriptures, where it is said that the Gihon has its spring in the terrestrial paradise, and it waters the land of Chus; it passes through under the seas and under the earth to reappear in Ethiopia. How many clever men have endeavoured to clear up these fables? and how many different systems were got up? The Bishop of Avranches supports, in his ‘Treatise of the Terrestrial Paradise,’ that the Gihon is an easternly branch of the Euphrates, which flows from the country of Eden and passes along the country of Chus, now the Cheezeslam. He adds that Homer makes out that it descends from Jupiter, and calls it Δητετἡ; this is what has caused Plautus to say, in speaking of a river, which he does not name, that it has its source in heaven and under the throne of Jupiter. The Egyptians, Ethiopians, Abyssinians, Gymnosophists, after making out this river to be a divinity, have thought themselves obliged to maintain the old errors—even the most absurd ones. Therefore we should not be astonished, after the poets having attributed a heavenly origin to the Nile, if the Egyptians, who owe the fertility of their country to it, have built temples, have erected altars, have established festivals in its honour, finally, if they have adored it under the name of Osiris.”
“The Jews and the Mohammedans, who are far from each other in idolatry, have thought that the waters of the Nile were holy and blessed, and the Agaus, who live in the environs of the sources of this river, although instructed in the Christian religion, still offer sacrifices; so that obstinacy and vanity support the superstitions and the idolatries that ignorance has introduced.”
“The Nile has changed its name, according to the times and places: ‘Nec ante Nilus, quam se totum aquis concordibus rursus junxit. Sic quoque etiamnum Siris, ut ante, nominatus per aliquos in totum Homero Ægyptus, aliisque Triton.’ Pliny does not say, as some others have said, that it was the Nile which at first had the name of ‘Egypt,’ but it has given it to the countries it watered while running into the sea, or it is called so after the name of the country, as rivers are ordinarily called after the name of the countries they pass through. Hesychius pretends that the Nile was at first called Egypt, and that it is this river which has given its name to the country: Αἱγυπτος, ὁ Νεἱλος ὁ ποταμὁς ἁχ’ οὑ καἱ ἡ χαρἁ ὑπὁ τος νεωτεροὑς Αἱγυπτος ἑπωνομασμἑνος (Ægyptus, Nilus fluvius à quo regio à recentioribus Ægyptus est appellata). Egypt, nevertheless, is not the first name under which it was known; before it was called Oceanus, afterwards Aetus or Aquila, then Ægyptus, and from thence it was called Triton, on account of these three names; finally, it is known now by the Greeks as well as the Latins by the name of Nile. According to Pliny it takes the name of Syris by passing through the country of Syene. The Egyptians, who think themselves indebted to it for the fecundity of their country and for all its products, have called it the Saviour, the Sun, the God, sometimes the Father. In the Ethiopian language, as used by the learned, it is called Gejon, and he believes that it may have been called so after the name of Gihon, of which Moses speaks in his description of the terrestrial paradise, where he says, ‘Et nomen fluvii fecundi Gihon: ipse qui circumit omnem terram Æthiopiæ.’ Vatable, in explaining the word Kuseh or Æthiopia, says that this must mean the Eastern Ethiopia, ‘de Æthiopia Orientali intelligit.’ The Nile or the Gejon do not environ the whole of Ethiopia or the whole of Abyssinia, but merely a portion, which is the kingdom of Goyam.”
“It will easily be seen shortly how many false hypotheses, how many false reasonings, have been made on the subject; however, there are still people so obstinate of the antiquity, that they will not put faith in those who have been on the spot, and who, having witnessed with their own eyes, could efface what the ancients had written about them. It was difficult and even impossible in following the course of the Nile to go up to its source; those who undertook it were always stopped by the cataracts, and despairing that neither they themselves or others could succeed, they invented a thousand stories. Let us add that neither the Greeks nor the Romans, who are the only ones from whom we have borrowed all our knowledge, have ever carried their arms to that side; who have not even heard spoken of so many barbarous nations who live along this great river; that the land where the Nile springs from, and all those in its environs, are only inhabited by savage and barbarous people; that to arrive there terrible mountains will have to be crossed, impenetrable forests, deserts full of wild beasts, who hardly find there anything to live on. If, however, those who have made so many attempts to discover the source of the Nile had gone though the Red Sea they might with less trouble and expense found what they were looking for.”
After hearing what the ancients said and thought of the sources of the Nile, let us see what we are able to gather from the Arabs:
The following are extracts from part of a manuscript, in the possession of H. E. Ali Pasha Moubarek, the present Minister of Public Instruction, Egypt. The name of the compiler is not given; only the date, 1098 A.H. = 1686 A.D. They are translated by Mr. Vandyck, teacher of English in the Government Schools, Cairo.
“Abu el Fadel, son of Kadama, says in his book, ‘that all rivers in inhabited countries are 228 in number. Some flow like the Nile, from south to north, some flow from east to west, and some flow from north to south, and some flow in more than one of these directions, like the Euphrates and the Gihon.’ He further says, ‘As for the Nile, it starts from the Mountains of Gumr (Kamar) beyond the equator, from a source from which flow ten rivers, every five of these flowing into a separate lake, then from each one of these two lakes two rivers flow out; then all four of these rivers flow into one great lake in the first zone, and from this great lake flows out the Nile.”