about the river

The Nile (Arabic: النيل‎, transliteration: an-nīl, Ancient Egyptian iteru, Coptic piaro or phiaro) is a major north-flowing river in Africa, generally regarded as the longest river, though not the most voluminous, in the world.[1] The Nile has two major tributaries, the White Nile and Blue Nile, the latter being the source of most of the Nile's water and fertile soil, but the former being the longer of the two. The White Nile rises in the Great Lakes region of central Africa, with the most distant source in southern Rwanda 2°16′55.92″S, 29°19′52.32″E, and flows north from there through Tanzania, Lake Victoria, Uganda and southern Sudan, while the Blue Nile starts at Lake Tana in Ethiopia, flowing into Sudan from the southeast. The two rivers meet near the Sudanese capital Khartoum.

The northern section of the river flows almost entirely through desert, from Sudan into Egypt, a country whose civilization has depended on the river since ancient times. Most of the population of Egypt and all of its cities, with the exception of those near the coast, lie along those parts of the Nile valley north of Aswan; and nearly all the cultural and historical sites of Ancient Egypt are found along the banks of the river.

The Nile ends in a large delta that empties into the Mediterranean Sea.

The Yellow River or Golden River (Traditional Chinese: 黃河; Simplified Chinese: 黄河; Hanyu Pinyin: Huáng Hélisten (help·info); Wade-Giles: Hwang-ho, sometimes simply called the River in ancient Chinese) is the second longest river in China (after Yangtze River) and the seventh longest in the world. It is 5464 km long [1]. Originating in the Bayankala Mountains in Qinghai Province in western China, it flows through nine provinces of China and empties into the Bohai Sea. The Yellow River basin has an east-west distance of 1900 km, and north-south distance of 1100 km. Total basin area is 752443 km².


The middle stream of the Yellow River passes through the Loess Plateau where substantial erosion takes place. The large amount of mud and sand discharged into the river makes the Yellow River the most sediment-laden river in the world. The highest recorded annual level of silts discharged into the Yellow River is 3.91 billion tons in 1933. The highest silt concentration level was recorded in 1977 at 920 kg/m³.[citation needed] These sediments later deposit in the slower lower reaches of the river, elevating the river bed and creating the famous "river above ground". In Kaifeng, Yellow River is 10 meters above the ground level.[2]

The Yellow River is called the "Mother River of China" and "the Cradle of Chinese Civilization" in China, as its basin is the birth-place of the northern Chinese civilizations and the most prosperous region in early Chinese history. But frequent devastating flooding, largely due to the elevated river bed in its lower course, has also earned it the unenviable distinction as "China's Sorrow".

The world's ten longest rivers


Nile (6,690 km)

Amazon (6,452 km)
Mississippi-Missouri (6,270 km)[1]
Yangtze (Chang Jiang) (6,245 km)[2]
Yenisey-Angara (5,550 km)
Huang He (Yellow) (5,464 km)
Ob-Irtysh (5,410 km)
Amur (4,410 km)
Congo (4,380 km)
Lena (4,260 km)