Lake Tana

The Lake Tana (also spelled T'ana; previously written as Tsana or Dambea) It is the largest lake in Ethiopia and is the source of the Blue Nile. The lake is located in the highlands in the northwest of the country, at 1840 m above sea level. n. m., and is approximately 84 km long and 66 km wide. The maximum depth is 15 m and it has an area of 2156 km². The lake receives its waters from the Reb, Gumara, Lesser Abay, Kilti and Magech rivers.

Description

The first European to describe Lake Tana was the Spanish Jesuit Pedro Páez in 1618 while he accompanied, as chaplain, the Emperor of Ethiopia Susinios Sequed III, on a military expedition. He described the existence of some grandiose waterfalls that the local inhabitants called "the water that gives off smoke"; due to the infinite amount of drops and water vapor they produced. He was the first European to see and describe the sources of the Blue Nile.

The lake has about thirty islands and islets, whose number varies depending on the level of the lake, which has dropped by about two meters in the last 400 years. According to Manoel de Almeida (a Portuguese missionary of the 16th century), the lake had 21 islands, seven or eight of which had monasteries in them "previously large, but currently very small." When Robert Bruce visited the area at the end of the 18th century , he stated that the local inhabitants counted 45 inhabited islands, but that he believed there were only eleven. A more recent geographer mentions 37 islands, of which 19 have and would have had monasteries or churches.

The remains of Ethiopian emperors were buried in the isolated monasteries of these islands. On the island of Tana Cherqos there is a rock on which, according to tradition, the Virgin Mary rested on her return trip from Egypt; It is also said that Frumentius, who introduced Christianity to Ethiopia, would be buried in Tana Qirqos. The body of Yekuno Amlak was buried in the monastery of Saint Stephen, on Dagger Island; Also in Daga are the tombs of the emperors Dawit I, Zara Yaqob, Za Dengel and Fasilides. Other important islands in the lake are Dek Island and Meshralia.

The monasteries are thought to have been built on earlier religious sites and include Debre Maryam and Dega Estefanos of the 14th century Narga Selassie, Tana Qirqos (where according to Ethiopian traditions the Ark of the Covenant would have been), and Ura Kidane Mecet from the 19th century. There is a ferry service that connects Bahir Dar with Gorgora passing through Dek Island and several seaside towns.