Mystery On The Nile: Just Whose River Is It?

A 3 part series on NPR....
(thanks to travelers Irma and Horace for sharing this information)

September 19, 2010
First of three parts
All great mysteries begin at the end and end at the very beginning. And for thousands of years, the Nile River was perhaps the world’s greatest mystery.

Anyone can see where it ends, pouring northward through Egypt and into the Mediterranean Sea. But locating the origins of this magnificent river befuddled nearly everybody. Not until the Victorian Age did Western explorers find what had eluded so many.

The 19th century explorers who helped solve the mystery of the Nile's source were the best of the Victorian era, doing the work of Britain's Royal Geographic Society, of private sponsors, sultans, Egyptians and of a queen bent on expanding her empire.

But in settling the question of the Nile, the explorers may have inadvertently stumbled onto a whole new question: Just whose river is it?

Listen to the story and read more