ABAY RIVER

(Redirected from Abbay River)

The 'Abay River' (ዓባይ ወንዝ ''abay wonz'') is a river in Ethiopia. Locally, it is also known as the ግዮን (''giyon'', usually spelled 'Ghion'). The river forms the upper part of the Blue Nile. The river is considered holy by many in Ethiopia, and is believed to be the Gihon river mentioned as flowing out of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2.^[1]
The Abay rises at Lake Tana and flows for some thirty kilometers before plunging over the Tis Issat Falls. The river then loops across northeast Ethiopia through a series of deep valleys and canyons into Sudan, where it is called the Blue Nile. According to the ''Statistical Abstract of Ethiopia for 1967/68'', the Abay River is 1450 kilometers long, extending for 800 kilometers inside Ethiopia and 650 inside Sudan.
The Abay is the source of the summer flood stage of the Nile in Egypt, for it carries off the precepitation of Ethiopia's rainy season.

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1. Edward Ullendorff, ''Ethiopia and the Bible'' (Oxford: University Press for the British Academy, 1968), p. 2.