Difference between revisions of "Nile River" - New World Encyclopedia

From New World Encyclopedia
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[[Image:Africa4 009.jpg|none|thumb|250px|A river boat crossing the Nile in Uganda]]
 
[[Image:Africa4 009.jpg|none|thumb|250px|A river boat crossing the Nile in Uganda]]
 
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The Nile still supports much of the population living along its banks, with the Egyptians living in otherwise inhospitable regions of the [[Sahara Desert]]. The Nile still is used to transport goods along its path; especially, since winter winds in this area blow upriver, ships could travel up with no work using sails and down using the flow of the river. While most Egyptians still live in the Nile valley, the construction of the Aswan High Dam (finished in 1970) to provide hydroelectricity ended the summer floods and their renewal of the fertile soil since most of the silt settles in Lake Nasser.
+
The Nile still supports much of the population living along its banks. However, construction of the Aswan High Dam (finished in 1970) to provide hydroelectricity ended the summer floods and their renewal of the fertile soil, since most of the silt carried by the Blue Nile settles in Lake Nasser.
 
 
For the first time in history, all ten Nile basin countries — Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda — expressed a serious concern about the need to work together to fight poverty.
 
 
 
The Initiative is developing an agreed basin-wide framework and is guided by the countries’ Shared Vision "to achieve sustainable socio-economic development through the equitable utilization of, and benefit from, the common Nile Basin water resources
 
In February 1999, the ten countries of the Nile adopted a Shared Vision: To achieve sustainable socio-economic development through the equitable utilization of, and benefit from, the common Nile Basin water resources. Nine countries agreed to launch the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), with Eritrea as Observer, and at the same time decided to engage in negotiations for a Permanent Cooperative Framework.
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 +
Pressed by their growing populations and water needs, for the first time in history, all ten Nile basin countries (Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda) have expressed a serious concern about the need to work together to fight poverty. Guided by a shared vision adopted in February 1999— "to achieve sustainable socio-economic development through the equitable utilization of, and benefit from, the common Nile Basin water resources"— nine countries agreed to launch the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), with Eritrea as observer, and at the same time decided to engage in negotiations for a Permanent Cooperative Framework.
  
 
The Nile north of Aswan is a regular tourist route, with cruise ships and traditional wooden sailing boats known as [[felucca]]s. In addition, many "floating hotel" cruise boats ply the route between Luxor and Aswan, stopping in at Edfu and Kom Ombo along the way.
 
The Nile north of Aswan is a regular tourist route, with cruise ships and traditional wooden sailing boats known as [[felucca]]s. In addition, many "floating hotel" cruise boats ply the route between Luxor and Aswan, stopping in at Edfu and Kom Ombo along the way.
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* Bangs, Richard, and Pasquale Scaturro. 2005. ''Mystery of the Nile: the epic story of the first descent of the world's deadliest river''. New York City: G.P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 0399152628
 
* Bangs, Richard, and Pasquale Scaturro. 2005. ''Mystery of the Nile: the epic story of the first descent of the world's deadliest river''. New York City: G.P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 0399152628
 
* "Nations inch toward Nile accord," ''Washington Times'', January 11, 2007.
 
* "Nations inch toward Nile accord," ''Washington Times'', January 11, 2007.
 +
* De Villiers, Marq. 2000. ''Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource''. New York City: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0618030093
  
 
==Notes==
 
==Notes==
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==External links==
 
==External links==
 
{{commons|Nile}}
 
{{commons|Nile}}
* [http://www.visiting-uganda.com/album/Uganda/index3.html Images of Uganda]. ''Uganda''. Retrieved April 16, 2007.
 
 
* [http://earthtrends.wri.org/maps_spatial/maps_detail_static.cfm?map_select=299&theme=2 Watersheds of the World: Africa - Nile Watershed]. ''World Resources Institute''. Retrieved April 16, 2007.
 
* [http://earthtrends.wri.org/maps_spatial/maps_detail_static.cfm?map_select=299&theme=2 Watersheds of the World: Africa - Nile Watershed]. ''World Resources Institute''. Retrieved April 16, 2007.
* [http://www.waterandnature.org/eatlas/html/af15.html Nile Watersheds of Africa]. ''Water Resources eAtlas''. Retrieved April 16, 2007.
+
* [http://www.waterandnature.org/eatlas/html/af15.html Watersheds of Africa: Nile]. ''Water Resources eAtlas''. Retrieved April 16, 2007.
 
* [http://earthfromspace.photoglobe.info/spc_nile_delta.html Nile Delta]. ''Earth from Space''. Retrieved April 16, 2007.
 
* [http://earthfromspace.photoglobe.info/spc_nile_delta.html Nile Delta]. ''Earth from Space''. Retrieved April 16, 2007.
 
* Collins, Robert O. [http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/Inscrutable%20Nile1.pdf The Inscrutable Nile at the Beginning of the New Millennium]. ''Department of History''. Retrieved April 16, 2007.
 
* Collins, Robert O. [http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/Inscrutable%20Nile1.pdf The Inscrutable Nile at the Beginning of the New Millennium]. ''Department of History''. Retrieved April 16, 2007.

Revision as of 16:16, 21 April 2007


Nile
The River Nile in Egypt
The River Nile in Egypt
Origin Africa
Mouth Mediterranean Sea +
Basin countries Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Egypt +
Length 6,695 km (4,180 mi) +
Source elevation 1,134 m (3,721 ft) +
Avg. discharge 2,830 m³/s (99,956 ft³/s) +
Basin area 3,400,000 km² (1,312,740 mi²) +

The Nile is a major north-flowing river in Africa, at 4,180 miles (6,695 km) generally regarded as the longest river in the world.[1]The drainage basin of the Nile encompasses about 10 percent of the area of Africa [1].

Egypt's civilization has depended on the river since ancient times. Most of the population of Egypt and all its cities except 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 its banks. Today, only 2 percent of Egypt is not desert, and its rapidly increasing population is still dependent on the Nile for survival. Traditionally, Egypt has discouraged the nations that lie upriver from damming or tapping the river's water, and poverty or warfare in Ethiopia and Sudan, the two principal nations affected, have kept them from doing so. But the nine upriver countries are gradually insisting on having more say over distribution of the Nile's water.

North of Cairo, the Nile splits into two branches that feed the Mediterranean: the Rosetta Branch to the west and the Damietta to the east, forming the Nile Delta.

Etymology of the word Nile

Iteru.png

The word "Nile" comes from the Greek word Neilos, meaning river valley. In the ancient Egyptian language, the Nile is called iteru, meaning "great river," represented by the hieroglyphs shown on the right (literally itrw).[2]

Tributaries

The Nile has two major tributaries. The Blue Nile is the source of most of the Nile's water and fertile soil, but the White Nile is 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, and flows north from there through Tanzania, Lake Victoria, Uganda, and southern Sudan. The Blue Nile starts at Lake Tana in Ethiopia and flows into Sudan from the southeast. The two rivers meet near the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.

East Africa, showing the course of the Nile River, with the "Blue" and "White" Niles marked in those colors.

Both branches are on the western flanks of the Eastern Rift, the southern part of the Great Rift Valley. Another less important tributary is the Atbara, which flows only while there is rain in Ethiopia and dries quickly. The Nile is unusual in that its last tributary (the Atbara) joins it roughly halfway to the sea. From that point north, the Nile diminishes because of evaporation.

White Nile

The source of the Nile is sometimes considered to be Lake Victoria, but the lake itself has feeder rivers of considerable size. The most distant stream emerges from Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda, via the Rukarara, Mwogo, Nyabarongo, and Kagera rivers, before flowing into Lake Victoria in Tanzania near the town of Bukoba.

The Blue Nile Falls fed by Lake Tana near the city of Bahar Dar, Ethiopia

The Nile leaves Lake Victoria at Ripon Falls, near Jinja, Uganda, as the Victoria Nile. It flows for approximately 300 miles (500 km) farther, through Lake Kyoga, until it reaches Lake Albert. After leaving Lake Albert, the river is known as the Albert Nile. It then flows into Sudan, where it becomes known as the Bahr al Jabal ("River of the Mountain"). At the confluence of the Bahr al Jabal with the Bahr al Ghazal, itself 445 miles (720 km) long, the river becomes known as the Bahr al Abyad, or the White Nile, from the whitish clay suspended in its waters. From there, the river flows to Khartoum.

Blue Nile

The Blue Nile to Ethiopians (Bahr al Azraq to Sudanese) springs from Lake Tana in the Ethiopian highlands, then flows about 850 miles (1,400 km) to Khartoum, where the Blue Nile and White Nile join to form the Nile. Some 90 percent of the water and 96 percent of the transported sediment carried by the Nile[3] originates in Ethiopia, with 59 percent of the water from the Blue Nile alone (the rest being from the Tekezé, Atbarah, Sobat, and small tributaries). The erosion and transportation of silt only occurs during the Ethiopian rainy season in the summer, however, when rainfall is especially high on the Ethiopian plateau.

Composite satellite image of the White Nile (see also the Nile delta)

Cataracts and Great Bend

Two things define the Nile between Khartoum and Aswan: the cataracts and the great bend. The cataracts are sections where the river tumbles over rocks. Since Roman times, these kept boats from going up and down the river between Equatorial Africa and Egypt. Thouth six are numbered, there are actually many more. The cataracts are also significant because these define river segments where granite and other hard rocks come down to the edge of the Nile. The floodplain is narrow to nonexistent, so opportunities for agriculture are limited. For these two reasons - navigation obstacles and restricted floodplain - this part of the Nile is thinly populated. The historic border between Egypt in the north and Nubia or Sudan in the south is the First Cataract at Aswan.

The Great Bend is one of the most unexpected features of the Nile. For most of its course, the Nile flows inexorably north, but in the heart of the Sahara, it turns southwest and flows away from the sea for 300 km before resuming its northward journey. This deflection of the river's course is due to tectonic uplift of the Nubian Swell. This uplift is also responsible for the cataracts; if not for recent uplift, these rocky river stretches would have been quickly reduced by the abrasive action of the sediment-laden Nile.

Hydrology

It puzzled the ancients why the amount of water flowing down the Nile in Egypt varied so much over the course of a year, particularly because almost no rain fell there. Today we have hydrographic information that explains why the Nile is a 'summer river'.

The Nile south of the Great Bend in Sudan is really two hydraulic regimes: The White Nile maintains a constant flow over the year, because its flow is doubly buffered. Seasonal variations are moderated by the water stored in the Central African lakes of Victoria and Albert and by evaporation losses in the Sudd, the world's largest freshwater swamp. The Sudd reduces annual variations in streamflow since in unusually wet years, the area of the Sudd increases, which leads to larger losses to evsaporation than during dry years, when the area of the Sudd is reduced. The result is that the White Nile issuing from the Sudd flows at about the same rate all year long, keeping the Nile downstream from Khartoum flowing during the winter months, when the Blue Nile/Atbara system has dried up.

The Blue Nile/Atbara system is a completely different hydraulic regime. It responds to the wet season/dry season variation of the Ethiopian highlands. In the winter, when little rain falls in the highlands, these rivers dry up. In the summer, moist winds from the Indian Ocean cool as they climb up the Ethiopian highlands, bringing torrential rains that fill the dry washes and canyons with rushing water that ultimately joins the Blue Nile or the Atbara. During the summer, the White Nile's contribution is insignificant. The annual flood in Egypt is a gift of the annual monsoon in Ethiopia.

After Aswan, there is less water due to evaporation of the Nile's waters during its leisurely passage through the Sahara Desert. Water is also lost due to human usage, so that progressively less water flows in the Nile from Arbara, the Nile's last tributary, all the way to the Mediterranean Sea.

The White Nile contributes approximately 31 percent [citation needed] of the yearly Nile discharge. However, during the dry season (January to June) the White Nile contributes between 70 and 90 percent of the total discharge from the Nile. During this period the natural discharge of the Blue Nile can be as low as 113 m³/s (3,990 ft³/s), although upstream dams regulate the flow of the river. During the dry period, there will typically be no flow from the Atbara River.

The Blue Nile contributes approximately 80-90 percent of the Nile River discharge. The flow of the Blue Nile varies considerably over its yearly cycle and is the main contribution to the large natural variation of the Nile flow.

Before the placement of dams on the river, peak flows would occur during late August and early September and minimum flows would occur during late April and early May.

The Nile basin is complex and because of this the discharge at any given point along the river depends on many factors including weather, diversions, evaporation/evapotranspiration, and groundwater flow.

In 1958 radioisotope tracking led to the discovery of a subterranean river, also called a crypto-river, which flows beneath the Nile.


History

The confluence of the Kagera and Ruvubu rivers near Rusumo Falls, part of the Nile's upper reaches.


The founding of Egyptian civilization

The Nile has been the lifeline for Egyptian culture since the Stone Age. Climate change, or perhaps overgrazing, desiccated the pastoral lands of Egypt to form the Sahara Desert, possibly as long ago as 8000 B.C.E., and the inhabitants then presumably migrated to the river, where they developed a settled agricultural economy and a more centralized society.

As an unending source of sustenance, The Nile played a crucial role in the founding of Egyptian civilization. The Nile made the land surrounding it extremely fertile when it flooded or was inundated annually. The Egyptians were able to cultivate wheat and other crops, providing food for the population. Also, the Nile’s water attracted game such as water buffalo and, after the Persians introduced them in the seventh century B.C.E., camels. These animals could be killed for meat or tamed and used for ploughing — or in the camels' case, traveling. The Nile itself was also a convenient and efficient way of transportation for people and goods.

Egypt’s stability was one of the best structured in history. In fact, it might easily have surpassed many modern societies. This stability was an immediate result of the Nile’s fertility. The Nile also provided flax for trade. Wheat was also traded, a crucial crop in the Middle East where famine was very common. This trading system secured the diplomatic relationship Egypt had with other countries, and often contributed to Egypt's economic stability. Also, the Nile provided the resources such as food or money, to quickly and efficiently raise an army. Whether the army was to take on a defensive or offensive role is unknown.

The Nile played a major role in politics and social life. The Pharaoh would supposedly flood the Nile, and in return for the life-giving water and crops, the peasants would cultivate the fertile soil and send a portion of the resources they had reaped to the Pharaoh.

The Nile was so significant to the lifestyle of the Egyptians that they created a god dedicated to the welfare of the Nile’s annual inundation. His name was Hapi, and both he and the Pharaoh were thought to control the flooding of the Nile River. Also, the Nile was considered as a causeway from life to death and afterlife. The east was thought of as a place of birth and growth, and the west was considered the place of death, as the god Ra, the sun, underwent birth, death, and resurrection each time he crossed the sky. Thus, all tombs were located west of the Nile, because the Egyptians believed that to enter the afterlife, they must be buried on the side that symbolized death.

The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that ‘Egypt was the gift of the Nile’, and in a sense that is correct. Without the waters of the Nile River for irrigation, Egyptian civilization would probably have been short-lived. The Nile provided the elements that make a vigorous civilization, and contributed much to its lasting three thousand years.

That far-reaching trade has been carried on along the Nile since ancient times can be seen from the Ishango bone, possibly the earliest known indication of [Ancient Egyptian multiplication]], which was discovered along the headwaters of the Nile River (near Lake Edward, in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo) and was carbon-dated to 20,000 B.C.E.

The search for the source

The Great Bend of the Nile in Sudan, looking north across the Sahara Desert toward northern Sudan.

Despite the attempts of the Greeks and Romans (who were unable to penetrate the Sudd), the upper reaches of the Nile remained largely unknown. Various expeditions had failed to determine the river's source, thus yielding classical Hellenistic and Roman representations of the river as a male god with his face and head obscured in drapery. Agatharcides records that in the time of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, a military expedition had penetrated far enough along the course of the Blue Nile to determine that the summer floods were caused by heavy seasonal rainstorms in the Ethiopian highlands, but no European in antiquity is known to have reached Lake Tana, let alone retraced the steps of this expedition farther than Meroe.

Europeans learned little new information about the origins of the Nile until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when travelers to Ethiopia visited not only Lake Tana but the source of the Blue Nile in the mountains south of the lake. Although James Bruce claimed to have been the first European to have visited the headwaters, modern writers with better knowledge give the credit to the Jesuit Pedro Páez. The tumultuous waters that passed through a narrow gorge near the headwaters deterred exploration until recent years.

The White Nile was even less understood, and the ancients mistakenly believed that the Niger River represented the upper reaches of the White Nile; for example, Pliny the Elder wrote that the Nile had its origins "in a mountain of lower Mauretania," flowed above ground for "many days" distance, then went underground, reappeared as a large lake in the territories of the Masaesyles, then sank again below the desert to flow underground "for a distance of 20 days' journey till it reaches the nearest Ethiopians" (Natural History 5.10).

Lake Victoria was first sighted by Europeans in 1858 when the British explorer John Hanning Speke reached its southern shore while on his journey with Richard Francis Burton to explore Central Africa and locate the Great Lakes. Believing he had found the source of the Nile on seeing this "vast expanse of open water" for the first time, Speke named the lake after the then Queen of the United Kingdom. Burton, who had been recovering from illness at the time and resting farther south on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, was outraged that Speke claimed to have proved his discovery to have been the true source of the Nile when Burton regarded this as still unsettled. A very public quarrel ensued, which not only sparked a great deal of intense debate within the scientific community of the day but much interest by other explorers keen to either confirm or refute Speke's discovery. The well-known British explorer and missionary David Livingstone failed in his attempt to verify Speke's discovery, instead pushing too far west and entering the Congo River system instead. It was ultimately the American explorer Henry Morton Stanley who confirmed the Speke's discovery, circumnavigating Lake Victoria and reporting the great outflow at Rippon Falls on the lake's northern shore.

The White Nile Expedition, led by South African national Hendri Coetzee, was to become the first to navigate the Nile's entire length. The expedition took off from Uganda in January 2004 and arrived safely at the Mediterranean Sea four and a half months later.

In April 2004, geologist Pasquale Scaturro and his partner, kayaker and documentary filmmaker Gordon Brown, became the first people to navigate the Blue Nile, from Lake Tana in Ethiopia to the Mediterranean. Though their expedition included a number of others, Brown and Scaturro were the only ones to remain on the expedition for the entire journey. However, the team was forced to use outboard motors for most of their journey, and it was not until January 2005, when Canadian Les Jickling and New Zealander Mark Tanner reached the Mediterranean, that the river had been paddled for the first time under human power.

On April 30, 2005, a team led by South Africans Peter Meredith and Hendri Coetzee became the first to navigate the most remote headstream, the true source of the Nile — the Akagera river which starts as the Rukarara in Nyungwe forest in Rwanda.

On March 31, 2006, three explorers from Britain and New Zealand, led by Neil McGrigor, claimed to have been the first to travel the river from its mouth to a new "true source" deep in Rwanda's Nyungwe rainforest.[2]

The river today

View of the Nile from a cruiseboat, between Luxor and Aswan in Egypt
The Eternal Nile
The Nile in Uganda
A river boat crossing the Nile in Uganda

The Nile still supports much of the population living along its banks. However, construction of the Aswan High Dam (finished in 1970) to provide hydroelectricity ended the summer floods and their renewal of the fertile soil, since most of the silt carried by the Blue Nile settles in Lake Nasser.

Pressed by their growing populations and water needs, for the first time in history, all ten Nile basin countries (Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda) have expressed a serious concern about the need to work together to fight poverty. Guided by a shared vision adopted in February 1999— "to achieve sustainable socio-economic development through the equitable utilization of, and benefit from, the common Nile Basin water resources"— nine countries agreed to launch the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), with Eritrea as observer, and at the same time decided to engage in negotiations for a Permanent Cooperative Framework.

The Nile north of Aswan is a regular tourist route, with cruise ships and traditional wooden sailing boats known as feluccas. In addition, many "floating hotel" cruise boats ply the route between Luxor and Aswan, stopping in at Edfu and Kom Ombo along the way.

Flooding of the Nile

The annual cycles of the Nile were very important to the lives of ancient Egyptians. Egypt’s stability was an immediate result of the Nile’s fertility. The Nile also provided flax and wheat for trade. This trading system secured the diplomatic relationship Egypt had with other countries and contributed to Egypt's economic stability. Also, the Nile provided the resources such as food or money to quickly and efficiently raise an army.

The Nile also played a major role in political and social life. The Pharaoh would supposedly flood the Nile, and in return for the life-giving water and crops, the peasants would cultivate the fertile soil and send a portion of the resources they had reaped to the Pharaoh.

Excess water in Lake Nasser since March 2005 has been pumped by the Mubarak Pumping Station, said to be largest of its kind in the world into a canal through the Toshka Valley that is about 310 km. Along the whole stretch, agricultural communities will be established wherever possible. The water is projected to irrigate a land of about 2,300 km² that today is only desert. The government hopes to resettle up to three million inhabitants in the area. Experimental farms have shown that the soil is potentially fertile. Crops like cotton, cucumbers, tomatoes, watermelon, bananas, grapes and wheat have all been successfully cultivated here.

Flora and Fauna

In the southern parts of the river, the hippopotamus and Nile crocodile are common. The Nile is also home to a variety of fish and birds, mostly in the southern part. Fish, especially the Nile perch and tilapia, are an important food source.

The upper regions of the Nile are in mountain forests, but as it travels north the vegetation around the river changes to shrubs and short trees, then no plants in the desert. In the river itself, water hyancinth and papyrus flourish. The latter was used for making paper, boats, sandals, and rope in ancient times.

The Eonile

The present Nile is at least the fifth river that has flowed north from the Ethiopian highlands. Satellite imagery was used to identify dry watercourses in the desert to the west of the Nile. An Eonile canyon, now filled by surface drift, represents an ancestral Nile called the Eonile that flowed during the later Miocene (23-5.3 million years before the present). The Eonile transported clastic sediments to the Mediterranean, where several gas fields have been discovered within these sediments.

During the late-Miocene Messinian Salinity Crisis, when the Mediterranean was a closed basin and evaporated empty or nearly so, the Nile cut its course down to the new base level until it was several hundred feet below world ocean level at Aswan and 8000 feet deep under Cairo. This huge canyon is now full of later sediment.

Formerly, Lake Tanganyika drained northwards into the Nile, until the Virunga Volcanoes blocked its course in Rwanda. That would have made the Nile much longer, with its longest headwaters in northern Zambia.


Sources and Further reading

  • Holmes, Martha, Gavin Maxwell, and Tim Scoones. 2004. Nile. London: BBC Books. ISBN 0563487135
  • Morell, Virginia. 2001. Blue Nile: Ethiopia's river of magic and mystery. Washington, D.C.: Adventure Press. ISBN 0792279514
  • Bangs, Richard, and Pasquale Scaturro. 2005. Mystery of the Nile: the epic story of the first descent of the world's deadliest river. New York City: G.P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 0399152628
  • "Nations inch toward Nile accord," Washington Times, January 11, 2007.
  • De Villiers, Marq. 2000. Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource. New York City: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0618030093

Notes

  1. River Encarta (Accessed 3 October 2006)
  2. What did the ancient Egyptians call the Nile river? Open Egyptology. (Accessed 17 October 2006 - Login required or enter as Guest)
  3. Marshall et al., Noia 64 mimetypes pdf.pngPDF, 2006

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