Lake Zway
Hora-Dambal is 31 kilometers long and 20 km across at its widest, with a surface area of 440 square kilometers. It has a maximum depth of 9 meters and lies at an elevation of 1,636 meters. According to the Statistical Abstract of Ethiopia for 1967/68, Lake Ziway is 25 kilometers long and 20 km wide, with a surface area of 434 square kilometers. It has a maximum depth of 4 meters and is at an elevation of 1,846 meters. It contains five islands, including Debre Sina, Galila, Funduro, Tsedecha and Tulu Gudo, which is home to a monastery said to have housed the Ark of the Covenant around the ninth century.
The early 20th-century explorer Herbert Weld Blundell describes finding that "two distinct terraces of former shores rise some 80 feet above the present level, forming a ring round that nearest to the lake on the north, about 4 miles from the shore, marking a former basin." The northern shores were covered by papyrus. Weld Blundell includes in his account "a curious tradition, perhaps suggested by the apparent elevated shore," that the lake "was a kingdom 50 miles across, inhabited by seventy-eight chiefs", which disappeared in a single night.
The lake is known for its population of birds and hippopotamuses. It supports a fishing industry; according to the Ethiopian Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture, 2454 tonnes of fish are landed each year, which the department estimates is 83% of its sustainable amount.
Notes
- ^ Leslau, Wolf (1999). Dambal Ethiopic Documents: Grammar and Dictionary. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. p. xv. ISBN 3447041625.
- ^ Robert Mepham, R. H. Hughes, and J. S. Hughes, A directory of African wetlands Archived 3 July 2021 at the Wayback Machine, (Cambridge: IUCN, UNEP and WCMC, 1992), p. 158
- ^ "Water Resources and Irrigation Development in Ethiopia – IWMI" Archived 18 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Table 3. Basic hydrological data of lakes and reservoirs of Ethiopia. (Retrieved 2 July 2011)
- ^ Google Earth
- ^ "Climate, 2008 National Statistics (Abstract)" Archived 13 November 2010 at the Wayback Machine, Table A.2. Central Statistical Agency website (Retrieved 26 December 2009)
- ^ H. Weld Blundell, "Exploration in the Abai Basin, Abyssinia", The Geographical Journal, 27 (1906), pp. 529–551
- ^ "Information on Fisheries Management in the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia" Archived 28 February 2008 at the Wayback Machine (report dated January, 2003)