Dek Island (

Amharic Amharic ( or ; (Amharic: ), ', ) is an Ethiopian Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amharas, and also serves as a lingua franca for all oth ...

: ደቅ ደሴት ''Däq Däset'') is the biggest island (approximately 16 square kilometers in size) on Lake Tana in

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

. It is administratively included in the Bahir Dar Zuria woreda of the

Mirab Gojjam Zone West Gojjam (Amharic: ምዕራብ ጎጃም) or Mirab Gojjam is a Zone in the Amhara Region of Ethiopia. It is named after the former province of Gojjam. West Gojjam is bordered on the south by the Abay River which separates it from the Oromia ...

. To the southeast of Dek is the much smaller

Daga Island Daga Island (Amharic: ደጋ ደሴት ''Däga Däset'') is an island located in the southeastern part of Lake Tana in Ethiopia. Southeast of the much larger Dek Island, Daga has a latitude and longitude of . The entire island, consisting of a vo ...

Overview

Dek Island is home to several

monasteries A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which ...

, the best-known being

Narga Selassie Narga Selassie is an Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Orthodox Tewahedo church architecture, church on the western shores of Dek Island, the largest island of Lake Tana in northern Ethiopia. The name signifies "Trinity of the Rest". "Rest" ref ...

. Dek is accessible by the

ferry A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water taxi ...

that runs from

Bahir Dar Bahir Dar ( amh, ባሕር ዳር, 3=sea shore) is the capital city of Amhara Region, Ethiopia. Bahir Dar is one of the leading tourist destinations in Ethiopia, with a variety of attractions in the nearby Lake Tana and Blue Nile river. The ...

Gorgora Gorgora (Amharic: ጎርጎራ ''Gōrgōrā'', also, especially formerly, ጐርጐራ ''Gʷargʷarā'', modern pronunciation ''Gʷergʷerā'') is a town and peninsula in northwestern Ethiopia. It is located south of Gondar on the north shore of ...

Hormuzd Rassam Hormuzd Rassam ( ar, هرمز رسام; syr, ܗܪܡܙܕ ܪܣܐܡ; 182616 September 1910), was an Assyriologist and author. He is known for making a number of important archaeological discoveries from 1877 to 1882, including the clay tablets tha ...

mentions visiting the island in February 1866, describing that at the time it contained four villages with a church attached to each one. Rassam also repeats the story told to him how ''

Dejazmach Until the end of the Ethiopian monarchy in 1974, there were two categories of nobility in Ethiopia and Eritrea. The Mesafint ( gez, መሳፍንት , modern , singular መስፍን , modern , "prince"), the hereditary nobility, formed the upper ...

'' Kassa (the later Emperor Tewodros II) captured Dek in a single assault. When R.E. Cheesman visited Dek in 1932 and 1933, he found that it was not strictly "monasterial", but with five churches each with a small village nearby. Cheesman continues his description: : Three-quarters of the island is given up to plough, the chief crops being dagusa and teff, both dwarf millets. Plough-land is divided into plots of about an acre, separated from each other by narrow hedges of scrub forest and big trees. The base of the island is scoriaceous lava in cubes, which are exposed all around the shore and washed by the waves, and identified as vesicular olivine basalt. On the top is a thin layer of red soil derived from the decay of the basalts. The fauna consists chiefly of birds and butterflies that can fly the 5 miles. Animals, as may be expected, are almost absent, though I trapped two kinds of rat; big pythons are numerous in the reed beds and are sometimes found exhausted out at sea and have been known to land on tankwas as unwelcome passengers. Mosquitoes on the islands were very bad.

Demographics

Based on the 2007 national census conducted by the

Central Statistical Agency The Central Statistical Agency (CSA; Amharic: ማዕከላዊ ስታቲስቲክስ ኤጀንሲ) is an agency of the government of Ethiopia designated to provide all surveys and censuses for that country used to monitor economic and social growt ...

of Ethiopia (CSA), the

kebele A ward ( am, ቀበሌ; om, Araddaa; ) is the smallest administrative unit of Ethiopia: a ward, a neighbourhood or a localized and delimited group of people. It is part of a district, itself usually part of a zone, which in turn are grouped into ...

which includes Dek has a total population of 4,816, of whom 2,503 are men and 2,313 women; a total of 1,218 households were counted in this kebele, resulting in an average of 3.95 persons to a household, which less than the woreda average of 4.45 persons, and 1,197 housing units. The 1994 national census reported a total population for this woreda of 5,099 people in 1,028 households, of whom 2,683 were men and 2,416 were women.''1994 Population and Housing Census of Ethiopia: Results for Amhara Region'', Vol. 1, part 1
, Annex Table II.2 (accessed 9 April 2009)

Notes

{{reflist Islands of Lake Tana Amhara Region