Dek Island is the biggest island (approximately 16 square kilometers in size) on Lake Tana

Lake Tana

Lake Tana is the source of the Blue Nile and is the largest lake in Ethiopia...

 in Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

. It is administratively included in the Bahir Dar Zuria

Bahir Dar Zuria

Bahir Dar Zuria is one of the 105 woredas in the Amhara Region of Ethiopia. Part of the Mirab Gojjam Zone, this woreda is bordered on the south by Adet, on the southwest by Merawi, on the northwest by the Lesser Abay River which separates it from Achefer, on the north by Lake Tana, on the...

 woreda of the Mirab Gojjam Zone

Mirab Gojjam Zone

Mirab Gojjam is a Zone in the Amhara Region of Ethiopia. Mirab Gojjam is named after the former province of Gojjam was divided in to two administrative zones by EPRDF...

. To the southeast of Dek is the much smaller Daga Island

Daga Island

Daga Island is located in the southeastern part of Lake Tana in Ethiopia. Southeast of the much larger Dek Island, Daga has a latitude and longitude of...

.

Overview

It is home to several monasteries

Monastery

Monastery denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer as well as the domestic quarters and workplace of monastics, whether monks or nuns, and whether living in community or alone .Monasteries may vary greatly in size – a small dwelling accommodating only...

, the best known being Narga Selassie

Narga Selassie

Narga Selassie is a church on the western shores of Dek Island, the largest island of Lake Tana in northern Ethiopia. The name signifies "Trinity of the Rest"...

. Dek is accessible by the ferry

Ferry

A ferry is a form of transportation, usually a boat, but sometimes a ship, used to carry primarily passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo as well, across a body of water. Most ferries operate on regular, frequent, return services...

 that runs from Bahir Dar

Bahir Dar

Bahir Dar is a city in north western Ethiopia. It is the capital of the Amhara Region .Administratively, Bahir Dar is considered a Special Zone, placing it midway between Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa which are organized as chartered cities , and cities like Debre Marqos and Dessie, which are...

 to Gorgora

Gorgora

Gorgora is a town and peninsula in northwestern Ethiopia...

. Hormuzd Rassam

Hormuzd Rassam

Hormuzd Rassam , was a native Assyrian Assyriologist, British diplomat and traveller who made a number of important discoveries, including the clay tablets that contained the Epic of Gilgamesh, the world's oldest literature...

 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 Kassa (the later Emperor Tewodros II

Tewodros II of Ethiopia

Tewodros II was the Emperor of Ethiopia from 1855 until his death....

) 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 round 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

Central Statistical Agency (Ethiopia)

The Central Statistical Agency is an agency of the government of Ethiopia designated to provide all surveys and censuses for that country used to monitor economic and social growth, as well as to act as an official training center in that field. It is part of the Ethiopian Ministry of Finance and...

 of Ethiopia (CSA), the kebele

Kebele

A kebele is the smallest administrative unit of Ethiopia similar to ward, a neighbourhood or a localized and delimited group of people...

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.