The Aswan High Dam

Egypt is a Country of marvel, culture, rich and unique history and is rightfully well known for all of that. Although the monuments of Ancient Egypt are the most famous among the Egyptian catalog of astonishing feats such as the Great Giza pyramids and the Sphinx, one of the rarely mentioned and more modern accomplishments of Egypt is the Aswan High Dam. It is located near the second Nile cataract only about 13 km south of Aswan. It is considered one of the most important structures during the last century and a tourist attraction that cannot be missed during a visit to Aswan.

History of Aswan High Dam

Throughout the history of Egypt, there have been many attempts to construct a dam in Aswan. The primary Aswan dam provides an important water system during dry seasons. However, couldn’t keep down the yearly surge of the flooded Nile River.

Then in the 1950s, the Great President Gamal Abd El-Nasser ordered the building of the High Dam, a huge one enough to end flooding and carry the electric capacity to each edge of Egypt. He won the United States and British monetary support, yet in July 1956 the two countries dropped the idea after learning of a mystery Egyptian arms concurrence with the Soviet Union. Accordingly, Nasser nationalized the British and French-possessed Suez Canal, aiming to utilize tolls to pay for his High Dam venture. After that, the Soviet Union decided to provide the total support in building the High Dam in 1958 which cost $1.12bn as a form of investment with a 2% interest.

The construction of the Aswan High Dam started on 9 January 1960 taking 10 years to complete on 21 July 1970 and officially opened on 15 January 1971, forming a huge reservoir called Lake Nasser, named after the former Egyptian President Nasser.

Construction of Aswan High Dam

The world-famous Aswan High Dam was an engineering miracle when it was built in 1960. It contains 18 times the material used in the Great Pyramid of Cheops. It contains 43,000,000 cubic meters of materials. The Dam is 13,000 feet long; 3,220 feet thick at the base and 364 feet tall; and surprisingly about 11,000 cubic meters per second of water can pass through the dam through 180 sluice gates to regulate the flow of water to achieve flood control.

The dam’s construction created the enormous Lake Nasser. At 550 km in length, 35 km in width, and with an area of 5,250 square km of water, it is also one of the largest man-made lakes in the world. 

Benefits of Aswan High Dam

The Aswan High Dam yields enormous benefits to the economy of Egypt. It was mainly constructed to control the annual Nile flood for the first time in history. This resulted in supplying irrigation water for all parts of Egypt for the whole year. The dam protected Egypt from droughts and provided irrigation waters to 2 million Feddans that became available for farming for various crops like rice, wheat, cotton, and sugar cane and acted as the new homes for 500,000 families. The dam also improved navigation across the Nile, benefiting the tourism and fishing industries.

Another Vital benefit of the Aswan High Dam is its Power Generation. As the dam has 12 power generators each of 175 megawatts and produces energy for more than 2 gigawatts. It also generates more than half of the electricity needed by Egypt and was a main factor & reason for some villages getting electricity for the first time.

Problems of the High Dam

When the dam was created, more than 90000 people had to leave their homes in order not to be submerged by the resulting lake. Although it was a traumatic and sad episode in the history of Nubia, the territory around the present dam contributed to mitigating the effects of the dangerous floods of 1964 and 1973 and the famines of 1972-1973 and 1983-1984.

More than 22 monuments and architectural complexes were threatened by flooding from Lake Nasser, including the great temples of Abu Simbel. Those monuments were preserved with the help of the UNESCO Nubia campaign. That campaign also moved Philae, Kalabsha, and Amada temples to different places to keep the treasures of the Ancient Egyptians safe. Some of them were given to the countries that contributed to the rescue work such as the temple of Ellesyia now kept in the Egyptian Museum of Turin, the Debod temple relocated to Madrid and the temple of Dendur relocated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York.

The construction of the Aswan high dam had also some negative impacts including the spread of Schistosomiasis. Another problem that resulted from the construction of the High Dam was the gradual decrease in infertility. That was mainly due to the dam’s complete control of the Nile’s annual flooding.

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