The Aswan High Dam

Podcast Transcript

In 1970, one of the world’s largest infrastructure projects opened in Aswan, Egypt.

It was a dam that harnessed the power of the Nile River, the longest river in the world.

The dam provided electricity for half of the country and tamed the annual floods, a regular feature on the Nile.

But the project wasn’t without its drawbacks. It became a point of contention during the Cold War, displaced thousands, and destroyed an unknown number of ancient artifacts.

Learn more about the Aswan High Dam on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Daming the Nile River is an idea that has been around for almost a thousand years.

In the early 11th century, the engineer Ibn al-Haytham was summoned by the Fatimid Caliph to Cairo to see if he could do something about the flooding on the Nile. He investigated the problem, realized that a dam across the Nile was the only solution, and also realized that it was impossible given the state of technology at the time.

Here, I should explain the flooding of the Nile and how it was both a blessing and a cure to the Egyptians.

If you know anything about ancient Egypt, you probably know that the reason why it was able to flourish is because the banks of the Nile were extremely fertile. The reason for this had to do with the flooding of the Nile.

When it did flood, it would deposit nutrient-rich soil along the Nile’s floodplain. This is what made the land extremely fertile and supported one of the world’s earliest and most successful agricultural civilizations.

As Egypt modernized and its population grew, the very floods that sustained life for thousands of years also became increasingly problematic.

The problem was the unpredictability of the floods.

In some years, the floodwaters were too high, submerging villages, destroying crops, and causing widespread devastation. In other years, the floods were too weak, leading to drought, water shortages, and famine.

The ancient Egyptians had adapted to this cycle, but in the modern era, such instability threatened economic development, food security, and infrastructure.

With the expansion of agriculture beyond the traditional floodplain, year-round irrigation became necessary. The reliance on seasonal flooding meant that farmers could only cultivate their land during certain times of the year.

If the floods were controlled, irrigation could be regulated, allowing multiple growing seasons and increased food production.

Urbanization and industrialization also made flood control essential. As Egypt developed, cities, roads, and industries were built near the river. Unchecked floods posed a major threat to this infrastructure, and controlling the river became necessary to prevent economic and human losses.

The next serious consideration of placing a dam on the Nile took place in the 19th century.

Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt, ruled from 1805 to 1848 and is considered to be the founder of modern Egypt. During his reign, the idea of controlling the Nile floods came up, but nothing concrete was done or even proposed.

One of the first actual proposals for a dam came during the reign of Khedive Isma’il Pasha in the mid-19th century. He sought to transform Egypt’s agricultural economy by expanding irrigation, particularly for cotton production, which had become a crucial cash crop.

European engineers, particularly British and French experts, were consulted to explore ways to regulate the river’s flow. However, no major projects materialized at that time due to technological limitations and financial constraints.

In 1882, the British occupied Egypt as part of its efforts to control the Suez Canal.

In the 1890s, the British administration, led by Lord Cromer, commissioned plans to construct a dam to improve irrigation and prevent seasonal flooding. This resulted in the construction of the Aswan Low Dam, completed in 1902, outside the city of Aswan.

If you wondered if the Aswan High Dam meant there was a Low Dam, the answer is yes.

Designed by Sir William Willcocks, the dam was initially effective in controlling water levels but was soon found to be inadequate as Egyptian agriculture expanded.

There were a few problems with the Low Dam. First, it wasn’t built high enough because the British wished to protect Egyptian ruins, particularly the Philae Temple, which was one of the best preserved Egyptian temples in the Upper Nile. The Philae is on an island upstream from the Low Dam and if the dam were bigger, the temple would have been submerged.

The second problem was that the dam wasn’t built to generate electricity. Although generators were eventually added in the 1930s, the size of the damn limited the amount of electricity that could be produced.

Even before the Aswan Low Dam was completed, discussions about building a even larger dam were already underway. Some early proposals envisioned a more ambitious structure further upstream to store a greater volume of water. However, the technology and engineering expertise required for such a massive project were not yet advanced enough.

Ideas and plans were discussed for several decades. In 1952, a Greek-Egyptian engineer named Adrian Daninos came up with a plan for an upper dam that would have its reservoir in Sudan and Ethiopia.

However, the leader of Egypt at the time, King Farouk, had no interest in the project.

Later that year, King Farouk was overthrown in a military coup, and the Egyptian position on a new dam was completely reversed.

In 1954, a new president came to power, Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser wasn’t just the president of Egypt. He claimed to be the leader of Arab Nationalism across the region and supported the overthrow of all Arab monarchies.

Nasser supported the construction of a new dam, which was now very much possible given the state of the art in dam construction. He wanted to modernize Egypt, and the creation of a new damn would radically jump-start that by providing electricity for half the country.

The United States was concerned that this movement could easily find its way to the support of the Soviets, so they and the British offered to fund the construction of the dam by offering a loan to Egypt.

Nasser was very much a nationalist and was willing to play the Americans and the Soviets against each other.

However, in 1956, when Egypt seized the British-controlled Suez Canal, western support dried up.

This left Nasser to accept support from the Soviet Union.

The cost of the dam was approximately $1 billion, a massive sum for Egypt at the time. Soviet loans and assistance made the project possible, deepening Egypt’s ties to the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.

The dam that was going to be built would have most of its reservoir water stored in Egypt, not Sudan, as the 1952 proposed dam would have done. This was primarily for geopolitical reasons.

The Soviets agreed to support the dam in 1958, and plans went ahead.

Construction began in 1960. The dam was to be an Earthen dam.

Tens of thousands of workers were involved, working under harsh desert conditions.

Immediately, as construction began, archeologists and Egyptologists noticed a serious problem. The reservoir behind the dam would completely submerge the temple of Abu Simbel.

Abu Simbel, one of Egypt’s most iconic ancient temple complexes, was an extraordinary feat of engineering built by Pharaoh Ramses II in the 13th century BC.

You may have seen photos of it. It has several enormous reliefs of Ramses II carved in stone in the front.

To prevent this cultural loss, UNESCO launched an ambitious campaign in 1960 to save Abu Simbel. The solution involved cutting and relocating the temples to higher ground. Over the course of four years, from 1964 to 1968, a team of engineers and archaeologists carefully sawed the temples into massive blocks, each weighing between 20 and 30 tons.

These blocks were then meticulously labeled, moved to a prepared site 65 meters higher and 200 meters back from their original location, and reassembled with precision to maintain their original orientation and alignment.

To replicate the original setting, engineers constructed an artificial mountain to house the temples, preserving their grandeur and ensuring that the famous solar alignment—where the sun illuminates the inner sanctum on specific days—remained intact.

The project, costing around $40 million, was a milestone in heritage preservation and set a precedent for saving endangered archaeological sites worldwide.

There were almost certainly undiscovered and unknown artifacts buried along the banks of the Nile that were destroyed as the reservoir was filled with water.

The other major problem was that people lived along the banks of the Nile in Southern Egypt. Approximately 100,000 people of the Nubian ethnic group lived along the Nile and were forcibly relocated to a higher elevation. They had lived along the banks of the Nile for thousands of years, maintaining a distinct language, traditions, and way of life.

Most were moved to an area called New Nubia, near Kom Ombo, about 50 kilometers north of Aswan.

While the government constructed houses and infrastructure for them, the resettlement sites were drastically different from their original homeland. The fertile riverbanks and lush landscapes they had relied on for farming and fishing were replaced by dry, arid land, making traditional agriculture much more difficult.

With Abu Simble moved and the Nubian people relocated, the dam was finished in 1970, and the process of filling the reservoir, now known as Lake Nassar, began.

You can’t just shut off the entire river to fill up the reservoir. You have to continue to let some water pass while keeping some to fill up the reservoir.

The dam is 3,830 meters long, 980 meters wide at its base, and 111 meters high, requiring enormous amounts of material.

Over 34 million cubic meters of stone were used.

At its completion, it was the tallest earthen dam in the world.

It took approximately six years to fill Lake Nasser after the completion of the dam in 1970. The filling process began gradually, with water levels rising year by year as the dam regulated the flow of the Nile.

By 1976, the reservoir reached its maximum capacity, covering an area of about 5,250 square kilometers and extending over 500 kilometers into both Egypt and Sudan.

The Aswan High Dam began generating electricity in stages, with the first hydroelectric turbines becoming operational in 1967. The installation of all 12 turbines was completed by 1971, allowing the dam to reach its full hydroelectric capacity of 2.1 gigawatts.

By that time, it was supplying about half of Egypt’s electricity, helping to industrialize the country and expand electrification to rural areas.

The Aswan dam has certainly been a boon to the economy of Egypt. The amount of electricity produced has decreased as a percentage of overall electrical production, but it is still an important source of electricity.

Since the creation of the dam, several problems have cropped up.

One has to do with soil depletion. Without the floods to deposit fresh silt to rejuvenate the soil, farmland along the Nile has progressively become more depleted. This has resulted in the use of more chemical fertilizers, much of which gets washed into the Nile.

The other problem is that the silt which used to be deposited in floods is now settling in Lake Nasser. As more silt settles in the lake, it reduces the amount of water that can be stored in the lake.

This isn’t a major problem yet, but in several decades it will be. The lack of silt coming down the Nile is also causing problems in the Nile Delta, as it is no longer getting silt to offset coastal erosion.

One possible solution to the problem, which has yet to be implemented, is the construction of slurry pipes, which would transport the silt past the dam and into the river downstream.

If you should ever get the chance, I highly recommend visiting Aswan. The dam itself isn’t actually as interesting to visit as other dams like the Hoover Dam, but it’s still worth the visit. The Philae Temple is nearby, which is definitely worth a visit, as is Abu Simble. It requires a bit more effort as it is close to the Sudanese border, but it is one of the highlights of Egypt.

Also, Aswan gets far fewer visitors than Cairo or even Luxor, which can make it much more enjoyable.

The Aswan High Dam has played a crucial role in economic development, energy production, and agricultural expansion. Despite its challenges—such as soil depletion, displacement of communities, and long-term sediment accumulation—it remains a landmark of modern Egypt.

The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.

Today’s review comes from listener Amps0 over on Apple Podcasts in the United States They write.

Impressive, intellectual, innovative, inspiring!

I accidentally came across your podcast and was truly impressed by the intellectual depth and innovative thinking displayed in each episode. Mr. Gary A, is clearly a highly accomplished researcher, debater, photographer, teacher, and traveler. His insights and wisdom are truly remarkable, and I believe he must have an IQ well above 150. Thank you for providing such engaging and enlightening content through your podcast.

Thanks, Amps0! I don’t know about the IQ thing. To be honest, I think once you get beyond two or three standard deviations, I think IQ becomes impossible to measure, and there really isn’t a basis that you can measure it against.

As for the rest of the review, I’ll gladly take it.

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