Aswan High Dam

The High Dam was built between 1960 and 1970 across the Nile above Aswan, a rockfill embankment about 3,830 metres long and 111 metres high, holding back Lake Nasser and generating a large share of Egypt's electricity. Its effects were enormous in every direction: it ended the annual flood that had governed Egyptian agriculture for millennia, allowed year-round irrigation and multiple harvests, drowned Lower Nubia and displaced its population, and stopped the silt that had renewed the fields and now settles in the reservoir instead. Visitors stop at a viewing area on the crest with the lake on one side and the river below on the other, and at a lotus-shaped monument commemorating the Soviet engineering partnership. There is a small visitor pavilion with a model.

History

The earliest recorded attempt at a dam near Aswan was in the 11th century, when the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim summoned the polymath Ibn al-Haytham to regulate the Nile's flood; convinced by his fieldwork that it could not be done, and fearing the caliph, he feigned madness and wrote his Book of Optics under house arrest until 1021. The British built the first dam across the Nile here, the Aswan Low Dam, in 1898-1902 to designs by Sir William Willcocks, opening it on 10 December 1902. In 1952 the Greek-Egyptian engineer Adrian Daninos began the plan for a new, much larger dam, built between 1960 and 1970 with the help of the Soviet Union, 7 km upstream of the Low Dam, to control flooding, store water for irrigation and generate electricity. When completed it was the tallest earthen dam in the world, and it created the reservoir of Lake Nasser (Wikipedia, Aswan High Dam).

The main sights

• The crest viewpoint - lake on one side, river far below on the other.
• The lotus monument - the memorial to the construction partnership.
• The scale of the embankment - nearly four kilometres of rockfill.
• Lake Nasser - the reservoir stretching south out of sight.

When to go

October to April. One hour, and it is almost always a stop on a circuit taking in Philae and the Unfinished Obelisk. Mornings for clearer air over the lake.

Good to know

Photography is restricted and cameras pointed at installations attract attention; follow what your driver tells you. There is nothing to walk to and the stop is short. The visitor pavilion is dated. Vendors work the car park.

Nearby

Philae temple is on the reservoir between the dams; Kalabsha lies just south.

Key facts