Aswan Dam

The Egyptians wanted to control the annual flooding of the Nile and to generate electrical power. As a result, in 1958 Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of Egypt, decided to build a high dam at Aswan.

The dam would bring benefits, but it would also create a huge lake that would flood all of Lower Nubia and the northern part of the Sudan. The people who lived there would have to leave their ancestral lands, and many archaeological sites of ancient Nubia would be destroyed.

As the waters rose, over 100,000 people were resettled elsewhere, and a huge international effort began to rescue the most important ancient temples and archaeological treasures before they were lost forever.

During its construction in the 1960s, the Aswan Dam held back greater amounts of water each year. As the water rose, many important archaeological sites were flooded, such as these sphinxes lining the avenue of the Temple at Wadi es-Sebua. In 1964, the sphinxes and temple were rescued and put on higher ground.

Photo: From the UNESCO Courier, Dec. 1964.

In eight years, over 40 teams of archaeologists from around the world worked together to explore 500 km of the Nile Valley. They discovered thousands of ancient sites and objects. This great effort made Lower Nubia, archaeologically, one of the best known regions in the world and created the discipline of Nubiology. After the flooding of Lower Nubia, many Nubiologists looked to the south to continue their research, and began the archaeological exploration of the northern Sudan, which continues today (2001).