A worldwide plea went out for assistance in saving the 4000-year old monuments, including the tombs and colossi of Abu Simbel and the temple at Philae. The United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization (
UNESCO) headed the epic project, and over the next several years the monuments were cut into pieces, moved to higher ground, and reassembled above the water line.
The High Dam, built with international technical assistance and substantial funding from the former Soviet Union, was the second to be built near Aswan. English and Egyptian engineers built the first Aswan dam between 1898 and 1902. Justification for the first dam was much the same as that for the second, larger dam, namely flood control and irrigation. Under natural conditions the Nile experienced annual floods of tremendous volume. Fed by summer rains on the Ethiopian Plateau, the Nile's floods could reach 16 times normal low season flow. These floods carried terrific silt loads, which became a rich fertilizer when flood waters overtopped the river's natural banks and sediments settled in the lower surrounding fields. This annual soaking and fertilizing kept Egypt's agriculture prosperous for thousands of years. But annual floods could be wildly inconsistent.
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