X-Nico

9 unusual facts about Aswan Dam


Bruce Bolt

He was a consultant on seismology for every major earthquake engineering project including on the Diablo Canyon Power Plant as well as international projects including the Aswan Dam and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.

Christiane Desroches Noblecourt

She was the author of many books on Egyptian art and history and was also known for her role in the preservation of the Nubian temples from flooding caused by the Aswan Dam.

Fadwa El Guindi

She worked at the Social Research Centre and participated in the first full-scale ethnographic project to study the way of life of the Nubians of Egypt prior to their government-sponsored relocation due to the building of the Aswan Dam.

Icchampally Project

This is one of very few sites for locating huge storage reservoir in India similar to Aswan Dam (4600 tmc) in Egypt, Lake Volta (4200 tmc) in Ghana and Three Gorges Dam (1350 tmc) in China.

Leila Ahmed

Her father, a civil engineer, was a strong opponent of Gamal Abdel Nasser's construction of the Aswan High Dam on ecological principles.

Sir Evan Davies Jones, 1st Baronet

He became a partner in Topham, Jones, & Railton, a successful engineering firm that obtained many government contracts and worked on the Aswan Dam among other projects.

Sir John Aird, 1st Baronet

Under Aird's leadership, the firm also became internationally famous for building the first Aswan Dam; the business was also later engaged to increase the height of the dam.

Water law

In 1899, construction of the first Aswan Dam was begun to address agricultural and energy shortages exacerbated by population growth in Egypt and the Sudan.

William Y. Adams

Adams's work in Nubia began in 1959 as part of the UNESCO archaeological salvage campaign to excavate sites threatened by the rising flood waters of Lake Nasser following the construction of the Aswan Dam.


Hindiya Barrage

After the Young Turk Revolution and the restructuring of the Ottoman government in 1908, British civil engineer William Willcocks, who had won recognition for his work on the Aswan Low Dam in Egypt, was tasked with the mapping of lower Iraq and the preparation of large-scale irrigation projects on both the Euphrates and the Tigris.

Mott MacDonald

Greathead is renowned as the foremost soft ground tunneller of the time, while Baker is remembered particularly for London's District Railway, the Forth Railway Bridge and the first Aswan Dam - which coincidentally was heightened between 1926 and 1933 by Sir M MacDonald & Partners.

Uranium market

This phenomenon can be traced back to the construction of the vast Aswan Dam in Egypt, and to a certain extent with the ambitious Three Gorges Dam in China.

Watkin's Tower

Watkin formed a company to manage the project, the International Tower Construction Company and to oversee construction he appointed Benjamin Baker, a civil engineer who was involved in the design of the Forth Bridge and the Aswan Dam.


see also

John Aird

Sir John Aird, 1st Baronet (1833–1911), English engineering contractor associated with Aswan Dam, MP for North Paddington