Aswan High Dam was an engineering miracle when it was built during the reign of the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1960 AD. The High Dam is a Reservoir which extends for 500 km along the Nile River and covers an area of 6,000 km2, of which northern two-thirds (known as Lake Nasser) is in Egypt and one-third (called Lake Nubia) in Sudan. Aswan High Dam Started work to be built in the January 9th, 1960 and has been completed the first phase in May 16th, in 1964 has been completed to implement the second phase in January 15th, 1971.

The dam, completely completed in 1971 at a distance of 7 km south of Aswan City, is a rock fill dam made of granite rocks and sands and provided with a vertical cut off wall consisting of very impermeable clay. The structure is 2,325 m long, 111 m high over the original river bed, and 40 m and 980 m wide, respectively, at its crest and bottom. Nile flow is allowed to pass only through the open-cut channel at the eastern side of the dam, where six tunnel inlets provided with steel gates are constructed for discharge control and water supply to power plants. An escape is also provided at the western side of the dam to permit excess water discharge.

In order to build the dam both people and artifacts had to be moved. Over 90,000 Nubians had to be relocated. Those who had been living in Egypt were moved about 28 miles (45 km) away but the Sudanese Nubians were relocated 370 miles (600 km) from their homes. The government was also forced to develop one of the largest Abu Simbel temples and dig for artifacts before the future lake would drown the land of the Nubians.

The Nile River and now the Aswan High Dam is Egypt’s lifeline. About 95% of Egypt’s population lives within twelve miles from the river. The High Dam increased the farmland 500% since 1970.The dam powers twelve generators each rated at 175 megawatts, producing a hydroelectric output of 2.1 gig watts. Power generation began in 1967. When the dam first reached peak output it produced around half of Egypt’s entire electricity production (about 15% by 1998) and allowed most Egyptian villages to use electricity for the first time.