Description
The Pharoahs were masters of the Nile: they had a subtle understanding of the ways of the river. The Egyptians of today see themselves as heirs of the pharaoh tradition and sole owners of the Nile waters. In their scheme to open up a new valley they forget the dire warning of the 14th-century Ethiopian Negus, Dawit II: the water of the river in my country will be stopped from reaching yours, which I shall cause to die of thirst. This warning is still relevant: in all upriver countries, numerous irrigation schemes will progressively reduce the amount of water descending to Egypt. It is true that, by 1960, Egypt needed to protect its increasingly populated valley from the potential ravages of the annual inundation. So it was decided to build a dam. But where? The builders should have resisted the temptation to place it near Aswan and chosen a site further up the valley of Nubia, in the region of Tushka. There, a smaller dam would have sufficed to evacuate the excess floodwaters towards the fossil valley of the Pre-Nile and made it unnecessary to drown more than 250km of a charming valley.
