What Happened To Ancient Egyptian Monuments When The Aswan Dam Was Built?

The Aswan dam was built in the 1960s to regulate flooding around the Nile river. It created Lake Nasser and is regarded as a great feat of modern engineering.

One problem that the dam caused was that the current location of Lake Nasser covers the sites of many ancient Egyptian monuments, including the Temple of Philae and Abu Simbel, the site of a great temple that was cut out of solid rock in the 13th century BC. To save this site, and also Philae temple, the engineers in charge of the dam project also moved these great monuments, stone by stone, to new locations where they would not be damaged by the water released as the dam was finished.

This took a great deal of money and a lot of time and effort, but both of these monuments and some others were moved successfully and can still be visited today.

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