Aswan High Dam

The High Dam is 3,830 metres long, 111 metres high and contains eighteen times the material of the Great Pyramid. It ended the annual inundation that had defined Egyptian agriculture for five thousand years, generates roughly a fifth of the country's electricity, and created Lake Nasser — 550 kilometres long and visible from orbit.

It also displaced 100,000 Nubians, drowned dozens of monuments, cut off the silt that fertilised the Delta, and prompted the largest archaeological rescue operation ever attempted.

Built 1960–1970 with Soviet engineering and finance after the United States and Britain withdrew funding, an episode that triggered the Suez Crisis. The lotus-shaped Egyptian–Soviet Friendship Monument stands at the western end.