Skip to content

PlaceLayers › Historic moments › Africa › The Aswan High Dam closes the Nile

The Aswan High Dam closes the Nile

Aswan High Dam · Aswan, Egypt · 1970-07-21

The Aswan High Dam closes the Nile
Jorge Láscar from Melbourne, Australia via Wikimedia Commons (The monument of Arab-Soviet Friendship (Lotus Flower) and As) · CC BY 2.0

The dam ended the Nile's annual flood, created Lake Nasser and forced the relocation of Nubian villages and the temples at Abu Simbel.

The record

Date1970-07-21
PlaceAswan High Dam, Aswan, Egypt
Coordinates23.971, 32.877 (landmark-level precision)
ScopeLocal interest
SourcesWikipedia
Added2026-08-14 · source: editors

Coordinates are given at landmark level. A landmark-level coordinate points at the structure; a city-level one points at the settlement, not at a parcel.

Finding photographs

Every one of these is a search, not a guess: the event is documented, so the pictures exist somewhere. Start here.

Check the licence before you reuse anything. A photograph being online, or being old, does not make it free; in most countries a 1960s press photograph is still in copyright.

Footage

Newsreel and archive film of events like this often survives. Search YouTube for this event If you find good footage, send us the link and we will attach it to this page.

Time layers within the surrounding city

One place, several moments in time. This location has 2 recorded time layers between 1969 and 1970 — slide through them:

1969
1969 Aswan Ilyushin Il-18 crash
1970
The Aswan High Dam closes the Nile

Seeded by the editors. This entry was compiled by us from public reference works and is labelled as such, not presented as a reader’s contribution. Sources are listed on the entry. If you know more, or we have it wrong, tell us — corrections are published.

You can add to this page

This entry is a skeleton on purpose. If you were there, if your family was, or if you simply know the place: photographs (yours or ones you have the right to share), comments and corrections to the record above, and observations — what the place was like before, after, what the books get wrong. Everything is read by a person before publication and credited the way you ask.

What readers have added

Nothing yet — this place is waiting for its first memory. The form below takes a date, a story, photographs and links.

Do you know something about Aswan High Dam, Aswan?

Old photographs, what your family remembers being on the corner, a shop that is not on any map we have. Contributions are read by a person before anything is published, and we never publish the names of living people.

By sending this you confirm you may share the material, and you agree it can be published with your first name or anonymously. See contribution rules.

Nearby in Africa

Privacy, cookies and website operator