Outcomes of Aswan: Archaeology and The Geopolitics of Dams
Outcomes of Aswan: Archaeology and The Geopolitics of Dams

Summary/Abstract: Answering a call for help from the Governments of Arab Republic of Egypt and Democratic Republic of Sudan, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) lead the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia (1959–1968). Involving more than 100 countries, the campaign consisted in a wide range of archaeological missions along with financial aid aiming to preserve and safeguard the cultural heritage threatened by the construction of the Aswan High Dam, built on the Nile River throughout the 1960s. The location chosen for the hydropower plant’s reservoir intersected the heartland of an extensive heritage belonging to both Nubian and Egyptian millenary civilizations implying the flood of several archeological sites and monuments of undeniable cultural and historical significance. This last chance to save the relics mobilized several scholars and countries that today exhibit their findings in their most prestigious museums. Entire monuments were dismantled and placed away from the inundations but still in the region, while others were moved to other countries as counterpart gifts on behalf of the Egyptian government. Under one specific angle, this article contests the well-established account that the international campaign was a success. The Nubian Campaign ends up normalizing a quite modern social phenomenon: to dam major rivers in name of national development. We then raise several aspects crossing the disciplines of archeology history and geopolitics as an exercise of counterweight to the official reports.

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