Gamal Abdel Nasser

Nasser's Defiance of the West

In 1956, the British finally left Egypt and Gamal Abdel Nasser was free to turn his attention to the intensely bitter conflict that had been raging in the Middle East over the creation of the state of Israel. It was at this point that Nasser resolved to find weapons to boost Egypt's fighting potential. Hoping to gain them from the Britain or the United States, he was frustrated by the condition that they not be used against Israel and that Egypt should join the West in an anti-Communist alliance. Undeterred, Nasser turned to the Communist bloc and purchased his arms from Czechoslovakia instead.

In the tense climate of the Cold War, the West took an extremely dim view of Nasser's "defiance". But from the Arab world, it brought rapturous applause. Nasser had shown the world that an Arab country could make its own decisions and choose its own destiny. Gamal Abdel Nasser was seen as a new champion who had stood up to the West and would lead the Arabs to victory in Palestine by defeating the Israelis.

Construction of the Aswan Dam

Gamal Abdel Nasser's star had risen, and the following year he pulled off one of the most dramatic and popular moves of his career. It came in July 1956, after the United States, annoyed by Nasser's drift away from the West, withdrew its support for an ambitious project to construct a huge new dam at Aswan in the south of Egypt.

The dam was the linchpin in a massive program to boost the Egyptian economy. By controlling the waters of the Nile, it would protect the country from the worst effects of drought, increase the area of land under cultivation, and provide a massive boost to industry by generating enormous supplies of hydroelectricity.

Nationalizing the Suez Canal

Nasser was furious at the U.S. withdrawal of support and took the bold step of nationalizing the Suez Canal Company. He further rejected any suggestion that the canal be managed by a new international body. The canal was Egyptian, and the revenue it earned which, as Nasser was quick to point out, made the proposed U.S. aid for the dam project look ridiculous in comparison - would be ploughed back into Egypt to fund the construction of the dam.

Gamal Abdel Nasser's Aswan Dam was eventually constructed, taking 30,000 workers ten years to complete. Finished in 1972, it now measures more than 12,000 feet long (two and one-quarter miles) along the top and stands 360 feet high. At its base it is 3,200 feet thick and 130 feet at its top. The huge body of water the dam created, named Lake Nasser, is an astonishing 300 miles long, with an average width of over 6 miles, and extends well into neighboring Sudan.

The Moving of Ancient Temples

The flooding of such a great area of land inevitably posed serious problems for local inhabitants and around 100,000 people had to be resettled. Another cause for concern was the fate of major archeological sites, especially the temples of Abu Simbel, which would be lost forever under the waters of the artificial lake.

At the behest of the Egyptian and Sudanese government, a huge rescue appeal was launched with the support of UNESCO. In what was to prove an unparalleled feat of modern engineering, two temples built by Ramses II were moved block by block and rebuilt on higher land. Many other temples in the region were similarly saved from destruction.