Lake Nasser is one of the largest man-made lakes in the World, located in Southern Egypt and Northern Sudan. The name Nasser only refers to 83% of the lake’s territory belonging to Egypt as Nasser was the Egyptian President who started the project, the rest of the lake lying in Sudan and is called “Lake Nubia” by The Sudanese. The lake is almost 340 miles (550 km) long, and 22 miles (35 km) across at its widest point.
Before the construction of the dam began which eventually led to the formation of Lake Nasser, there was another dam in the region, called the Aswan Low Dam, completed in 1902. The dam proved to be inefficient, since it nearly overflowed by the middle of the 20th century, even though it was raised twice. Instead of raising it for a third time, officials decided to construct the Aswan High Dam. It was Built in the 1960s, completed in 1970, and formally inaugurated in 1971. The High dam has doubled the electricity supply of Egypt and significantly increased the amount of agricultural land in the region.
The creation of the lake involved the submerging of several ancient historical sites such as the tombs and temples at Philae and Abu Simbel. To avoid this, the Egyptian government & the UNESCO worked together to rescue these ancient monuments, and many monuments were dismantled and relocated on safer ground. Ancient ruins weren’t the only thing to be removed.The area used to house Nubian villages with hundreds of thousands of people, who were located to new areas.