The binding of the Nile and the new Soudan

by Sidney Cornwallis Peel

Even as late as December, steaming up the 550 miles of river, often half a mile or more across, between Cairo and Assouan, against the strong current, watching the majestic sweep of those wide waters pouring irresistibly towards the sea, it is hard to realize the anxiety of later months. But May or June has a very different tale to tell. To take and store the precious water, which now during the flood and winter rushes down in untold volume, to be lost and squandered in the sea, and use it to feed the lean summer months, is almost absurdly obvious. No wonder that since Mehemet Ali gave so great a stimulus to the cultivation of cotton and sugar the idea of the Reservoir has been constantly in the minds of the rulers of Egypt. The strange thing is that so many hundreds, even thousands, of years should have elapsed without any attempt of the kind being made. Perhaps it was due partly to the reverence felt for the mighty and inscrutable power of the great river, partly to the passive fatalism innate in the Oriental mind. A few years ago Sir Benjamin Baker asked a prominent and representative land-owner in Egypt, a Pasha, and a descendant of the Prophet, what he thought of the prospects of a Nile Reservoir. With a shrug of his shoulders, he replied that ‘if it had been possible it would have been done 4,000 years ago.’

He reasoned wiser than he knew. At the second cataract above Wadi Halfa there are marks upon the rocks and other indications which go to show that a Dam once existed at that point, used to regulate the flow of the Nile. Swept away by some unrecorded disaster, no other direct knowledge of it remains. But it is far from unlikely that Herodotus, in his account of Lake Mœris in the Fayoum, has mixed up some tradition of this ancient work in Nubia. At any rate, whatever be the truth about Lake Mœris, his account proves beyond all question that the idea of a Reservoir was familiar to the ancient Egyptians.

The tradition of a Reservoir somewhere on the upper waters of the Nile lingered long in Egypt. There is a curious reference to it in a book of travel by F. Vansleb, a Dutchman who visited Egypt about the year 1670. The fertility of the Nile flood is caused, he says, by a fall of dew, which usually takes place on June 17, just after the appearance of the ‘green’ water. This dew purifies the foul water, and makes it swell by fermentation. ‘Some of the country,’ however, he proceeds, ‘that are ignorant of the true causes of this increase, imagine that it proceeds from a large pond in Ethiopia in the river itself, which the Abyssins begin to open about June 12, and let the water out by degrees, more and more till September 14, by which time they begin to shut it again. But this is a foolish fancy of the Copties.’

We have seen how the tradition of Lake Mœris fascinated Mehemet Ali; but the methods of Haroun-al-Raschid were not suited to solid engineering works, as the history of the Barrage too plainly shows. None of his descendants, with the exception of the Khedive Ismail, had the wit to conceive or the ability to execute such an undertaking, and Ismail’s fantastic imagination was fully occupied in other directions. Fortunately for Egypt, the project had to wait until the success of the Barrage made the time ripe for its execution, and until skilful brains and strong hands were ready to plan and carry it out in the most efficient manner possible.

There were three problems to be faced: first, Where could such a Reservoir be erected? second, What arrangements could be devised to avoid the danger of large silt deposits, which would soon seriously diminish the capacity of the Reservoir, and, if allowed to accumulate, render it in no long time entirely useless? third, Supposing that the difficulties of site and design could be overcome, where was the money to be found? During the first years of the British occupation, while Egypt was still painfully struggling upwards from the abyss of bankruptcy into which she had been cast by the mad whirlwind of extravagance in Ismail’s reign, it was no time for the inception of original works on a grand scale. But in 1890 the matter became an affair of practical politics, and was at last seriously taken in hand. Meantime discussion had been raging as to the best locality for the Reservoir. An American gentleman, Mr. Cope Whitehouse, took up the case of the Wadi Rayan, a depression in the desert to the south-west of the Fayoum. This, he maintained, was the real site of the ancient Lake Mœris, and here the Reservoir ought to be. He had no professional knowledge, and he was utterly wrong in his ideas; but his vehement method of controversy kept the subject thoroughly alive. The whole land was filled with his clamour, and every expert was forced to give his own views in self-defence. The debate served a useful purpose. Gradually it came to be recognised that the river-bed itself was the proper place for storing the water by means of a Dam. Authorities differ as to whom belongs the credit of first making this suggestion, or, rather, of first reviving the tradition of the past; but it seems pretty clear that Sir Samuel Baker suggested the construction of a Dam at the first cataract at Assouan as far back as 1867.

However that may be, in 1890 the Government took the matter up, and charged Mr. W. Willcocks with the task of examining the river north of Wadi Halfa, reporting upon the best available site for the Dam, and preparing a design for it. After a careful survey, his plans were completed in 1894, and his design for a Reservoir at Assouan was then submitted to an International Committee of Engineers, consisting of Sir Benjamin Baker, M. Boulé, and Signor Torricelli. Mr. Willcocks’ plans were, with some modifications, accepted by a majority of the Commission, and to him belongs the honour of having designed the Dam. The selection of the Assouan site solved the first of the three difficulties. There is at this point an extensive outcrop of granite clean across the valley of the Nile, which it was thought would give sound rock everywhere at a very convenient level for the foundations of the Dam. Moreover, the trough of the river above the cataract and a long way south of it is exceptionally deep, and this makes it possible for a greater amount of water to be stored up behind the Dam. But the prime necessity was for a solid foundation. Elsewhere in Egypt the bed of the Nile is composed of shifting sands, on which it would have been impossible to build a Dam capable of holding up so great a head of water.

Mr. Willcocks’ design solved the second difficulty, the problem of constructing a Dam strong enough for the purpose, and yet of avoiding the danger of filling up the Reservoir by too great accumulations of silt. The other great Dams in the world, as, for instance, that built by Sir Arthur Cotton on the Godavery River, in India, are solid throughout. They are planned so that the rising flood shall pass freely over the top of them. But the Assouan Dam is of a type previously unknown, and its success ought to stimulate perennial irrigation in many parts of the world where such projects have hitherto proved failures. Its principle is that even the highest flood shall pass, not over it, but through it. To this end it is pierced with 180 openings, which are like tunnels in the great mass of masonry. The openings are controlled by powerful sliding-gates worked from above. During the months of the flood every gate will be up, and the ‘red’ water, carrying all its heavy burden of silt, will pass through without impediment. Later in the year, about the end of November, when the flood has subsided and very much less matter is carried in suspension, the sluice-gates begin to be gradually closed, and by the end of February the Reservoir is full, without having affected the normal discharge of the river in any appreciable degree. From April to July the water thus stored up is let out by degrees for employment, according to the state of the river and the requirement of the crops. By the time the next flood begins to come down all the stored water will have passed out, and every sluice will be once more open to give free passage to the rising stream. Although the Nile in December and January carries an insignificant amount of sediment compared to that brought down in August and September, it yet brings down a very considerable quantity, far greater than most other rivers at any time, and quite enough to go a long way towards silting up the bed of the Reservoir, if it was allowed to remain. But for this the river provides its own remedy: every year the force of the flood will act like a gigantic broom, sweeping the floor of the Reservoir. The sluices, arranged in sets of five, are distributed at different levels, according to the formation of the river-bed on the upstream side, so as to facilitate this process to the utmost. During the months of the inundation the Nile at Assouan pours down for weeks together a volume of 10,000 tons of water per second, and sometimes as much as 14,000 or 15,000 tons per second. The rush of this stupendous mass is sufficient to assure us that there will be no silting up of the Reservoir.

Two of the difficulties had been thus overcome, when, from a new and unexpected quarter, a storm sprang up, which very nearly brought to a standstill the rising fabric of Egyptian prosperity. The project of the Reservoir would have raised the level of the water, and held up the river above the Dam to a head of 100 feet; this would have involved the temporary submersion every year of the island of Philæ, with its famous Temple of Isis, Pharaoh’s Bed, and other monuments. A terrific hubbub arose. Archæological and antiquarian societies, which until then had sometimes belittled the monuments of Philæ as belonging to an inferior period, poured in their protests. People who had never heard of Philæ before, but who were none the less influential for that, joined in the outcry. Diplomatists, whose one desire was to embarrass our progress in Egypt, took up the cause of Art with a will. These champions of humanity at large forgot the poor fellaheen, to whom the extra water means all the difference between misery and happiness; nothing would satisfy them but the complete abandonment of the project. The engineers fought stoutly in the interests of Egypt; they offered to raise the whole of the monuments bodily, or to transport them to the neighbouring island of Bigeh; but, though they saved the Dam, the original design was lost, and the Dam to-day is 33 feet lower than it ought to have been. The foundations of Philæ have been underpinned and strengthened, the island will only be partially submerged, and the injury to Egypt can only be faintly estimated.

Was the sacrifice worth it? The value of Philæ lies in its beauty more than in its antiquarian interest. No one who has witnessed night after night the glorious sunsets on the Nile, the mysterious charm of the changing waters, the dark belt of palms reflected in the river below and standing out in strong contrast against the sky, the limestone cliffs of the desert clear-cut in the dry air, and flushing pink in the radiance of the indescribable after-glow, no one who has seen the Temples of Karnak, could hesitate to make so small a sacrifice, in comparison, for the sake of the river-side people. Moreover, Egypt is rich in treasures of the past, as yet undiscovered, and wanting only money for their development, which the Reservoir would in time supply. And how few people visit Philæ at all! Surely, even in a country a thousand times poorer than Egypt in artistic and archæological interests, the well-being of the living and of the unborn should have prevailed.

If all those who joined to swell the uproar had been really disinterested lovers of the beautiful, there would have been small reason to complain of their insistence. Enthusiasts can hardly be expected to listen to the voice of reason, and Philæ has charms to soften the heart of the most savage utilitarian. Its fate is a mournful necessity, but it is a necessity, for the question of the Reservoir had come to be a question of existence for Egypt. Even the advantage gained by the opposition in lowering the height of the Dam is only a delay. On the pylon of the Temple of Isis at Philæ is carved a huge representation of the Pharaoh of the day, one of the most degenerate of the Ptolemies, catching his defeated enemies by the hair of their heads with one hand, an uplifted sword in the other. The whole is a copy of the work of his warlike ancestors, and even as a copy it is a delusion and a sham; for he won no victories, defeated no enemies, and, indeed, scarcely ventured outside the walls of his harem. The apparent victory of these lovers of Philæ, to call them by their more honourable title, was not less delusive. Philæ is doomed. Between half drowned and wholly drowned there is not much difference in the case of an island, certainly not a difference worth fighting for, and the Dam will be raised to its full height, perhaps as soon as Egypt is ready for the extra water.