SUN AND SHADOW AT ASWAN
A Commentary on Dams and reservoirs on the Nile at Aswan, Yesterday, Today and Perhaps Tomorrow

HERBERT ADDISON

CHAPMAN & HALL LTD: LONDON
1959

First edition.
“The aim of this book is first of all to celebrate a Diamond Jubilee—the Jubilee of a Dam. It is just sixty years ago since men first began to work on the foundations of what was then known as the Assouan Dam. That structure across the Nile, twice enlarged, still stands today and still helps to sustain the economy of Egypt. The British people used to be very proud of so magnificent a creation: the name ASSOUAN DAM can be read at this moment on a memorial window in Westminster Abbey.

But it was an international as well as a British achievement. At one time or another during this period of sixty years, men of many nations contributed their advice or their skill or their labour: Egyptians, Englishmen, Scotsmen, Frenchmen, Italians, Swiss, Americans, Russians. Some of them and some of the administrators who associated with them—Willcocks, Cromer, Baker, Kitchener, Allenby —were men of towering personality; and so the story that this book sets out to narrate is not one merely of blocks of granite. It is a tale of ultimate triumphs sometimes only won after strong personal conflicts had been resolved.

During the last few years quite another project has diverted attention from the original solid achievement at Aswan. This is the Aswan High Dam project. While Egyptian cotton, grown very largely with the help of the sixty-year-old dam, is being sold and bartered in various ways to maintain the prosperity of Egypt, the wholly imaginary High Dam continues to provoke fierce arguments and discussions. It was one such controversy that precipitated the Suez crisis of 1956.

This project also is examined in the book. The author explains the connexion between the two dams—the existing one and the imaginary one—and tries to show how each could take its place in schemes for the further development of the Nile valley.”

Herbert Addison, OBE, M.Sc., C. Eng. was Professor of Hydraulic Machines at Fouad el Awal University (later Cairo University).

22 x 14 cm. 166 pp + b/w photo plates.

Good + condition, cloth slightly faded on the spine. The 'blurb' from the dust jacket has been pasted to the front endpaper. Some mild foxing and age toning to the page edges, previous owner's name on the title page but contents clean and tidy. No dust jacket.