On July 21, 1970, engineers completed the Aswan Dam in southern Egypt. The Aswan Dam was an enormous project, lasting more than 10 years and costing more than a billion dollars.

The Aswan Dam controls the flow of the Nile River. The dam protects people living near the banks of the Nile from both floods and drought. The constant, regulated flow of water helps farmers irrigate their crops all year. The structure is also a hydroelectric dam, providing electricity used in a significant amount of Egypt's infrastructure.

The Aswan Dam created a huge reservoir, called Lake Nasser. Lake Nasser and expansion of the Nile behind the dam displaced more than 50,000 people in Egypt and Sudan. The dam also drowned priceless archaeological sites. The Egyptian government famously relocated features from one of these sites—colossal monuments of Pharaoh Ramses II—to a nearby hill before the site was flooded.