The Aswan High Dam brought the Nile's devastating floods to an end, reclaimed more than 100,000 acres of desert land for cultivation, and made additional crops possible on some 800,000 other acres.
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The Nile, that mighty supplier of potable and irrigation water for millions and vital transportation artery, is shrinking. The agent responsible for the river's diminishment is climate change. Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan alone cannot stop global warming, and each country nervously watches its effect on the Nile.
Today, 95 percent of Egyptians live within a few kilometers of the Nile. Canals bring water from the Nile to irrigate farms and support cities. The Nile supports agriculture and fishing. The Nile also has served as an important transportation route for thousands of years.
ASWAN, Egypt (Reuters) - A granite inscription tells us that for seven years during the reign of the ancient Egyptian king Djoser, the Nile failed to go through its annual flooding cycle, causing a devastating drought and famine.
The benefits of the flooding of the Nile River outweighed the costs because the silt deposits left behind fertilized the fields and allowed for the Egyptian people to have food and continue to grow crops.
'Question of life' Despite its importance, the Nile is still heavily polluted in Egypt by waste water and rubbish poured directly in to it, as well as agricultural runoff and industrial waste, with consequences for biodiversity, especially fishing, and human health, experts say.
The Nile was a critical lifeline that literally brought life to the desert, as Lisa Saladino Haney, assistant curator of Egypt at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, writes on the museum's website. Without the Nile, there would be no Egypt, writes Egyptologist in his 2012 book, The Nile.
Famine and death occur when the flood is delayed and the Nile dries up. About 110 million Egyptians eat, drink and live on the Nile waters, the only life artery.