HIGH DAM OVER NUBIA

El Sadd el Aali""---the history-making high dam going up on the Nile River which will create a 300-mile-long lake and flood some of the most valuable archeological finds in Egypt---provides the impetus for this very interesting book. The author, a former British Army officer and member of archeological expeditions into the Nubian Valley along the Nile, scrutinizes 3000 years to tell his story. Beginning with the actual need for the dam itself, he works back in time through archeological finds to the periods of the Pharoahs, of early Christianity, and of the Moslem conquests. He tells how the ruins of temples, forts, and burial vaults now threatened by the lake waters came into being along the historic Nile. Briefly he recreates some of those times with the pomp of their kingships, the brutality of their battles, the harrowing hours of their human sacrifices. He also discusses the controversial plan to save Abu Simbel, a huge temple, the raising of which above the waters will cost $50,000,000. Not only a competent focusing on Egyptian history, but a deeply-felt comment on how our industrial society threatens to eliminate the past.