The Aswan High Dam in southern Egypt is 364 feet (111 m) tall and 12,565 feet (3,830 m) long.
It was completed in 1970, after 10 years of construction.
It is built of silt, sand, clay, and rock, about 16 times as much material as contained in the Great Pyramid at Giza.
The dam was built for several reasons: to control flooding on the Nile, to increase Egypt’s electricity generation, and to provide water for crop irrigation.
The dam made it possible to transform about 100,000 acres (40,470 hectares) of desert into farmland.
