Word: nile
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More than 3.000 years ago, Ramses II. Pharaoh of Egypt, had his slaves cut a magnificent temple out of a sandstone cliff beside the Nile. Four colossal figures, designed as monuments to the Pharaoh, sit impassively beside the temple entrance. But for all its magnificence, the Temple of Abu Simbel is apparently doomed. For lack of $22 million, the cost of a few bombers or missiles, it will soon be submerged under 200 ft. of muddy water backed up by the High Dam being built at Aswan 180 miles downstream...
...Cliff. Many schemes have been proposed to save Abu Simbel. The simplest one, advanced by French engineers, involves the construction of a semicircular concrete dam 250 ft. high, to wall off the Nile water. The dam would probably cost $80 million, and constant pumping would still be needed to handle seepage. If the pumps were ever stopped, water would soon cover the temple, wrecking its ancient stonework...
...most of Cairo remains the same: close, crowded and cacophonous with hard-pressed auto horns. In Imbaba, on the west bank of the Nile, camels streaked with henna still plod unknowingly toward the slaughterhouse, and gully-gully men delight bright-eyed, brown-faced children with magic tricks as they did their grandfathers 50 years ago. Imbaba's junk market is still unchanged, and bent nails and half-shoelaces are traded with solemnity and diligence. The red flowerpot of the tarboosh has all but vanished from Cairenes' heads, and Nasser has even made considerable progress in his campaign...
...diplomats were shadowed by secret police. But since then, the atmosphere of fear has largely vanished. General Mohammed Naguib. the 1952 revolution's first leader, who served for two years as a front for Nasser and was then deposed, still lives quietly in a Cairo villa near the Nile and is permitted to move fairly freely about the city. Old Nahas Pasha and other former Wafdist enemies of the new regime remain in their homes, which, in most cases, they have been allowed to keep...
...fared the best under Nasser. Next to him comes the fellah, the timeless peasant working the timeless land. It was the jest of 1952 that Nasser's foremost ambition was to raise the fellahin at least to the living standard of the gamoosa, the water buffalo of the Nile. He has more than succeeded. You can see it simply in the fellah's clothes. But also the fellah, who used to have meat only once or twice a year, now eats it at least once a week...