1926 Egyptian Government: Gebel Aulia Dam and other Subsidiary Works on the White Nile, Sudan. General Conditions of Contract, Specification, Schedule of Prices and Sundry other Schedules, Bond, Formal Contract, Tender and Instructions to Persons Tendering.

Description

Publishers' Original Binding, Very Scarce

A fascinating and very scarce publication from the Egyptian Government consisting of the contract intended to be made between the Egyptian government and the engineering company employed to construct the Gebel Aulia Dam on the Sudanese White Nile.

The Gebel Aulia Dam, also known as the Jebel Aulia Dam, is located on the White Nile in Sudan, near Khartoum. The construction of the dam began seven years after this publication, in 1933, and was completed in 1937. Upon completion in 1937 it was the largest dam in the world. 

While this contract would eventually be signed by His Excellency Mohamed Shafik Pasha, Minister of Public Works on behalf of the Egyptian Government and Gibson and Pauling (Foreign) Ltd in 1933, it is present here without any of these details, and features countless corrections and annotations throughout.

This dam was one of the many undertakings of the Gezira Scheme, one of the world's largest irrigation projects, started by the British while the area was governed as a part of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. It involves water from the Blue Nile being distributed through canals and ditches to tenant farms lying between the Blue and White Nile rivers, for the purposes of growing cotton.

Among the many aspects covered by the contract are charts detailing costs of materials and estimated schedules.

From the library of Frederic Newhouse (1883-1969), sometime inspector-general of Egyptian irrigation in the Sudan, and with his contemporary inscription to the head of the front wraps, dated 1929.