Students: Isabelle Maassen, Samuel P. Smith

The entire Egyptian Culture is based on the land reclamation by irrigation with Nile water. Over the course of centuries different techniques of irrigation and water management have been developed. This development took place mostly in a slow and evolutionary manner, but there were also actual «Bewässerungsrevolutionen» (Knörnschild, 1993), such as the change from a seasonal «flooding system» to a year-round irrigation. However, the high value of water over time – and today also its scarcity, especially since the attempts to introduce large scale state run agricultural production – lead to a highly elaborated distribution and management of water: At present, political negotiation of the Nile artery as vital resource is present on various scales, from national (riparian states – Nile basin initiative) to regional and local.