Then and Now: Dams

PHOTO BY EGMONT STRIGL / IMAGEBROKER.COM / ALAMY

Today, dams serve a wide range of purposes: diverting rivers and streams, creating reservoirs, generating hydroelectricity, and so on. However, dams are far from a modern invention, with the world’s oldest known dams dating back nearly six millennia.

The Great Dam of Marib in western Yemen, which dates to the early first millennium BCE or before, had a dual role: It protected the capital city of the ancient South Arabian kingdom of Saba (biblical Sheba) from flash flooding and also collected and channeled those precious waters into an extensive system of irrigated fields. The original dam, which spanned the Wadi Adana, is estimated to have been around 13 feet tall and nearly 2,000 feet long. Later modifications, however, raised the dam’s height to nearly 50 feet. The dam stood for more than a thousand years, which allowed Saba to become a flourishing center of trade, culture, and commerce. The Quran (34:15–17) even alludes to its final breach and abandonment in the sixth century CE.

About two millennia earlier, in the 17th century BCE, King Abi-esuh of Babylon, the grandson of Hammurabi, built a similar dam across the mighty Tigris River, but for a very different purpose. Although the dam was used to redirect waters to several Babylonian-held settlements along the Euphrates River, its primary purpose was to divert water away from southern Babylonia, which had been conquered by the First Sealand Dynasty. As such, the Tigris dam is one of the earliest examples of a dam being used to deprive a neighboring people of water resources. The dam ultimately proved ineffective, however; around a century later, the Sealand Dynasty took control of Babylon.