The Greatest Dam of Antiquity

When were you last surprised by a book?

I bought a 1956 textbook on Engineering in History for a dollar on Amazon a couple of weeks ago thinking it may just sit on the shelf. I was wrong. Reading history through an engineering lens magnified past accomplishments for me and made clear whose shoulders I am standing on.

Case in point, if you are like me, you will never believe where the greatest dam of antiquity was located. Try Southern Arabia in the present day country of Yemen.

While some simple dams and canals were built in the area as far back as 2000 BC, the building of the first Marib dam began somewhere around 750 BC. The earthen dam spanned over 1,800 feet.

In 115 BC the dam height was increased to 45 feet with 25 foot thick walls connecting the dam to the canyon walls. The dam was not designed for a massive amount of storage, but to divert water into channels which allowed the irrigation of 25,000 acres.

The earthen portion of the dam is long gone. These pictures below show some of the surviving stoneworks on the northern and southern ends of the dam that diverted the water into the canals.

Pictures from Panoramio

The final destruction of the dam is noted in the Qur'an and the consequential failure of the irrigation system some say resulted in the migration of up to 50,000 people. In 1986 a new earth dam was completed 3 km upstream of the ruins of the old Marib dam. It took some aerial searching, but I found the remnants of the dam on Google.


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