ASWAN, Egypt — Packing 17 times as much sand and stone as the greatest pyramid at Giza, the Aswan High Dam is as imposing as any monument Egypt is known for.
Behind it sprawls Lake Nasser, the largest reservoir known to man. Below it, a ribbon of water winds through the gray and brown cliffs of the Nile Valley. Central to the dam's history is what it represents: Man's ability to harness a great river to modernize a nation living in the shadow of its past.
"The dam is the treasure of the country," says Hamad Ghaitan, a farmer in a dirty blue gown working the lake's sun-seared shores. "It's not any different than putting money in the bank."
But Ghaitan and the third of Egypt that lives south of the capital, Cairo--a region known as Upper Egypt, or more commonly, the Sa'eed--have yet to see any profit.
The dam and a handful of factories are the only signs of development in the Sa'eed, a dirt-poor region best known as the resting place of King Tut.
An insurgency by Muslim militants who despise the government in Cairo has driven away investors, and police provide personal escorts to any foreigner who sets foot in parts of the south.
The Sa'eed's 22 million people, long neglected on the outer fringes of Egypt's culture and economy, are growing poorer and angrier.
"I came from the womb of my mother simple, dirt-poor and worn-out," says Mahmoud Sami, a worker sweeping a road across the High Dam for less than a dollar a day. "But that's not my fault.
"There," he says, pointing north along the Nile, "there's opportunity for work, there's space to operate, there are cities and there is building. Here, there's nothing."
Today, aware of the threat that neglect poses, the government has promised to develop the Sa'eed with the help of U.S. aid.
Loans with generous grace periods are given to small businessmen, a government fund has set aside $40 million for the region's poorest province, and industrial parks with tax breaks are going up in long-neglected, faraway towns to court factories.
The push comes as Cairo celebrates its go-go days. Cellular phones and Mercedes fill the crowded streets. McDonald's and Microsoft occupy a once sleepy market, welcomed by an economy infused with foreign investment.
The boom gives rise to a growing contrast: Egypt is looking at two futures, one a modernizing economy, the other a backward region still dominated by the same tools depicted in ancient tombs.
