WILLCOCKS, William.

£400 · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Restoration of the Ancient Irrigation Works on the Tigris or the Re-Creation of Chaldea. First edition of this proposal to use modern river engineering to restore the prosperity of Mesopotamia. Willcocks spent the bulk of his career in Egypt and the Middle East, including as the personal assistant to Colin Scott-Moncrieff, Egypt's director of irrigation.In Egypt, "Willcocks surveyed and levelled from Cairo to Wadi Halfa, explored the upper Nile for possible sites for reservoir dams, and lectured on irrigation and applied mechanics at the Polytechnical School where he also presided over examinations" (ODNB). He managed the Cairo Water Company from 1897 to 1899 and then the Daira Sania Land Company, which acquired 250,000 acres acres of land for agricultural purposes. As part of his plan to revitalize the Mesopotamia, he surveyed the water resources of the whole region between 1908 and 1910.

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