The history of the Aswan High Dam project and the related salvage campaign in Lower and Upper Nubia simultaneously includes a portrait of political and economic strife and the exceptional effort made by archaeologists. As the Cold War and decolonisation impacted the Egyptian political and cultural concepts, institutions and individuals worked in a network of professional and political allegiances that contradict the applicability of a singular guiding narrative, including that of decolonisation or the Cold War, if studied in isolation. A case study of two Egyptologists of Czechoslovak origin attempts to tie the global setting of an international archaeological operation to more localised national and personal perspectives. and Překlad resumé: Hana Navrátilová a Melvyn Clarke