Ragheb Ayad’s painting of the Aswan Dam, like that of Effat Naghi’s painting of the same theme, are part of the Egyptian government’s art commissions program in the late 1950s to 1960s to depict the massive construction project of the Aswan Dam. In this painting, Ayad has narrowed the frame to compress the sense of height of the engineering project and its scaffolding. He also deliberately focused on the teams of heavy manual labour used in removing earth and block elements with hand carts, picks or shovels. The absence of massive construction machinery shifts the emphasis here to Egyptian workers in a manner that connects it with the building of monuments throughout history and into antiquity. In creating a pierced triangular framing through the rising scaffolds besides the cliff passageway, he highlights the tenuously chiseled paths along narrow cliffs.

Numerous other artists and writers, including the Egyptian novelist, Sonallah Ibrahim, were hired as artists, photographers and journalists to cover the building of the dam. Ibrahim later rewrote this experience as a novel, The Star of August, on the dangers facing those left at the bottom of the scaffolding. Ayad was among the first class of students to enter in 1908 and graduate in 1911 from the new School of Fine Arts in Cairo. In 1928, he received a Diploma from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and returned to Egypt where he held appointments at the School of Applied Art in Giza and at the School of Fine Arts in Cairo.