On May 14, 1964, Gamal Abdul Nasser and Nikita Khrushchev led a ceremony to inaugurate the initial phase of the Aswan High Dam. They detonated dynamite charges to divert the Nile River, creating Lake Nasser. In June 1964, the Egyptian government forcibly relocated the Nubian populations imperiled by the rising waters of Lake Nasser. This marked the culmination of a processof dispossession that began in 1902 with the British colonial administration’s construction of the Aswan Low Dam. Subsequent heightening’s caused further displacements, leading to the devastating inundation of 1964. Whilst catastrophic for Nubians, these projects proved a boon for archaeologists, necessitating the emergence ‘salvage’ archaeology, a mode of archaeological practice which now dominates globally. This study, drawing on the concept of the implicated subject, to examine how Egyptian archaeologists navigated their roles within this system of dispossession. Utilizing archival research, it interrogates their contested positionality as agents of state-driven violence. This project critically examines archaeology's entanglements with modernity, colonialism, and the ruination of Nubia.