For most ancient rulers, due to limitations in productivity, such large-scale construction projects were often seen as wasteful and burdensome to the people.
However, Alaric believed that, for Egypt at present, undertaking such projects was not a bad idea.
Because of the previous wars, Egypt had fallen into a certain degree of stagnation. Many of the common people had been reduced to poverty due to warlords and conflict.
Simply relying on recovery and rest would make it difficult for Egypt to prosper again in a short time. Large-scale construction, however, was a different matter.
Compared to the intensive farming of the Central Plains, Egyptian farmers benefited from the Nile, making their agriculture relatively extensive.
Moreover, the Nile had both flood and dry seasons.
During the dry season, Egyptian farmers naturally had little to do. At such times, paid construction projects allowed wealth to flow into their hands.
Only in this way could public consumption be stimulated and Egypt's prosperity restored.
Thus, for Egypt at this time, a certain degree of construction was nothing short of a remedy.
People of this era did not understand this principle, but Alaric did: money only creates value when it circulates.
At present, Alaric was the only one who could have restrained Nitocris from pursuing massive construction.
Now that even he supported it, Nitocris plunged headfirst into this grand undertaking.
Unlike previous Pharaohs, who would at most carry out repairs and maintenance on Nile irrigation works, Nitocris took things to an entirely new level.
Instead of mere patchwork, she initiated a transformative project: the construction of dams and reservoirs.
Reservoirs could store floodwaters, regulate water flow, and stabilize the Nile's extremes, preventing floods during the flood season and alleviating drought during the dry season.
Capturing excess water during floods and releasing it during droughts was an excellent solution.
However, for people of this era, building reservoirs was an enormous undertaking. No one had ever imagined controlling a river in such a way.
But Nitocris did not fear the difficulty.
Because she had a group of excellent assistants: magi.
Magi of the Geb school specialized in earth and soil-element magic, making them exceptionally skilled in construction projects.
To build a reservoir, Nitocris only needed these magi to cast spells that reshaped the terrain between the Nile and a designated lowland, creating a sunken channel.
Workers could then excavate along this path.
If magi were made to handle all the labor, no one could endure it, but having them establish the structural framework posed no problem.
Thus, Nitocris's grand hydraulic project began in full force.
The site she selected for the reservoir was Lake Faiyum.
It was located west of the Nile within the Faiyum nome, at the lowest point of the Faiyum oasis.
In prehistoric times, this lake had been a large freshwater body, abundant in water and connected to the Nile.
However, later climatic changes caused the water level to drop, severing its connection to the Nile and turning it into a largely useless lake.
By this era, the channel between Lake Faiyum and the Nile had dried up, with only occasional overflow reaching it during major floods.
In Nitocris's view, by deepening the channel, constructing dams, and reintroducing Nile water, this natural lake could be effectively utilized as a reservoir.
To achieve this, her first step was to restore Lake Faiyum, bringing it back to life.
First, she constructed a dam at the lake's mouth, along with sluices and embankments, and drained the surrounding marshlands, turning the lake into a stable and well-contained reservoir.
Then, she mobilized the magi to cast earth-splitting spells along the dried channel between the Nile and the lake, creating a deep fissure.
Workers then excavated along this fissure, forming a long canal that reconnected the lake to the Nile.
In this way, during flood season, the surging Nile waters could flow into the lake through the canal. Conversely, during the dry season, opening the dam would allow water from the lake to flow back into the Nile.
With Nitocris sparing no expense, and with the aid of magic, the Faiyum reservoir was constructed so well that, with proper maintenance, it could be used for thousands of years.
Indeed, over the following millennia, successive rulers of Egypt would carefully maintain this hydraulic system.
The legacy Nitocris left behind continued to benefit future generations, lasting until modern times, when Egypt eventually rebuilt the reservoir and dam using modern technology.
Even so, though the ancient Faiyum reservoir no longer remained intact, its millennia-long use astonished later generations.
Historians and archaeologists were baffled as to how, over four thousand years ago in Nitocris's time, the Egyptians had managed to construct such a marvel.
As a result, the Faiyum reservoir came to be regarded as an engineering wonder of ancient Egypt, rivaling the Sphinx and the Pyramid of Nitocris.
Speaking of the greatest miracle created during Nitocris's lifetime, in the eyes of people over four thousand years later, it was naturally the towering Pyramid of Nitocris.
It was also the most time-consuming project among her many construction endeavors, construction began after the expansion of Memphis and was only completed after Nitocris had abdicated.
The Pyramid of Nitocris was the largest pyramid in ancient Egypt.
Originally over 180 meters tall, erosion over time caused the top 15 meters to collapse, leaving it at 165 meters, equivalent to a building of more than fifty stories.
Its structure was composed of approximately four million massive stone blocks, ranging in weight from 1.5 to 50 tons, with a total mass of about 11.82 million tons.
Among the hundreds of pyramids discovered in Egypt, it remained the largest.
It was an almost solid stone structure. Teams of workers hauled these enormous blocks upward along a spiral internal passage, stacking them layer by layer.
Over one hundred thousand craftsmen spent more than sixty years completing this human marvel.
Before the construction of the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramid of Nitocris had once been the tallest structure in the world.
However, contrary to common belief, the Pyramid of Nitocris was not a tomb like those of other Pharaohs.
In fact, it was a magical workshop built by Nitocris for herself, essentially equivalent to a mage tower.
The pyramid was constructed atop Egypt's largest ley line, and through its unique structure and magical systems, it could gather energy from the sun.
For this reason, beyond its fame among ordinary people, it also became a sacred site in the eyes of later magi.
Every year, thousands of magi from across the world would travel to the Pyramid of Nitocris to pay homage to the legacy of their predecessor, the Magic Queen, Nitocris.