Faiyum Depression

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Lore & Background

In prehistory, the Faiyum hollow was a dry basin while the Mediterranean was a hot, dry hollow near the end of the Messinian Salinity Crisis. After the Mediterranean reflooded, the Nile canyon became an arm of the sea, which gradually filled with silt and became the Nile Valley. Eventually, the Nile valley bed silted up high enough to let the Nile periodically overflow into the Faiyum Hollow, forming a lake first recorded from about 3000 BC, around the time of Menes (Narmer). The canalization of the waterway connecting the Nile to the natural lake—now known as the Bahr Yussef—is traditionally associated with the Twelfth Dynasty (c. 1991–1802 BC) or later, not 2300 BC. The pharaohs of the Twelfth Dynasty used the natural lake as a reservoir to store surpluses of water for dry periods. The lake, Lake Moeris (Birket Qarun), was not abandoned in 230 BC and still exists today. Faiyum was known to the ancient Egyptians as the twenty-first nome of Upper Egypt, Atef-Pehu, with its capital Sh-d-y-t (Shedyt)—Atef-Pehu was the name of the nome itself, not the capital. Known to the Greeks as Crocodilopolis, and renamed by Ptolemy II Philadelphus as Arsinoe, this region has the earliest evidence for farming in Egypt, and was a center of royal pyramid and tomb-building in the Twelfth Dynasty and again during the Ptolemaic Kingdom. Faiyum became one of the breadbaskets of the Roman world. For the first three centuries AD, people of Faiyum and elsewhere in Roman Egypt placed a portrait of the deceased over the face of mummy wrappings, shroud or case. These Fayum mummy portraits, painted on wood in encaustic painting, make up the richest body of portraiture from antiquity. In the late 1st millennium, the arable area shrank and settlements around the edge of the basin were abandoned, including Karanis. In 1910, over 1,000 km² of the oasis was cultivated, chief crops being cereals and cotton. The completion of the Aswan Low Dam enabled 20,000 acres of land to be brought under cultivation in 1903–1905. The province was noted for its figs, grapes, olives, and rose trees for attar of roses. In antiquity, the Faiyum was a center of the cult of the crocodile god Sobek, with temples dedicated to local manifestations of the god. Egyptian temples operated at the edges of the Fayyum at least until the early third century and in some cases the fourth century.

In Their Own Story

The lake is first recorded from about 3000 BC, around the time of Menes (Narmer). Neolithic settlements bordered the lake, and the town of Crocodilopolis (now Faiyum) grew up on the south side where the higher ground created a ridge. In 2300 BC, the waterway connecting the Nile River to the natural lake was widened and deepened to make a canal now known as the Bahr Yussef. This canal fed into the lake and served three purposes: controlling the flooding of the Nile, regulating the water level during dry seasons, and serving the surrounding area with irrigation. The immense waterworks undertaken by the Twelfth Dynasty pharaohs to transform the lake into a vast water reservoir gave the impression that the lake was an artificial excavation, as classic geographers and travellers reported. The lake was eventually abandoned due to the nearest branch of the Nile dwindling in size from 230 BC.

Reader's Guide

The Faiyum Oasis is a depression or basin in the desert immediately west of the Nile, 62 miles south of Cairo. The extent of the basin area is estimated at between 1,270 km² and 1,700 km². The basin floor comprises fields watered by the Bahr Yussef, a channel of the Nile that veers west through a narrow neck of land north of Ihnasya, between the archaeological sites of El Lahun and Gurob near Hawara. It then branches out, providing agricultural land in the Faiyum basin, draining into the large saltwater Lake Moeris (Birket Qarun). The Bahr Yussef canal is 24 km in length. Between the beginning of the Bahr Yussef at El Lahun to its end at the city of Faiyum, several canals branch off to irrigate the Faiyum Governorate. The drainage water flows into Lake Moeris. Birket Qarun has an abundant population of fish, notably bulti, of which considerable quantities are sent to Cairo. In ancient times, this lake was significantly larger, and the ancient Greeks and Romans knew it as Lake Moeris. The largest city is Faiyum, which is also the capital of the Faiyum Governorate. Other towns include Sinnuris and Tamiya to the north of Faiyum, and Sanhur and Ibsheway on the road leading towards the lake. Itsa lies to the south west of Faiyum, while the district of Youssef Al-Seddik is also part of the governorate, situated near the Tunis Village.

Did You Know?

• The Faiyum Oasis is a depression or basin in the desert immediately west of the Nile, 62 miles south of Cairo, Egypt.
• In prehistory, the Faiyum hollow was dry while the Mediterranean was a hot, dry hollow near the end of the Messinian Salinity Crisis.
• The lake in Faiyum is first recorded from about 3000 BC, around the time of Menes (Narmer).
• In 2300 BC, the waterway connecting the Nile to the natural lake was widened and deepened to make a canal now known as the Bahr Yussef.
• The Fayum mummy portraits, painted on wood in encaustic painting, make up the richest body of portraiture to have survived from antiquity.