Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

CHAPTER XIV.
THE FAIOUM.

Opera basilica.—Bacon.

The history of the reclamation of the Arsinoite nome, or department, now the Faioum, would, if it had been preserved, or could be recovered, throw much precious light on the antiquity and power of the civilization of the primæval monarchy. But the simple fact that its details had been lost, even in the remote days of Theban learning and magnificence, when Egypt was at the summit of its greatness and glory, possesses of itself much historical value, for it shows at how much earlier a day the great undertaking had been carried out; and that, as we know, by such a system of hydraulic works, the newly-won district, too, having been adorned with such cities and buildings, as leave no doubt about the high character of its (were it not for the remains of these works and structures) prehistoric civilization.

The Faioum is, geographically, a basin formed by a depression in the Libyan range, about sixty miles to the south of the Pyramids of Gizeh. The basin is about the size of Oxfordshire, or Surrey, that is to say, it contains about 750 square, miles. More than 100 of these may be occupied by the Birket el Keiroon, a natural lake, which forms its northern and western boundary. This large piece of water resembles a rude crescent, with its convex side to the north and north-west, and its concave side to the south and south-east. On the former side the contiguous desert rises into a hilly ridge; this boundary being in fact an offset of the African range. The other side of the lake looks upon the dry and shelving descent of the basin, which, from its southern summit down to the edge of the water, has a fall of about 100 feet, being about fifteen miles across. There are considerable discrepancies as to the precise amount of this fall; some measurements making it more, and some less than the 100 feet here given.

When things were in their natural state, undisturbed by man, the Birket el Keiroon was a lake, as it is now. In those days, as in our own, it was supplied with water, just as the pool within the enclosure of Karnak, and other pools, and all the wells in Egypt, by natural infiltration; for the water of the river percolates readily through the porous strata, and flows into any sufficiently deep depressions, or excavations. The existence of the oases also in the desert must be accounted for in this way.

The Bahr Jusuf Canal had, at some unrecorded date, been brought along the foot of the Libyan range. Starting from Diospolis Parva, by the air-line forty miles below Thebes, it had traversed the whole of the rest of the valley; then, passing through the Delta, it had reached the sea, somewhere in the neighbourhood of modern Alexandria; a distance, again, in the air-line of 400 miles; though, of course, this falls very far short of giving the measure of its ceaseless sinuosities. This Grand Canal of old Egypt now carries off about a twenty-eighth part of the water that passes over the cataract of Philæ. In its course it flows along the depressed range that forms the eastern boundary of the Faioum. In this depressed range there is a ravine through which in early days, at the season of the inundation, some of the overflow of the Bahr Jusuf found its way to the top level of the Faioum. It is not easy now, to decide whether it got through naturally at first, or whether the ravine was canalized to enable it to pass through. At all events it is evident that, if there had originally been a natural passage, it was levelled and enlarged by man availing himself of natural fissures and depressions. But however this might have been, the inundation having found its way on to the upper level of the Faioum, appears to have formed there an immense morass.

The first condition, then, of the district had been a dry desert, precisely resembling any other part of the desert, except that it slanted from what may be spoken of as the rim of its mussel-shell-like depression down to the spring-fed Birket el Keiroon. Its second condition, that now before us, is what was brought about by the water of the inundation, that had in some way or other been let into the district: it formed wherever it was retained, and chiefly on the upper plateau, a vast extent of morasses. We have the evidence of geology for the former—for we see that the original surface of the district consisted of thin layers of limestone, alternating with layers of clay—and of tradition for the latter.

We now come to the third, which is the historical, stage. By a series of enormous dykes, some of them several miles in length, the enclosed space having a breadth also of some miles, the inflowing water was confined to certain portions of the upper plateau; perhaps the whole of the upper plateau was by these means formed into a lake. The water thus retained and secured, was amply sufficient for the perennial irrigation of the whole of the descent reaching from the upper southern plateau down to the Birket el Keiroon, and for a district to the west and south, and, when the effects of the inundation began to be exhausted in the valley of Egypt, for the contiguous departments of Memphis and Heracleopolis. In this way the creation of the Faioum, the most fertile province in Egypt, was far from being the whole of the benefit derived from these vast waterworks.

The lake, or series of connected lakes, formed on the summit of the plateau may have been twenty miles long, and two or three wide. This was the famous Lake Mœris. The water was made to enter the lake by a channel, which probably commenced at the modern Howarah, and was drawn off for irrigation outside the Faioum by a channel which appears to have passed out at Illahoun. In each of these a sluice was constructed. The extreme costliness of opening and shutting these sluices shows that they must have been enormous structures: but this was only in proportion to the vast volume of water that passed through them. To fill such lakes during the time of the high water of the inundation nothing less than a considerable river would have sufficed. We can only think it very much to the credit of these primæval engineers that they managed such sluices at all. Nothing like either the slatts, or the locks, on some of our rivers for holding back the water, would have answered their purpose. They wisely made the channel for letting out the water quite distinct from that for letting it in; for, if one of the sluices got out of order, then the other might be used while the damages of the injured one were being repaired. In a matter of life and death to so many it would not have done at all to have had only one string to their bow.