The Fayûm and Lake Mœris

by R. H. Brown

It also seems to be agreed to accept the testimony of Herodotus, Strabo, and Diodorus, when they describe the uses which Lake Mœris served, namely, to receive part of the Nile waters when the river was in flood, and so to moderate its excesses, and also to return the stored-up water to the Nile, when its discharge had fallen low in summer, and so to supplement its deficiencies.

Statements not accepted as postulates.—These same witnesses made other statements, which have been accepted or rejected according to the individual views of different theorists. If Herodotus and others after him are rightly interpreted as stating that the Lake Mœris was artificially dug out by human labour, I too must claim the privilege of assuming that they were mistaken. As pointed out at the commencement of Chapter II. of this paper, Herodotus was trying to give an account of what took place more than, at least, 2000 years before, with no records to help him. Under such circumstances, accuracy as to the origin of Lake Mœris was not to be expected in his accounts. Being no engineer, and having a large belief in the marvellous, he might well have supposed the whole oasis artificially dug out. The absence of all signs of the earth resulting from this immense excavation puzzled him, and he asked what had become of it. He was told that it had been carried to the Nile, whose waters dispersed it, and this he readily believed, because he had heard of a similar proceeding in another country, where some thieves excavated an underground passage to a king’s treasury, and got rid of the earth resulting from the excavation by throwing it into a river at the outer end of their shaft. This is comparing small and great with a vengeance. The distance of the centre of the Lake Mœris excavation to the Nile would have been 50 kilometres (31 miles), and the quantity of earth to be carried and dispersed by the Nile would have been at least 50,000 million cubic metres. Such a task can scarcely be called similar to a simple mining operation.

The Egyptian of to-day, if asked to account for any assumed fact, will not pause to consider whether the assumed fact is really fact, but will at once invent some more or less plausible explanation to account for it. I will give a remarkable instance of a very generally believed explanation of an annual Egyptian phenomenon, though it has nothing to do with the Fayûm or Lake Mœris. In the summer the land surface of the inundation basins of Upper Egypt is split up into mazes of deep cracks, into which innumerable rats are seen to disappear when disturbed. On the waters entering the basins all this cracked area becomes submerged, and the question is, what becomes of the rats? Again, when the water is discharged from the basins after remaining in them two months, the rats are found (or appear) to be in as great numbers as before. Again the question is, where have the rats come from? The accepted explanation is that when the water comes the rats turn into mud, and when it retires the mud changes back again into rats. I could scarcely credit that so childish a belief was general, so I submitted the question to a large Assembly of Notables (collected for a different purpose), and several members came forward and declared they had seen the rats in the state of semi-transition, when half mud and half rat, and offered to catch and deliver one to me. I accepted the offer, but the matter has not yet gone any further.

Returning to the discussion of the statement that Lake Mœris was artificially excavated, it strikes one as being a senseless operation to dig out a basin to the depth given as being that of the deepest part of Lake Mœris, viz. 92 metres, as all the water lying below half the depth stated could have served no useful purpose, except from the point of view of aquatic animals that have a liking for deep water.

Theorists lay stress on some features testified to by the ancients, and explain away or discredit other points of their testimony according as they support or are hostile to their adopted theories; or else they give strained interpretations to other statements from the same motives. Such statements, for instance, as the following are subject to this varied treatment.

Herodotus, and others after him, state that the circumference of Lake Mœris was 720 kilometres (450 miles), or, as some interpret, 360 kilometres, according to the value of the stadius adopted. Depth, 92 metres.

The length of the lake lies north and south. It was artificially made. There were two pyramids, crowned by colossal statues, centrally situated in the lake, as viewed from the Labyrinth or Arsinoë.

The water in the lake was not derived from local sources, but was brought in from the Nile by a canal. The lake was between the Arsinoïte and Memphite nomes.

Crocodilopolis was on or near the borders of the lake, and 9400 metres from the Labyrinth.

Lake Mœris formed an elbow to the west, was oblong, and situate in the middle of the lands along the mountains above Memphis.