VIEW OF MEDINET EL FAYÛM,
WHICH OCCUPIES PART OF THE SITE OF THE ANCIENT TOWN CALLED SUCCESSIVELY “SHED,” “CROCODILOPOLIS,” AND “ARSINOË.”
“So many opinions have been broached about Lake Moiris that an account of antiquities in the Fayûm without mentioning it would seem impossible. So, although my work has not been in that line, yet it will be well to state what seems to be the truth about it, in order that some collateral questions should be the better understood. For the following view of the use of the great dyke I am indebted to Colonel Ross, R.E., C.M.G., who has professionally considered the subject. The Fayûm is one of the oases of the Libyan Desert, lying close to the Nile Valley; and the intervening ground is low enough for the Nile to pour into the basin. The fall from the Nile Valley to where the channel widens out into the Fayûm is about 12 feet; and the water flows over the province by canals and ravines, worn through the rock and its superincumbent mud, until the streams finally collect in the Birket Kurûn at more than 200 feet below the Nile level, and, indeed, 130 feet below the sea. The present area of cultivation is about 20 miles in each direction; but the whole basin, geographically speaking, is about 40 miles across on an average. This does not include the secondary basin of the Wadi Raian to the south, which never had any connection with the Fayûm basin in historic times, the ground rising over 100 feet above Nile level between the two depressions.
“In pre-historic times the Nile Valley was full of water to a far greater depth than at present, probably 100 to 200 feet deep of water filled it right across. A river of such a size seems almost incredible, and we naturally should suppose it to have been an estuary; but this must not be too hastily assumed, as there are evidences over the whole country of an enormous rainfall, which ploughed up the cliffs with great ravines; while the bare bed of the old Nile in the eastern desert at Silsileh is some miles in width, showing what a large volume of water has filled it; a lesser stream would have cut down a deep channel in the old bed, and would never have filled that and topped the rocks to force its present cut. This pre-historic high Nile is not, however, pre-human, as I found a palæolithic flint high up on the hills to the west of Esneh, clearly river-worn. The geologic conditions, then, in the pre-historic time prove that the Fayûm Basin must have been a vast lake, connected by a broad arm with the Nile Valley. Thick beds of Nile mud exist beneath 10 to 20 feet of deposits washed down from the desert hills; and even this desert detritus is strewn with felspar and quartz pebbles brought in by the Nile from Assuan, and now lying high above the present Nile level. As the rainfall ceased, and the Nile fell, the neck of water was reduced, but it still sufficed as a channel for the filling of the Fayûm, in all probability, in the time of the earliest dynasties. The Nile bed has risen, it is true, 4 inches a century by its deposits; and hence at the time of the XIIth dynasty, when it was down to its present volume of water, it probably stood about 14 feet lower than it does now in the Nile Valley; but as the drop to the point of flow into the Fayûm is at present 12 feet below high Nile, and the water-level has risen somewhat there, it is pretty well certain that the Fayûm Basin continued during the early dynasties to receive the inflow of the Nile as it had done for ages before. This, then, was the state in which the great engineering monarchs of Egypt found the province; a basin full of overflow Nile water, replenished at each inundation through a marshy shallow inlet, and with much of its bottom so raised by deposits as to have become almost marsh ground, like the present lakes about the coast.
“Amenemhat I. is the earliest king of whom we have any evidence in the Fayûm. He appears to have reclaimed the site of the capital, Shed, ‘the separated’ or ‘extracted,’ and thus he established ‘the land of the lake.’ The dyke of Amenemhat I. may perhaps be seen in a fragment of an enormous bank which remains on the north of the temple area at Medinet. It cannot be part of the temenos wall, as it is far too thick in proportion; and no king later than Amenemhat I. would need to place a dam so near to the capital. The great dyke noticed by Linant—if indeed it be ancient, which some have doubted—is probably the further reclamation of Amenemhat III., signalised by his erecting at Biahmu two great statues of himself at the projecting corner of it looking over the lake, and flanking the road on either side. That the water was on the lower and not the upper side of the dyke, as Linant supposed, is proved by the levels. For if the area within the dyke had been covered with water as a reservoir, the Biahmu structures would have been submerged some 12 feet; whereas there is no trace of deposited mud on any of the upper stones, nor is the building such that it is likely to have been placed in a depth of water. (See [Plates 22] and [23.]) The work of Amenemhat III. consisted in reclaiming more land, and damming back the lake to narrower limits, while improving the canals which led in and out of it, so as to render it more effective in co-operating with the Nile. He thus established Lake Mœris, and his works gave him the credit of being its founder in later ages. In the time of Herodotos the lake still seems to have been kept up to its high level, and if this view be correct, we ought not to find any pre-Greek remains in the Fayûm below Nile level outside of the great dyke; so far as is at present known this is the case. The circumference mentioned by Herodotos as equal to the coast of Egypt, would have been about 130 miles, against 180 length of the coast-line; so this statement is but little exaggerated. The length in stadia is, however, evidently wrong. Apparently under the Persians or Ptolemies the desire to acquire more land in the Fayûm at the expense of the irrigation of the Nile Valley, led to restricting the inflow, and gradually drying up the lake. It was reduced greatly during the Greek period, as the temple of Kasr Kerûn, of Roman age, on the shore of the Birket Kurûn, is 72 feet below Nile level; and Dimeh, a Roman town, is at 69 feet, and has a quay, I am informed, at about 87 feet below the Nile.[7] The shrinkage of the lake, however, went on until it has now left the Roman quay 130 feet high in the air, and the Nile falls over 200 feet before its waters evaporate from the lake. The present problem is how just to let in enough for cultivation without any surplus, and so still further reduce the lake, and increase the area for crops.
“The general level of cultivated land in the Fayûm has not risen by deposits as in the Nile Valley; the denudation by the rapid drainage into the lake just compensating the rise by deposit which would otherwise take place. The evidence for this is seen on the east side of Arsinoë, where the Bahr Tirseh has cut a clean section of the mounds, and the undisturbed bed of Nile mud beneath the ruins is seen to be at just the same level as the fields at present. Also at Biahmu it is certain that the ground has never been much below its present level, or the foundations would have been washed out; nor has it risen much above the level apparently, as the highest mud on the stones is only three feet over the present soil. The fact seems to be that it slowly rose while the lake was at a high level, until it was about two feet higher; and then it has denuded since the lake was reduced, and drainage set in, until it is now perhaps a foot below the ancient level of the XIIth dynasty.”
I have quoted Mr. Petrie in full, as he is reputed to be accurate in his statement of facts, and undoubtedly is so as regards his own discoveries and excavations.
I must now pass on to my own views, and set them forth in more detail.