The Fayûm and Lake Mœris

by R. H. Brown

The modern Helouan, a dry treeless spot on the eastern desert a few miles south of Cairo, found favour in the eyes of the late Khedive, Tewfik Pasha, and became a sanatorium for the Cairenes, to whom a good draught of pure desert air must be a real treat after living in the tainted air of Egypt’s unsavoury capital. Helouan has sulphur springs to boast of, but Crocodilopolis had a fine expanse of sweet water to look out upon, instead of a dry, blinding and scorching desert.

The area above R.L. 22·50, at first reclaimed from the lake between Lahûn and Medineh, would have been about 10,000 acres; and the king and his favourites would, according to nature, have taken possession of it. But there would have been an extensive shore of habitable ground round the margins of the lake and on each side of the canal connecting the lake with the Nile, which would be within reach of a perpetual water supply and with the means of water transport at the door almost of the habitations.

When the attractions of Crocodilopolis and its suburbs became more appreciated and the population increased, the want of a larger area of cultivable land would be felt. There would also be another inconvenience, besides scarcity of arable land, felt by the dwellers in Crocodilopolis, arising from the yearly fall of the water surface. At high water, when the lake was filled up to R.L. 22·50, embarkation and disembarkation from boats might take place at Crocodilopolis itself, but, as the waters of the lake were allowed to flow back to the Nile, and the water level fell to R.L. 20·00 or 19·50, there would be laid bare a muddy margin of 2 kilometres breadth between the city and the water, which could with difficulty be crossed, and if crossed, the depth of water along the edge of the lake would be found too shallow to allow boats to get close to the land. One or both of these wants probably was the cause that led to the construction of the bank from the high land, east of Edwah to Biahmu, and thence, it appears probable, to Medineh. (See [Plate XX.]) The bank from Edwah to Biahmu runs generally along contour R.L. 17·50, and therefore would have been formed in water, probably with material transported from the high lands on the east and south-east of Edwah. This may account for the material of which the bank is formed being different from the land on either side of it, and for the absence of any trace of a borrow pit from which the bank was made. Such a bank, connected with the high land east of Edwah, running along contour R.L. 17·50 and joined from Biahmu to the high land at Crocodilopolis, would have enclosed an area, from which the lake water would have been excluded, the other two sides of the enclosure being formed by the natural ridge at the end of which Crocodilopolis was built, and by the high land connecting this ridge near Hawârat-el-Maqta with the commencement of the artificial bank at Edwah. From the levels of the rock underlying the Nile deposit at Hawârah it seems probable that the entering waters flowed in greatest volume past the Hawârah pyramid, separating the reclaimed tract from the desert on which the pyramid stands. Possibly this was the only channel by which the waters were admitted to the lake, and across which the regulator was built in the immediate neighbourhood of the Labyrinth and pyramid. The present course of the Bahr Yûsuf beyond Hawârah may have been closed and the Medineh ridge connected with the high desert on the left of the Bahr Yûsuf, near the modern head of the Gharaq canal. At present it is so connected, and the connection is only broken by artificial canals cut through it.

Plate XX.

DIAGRAM SHOWING THE LIMITS OF LAKE MŒRIS ACCORDING TO THE THEORY FAVOURED IN THIS PAPER.

Note.—The contours along the N.W. side of the lake are not accurately shown as this side has not been surveyed.

Outside the contour of R.L. 25·00 the dotted surface represents uncultivated desert. Within the contour of R.L. 21·00 the area crossed by parallel lines represents the water-surface of Lake Mœris.

The unshaded and undotted area represents the cultivable land in and around Lake Mœris.

Thus would the second reclamation have been contrived, and it would have added about 7000 feddans of good land to the 10,000 feddans included in the first reclamation.