The Fayûm and Lake Mœris

“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.

CHAPTER IV.

At a point in the hills dividing the Nile Valley and the Fayûm, about 10 kilometres south of Lahûn, near Sidment-el-Gebel, Dr. Schweinfurth found “the indubitable witnesses of a Pliocene sea” preserved in the form of oysters (Ostrea cucullata and Pecten) in the white sand at about R.L. 60 to 70. (See map and Plate XXI.) The Pliocene sea, he maintains, intruded up the Nile Valley and extended on both sides of it as far as the contours of 60 to 70 metres above sea-level allowed. The place, where the oysters in the white sand were found, is situated in a flat depression on the plateau of the narrowest part of the hills separating the Nile Valley and the Fayûm. The Pliocene sea flowed here from one depression into the other, and would have succeeded in scouring away the barrier between the two depressions, if it had not been interrupted by a later upheaval or a withdrawal of the sea. In a similar manner there seems to have been made from Lahûn to Hawârah, the present communication between the Nile Valley and the Fayûm by which the Bahr Yûsuf entered to form Lake Mœris, either as an old Nile-arm or as an artificial branch of the natural arm.

Besides this passage, the desert tract on the north of it offers, as breaks in the higher ridge, several depressions, which must have been accessible to the Pliocene sea. The present railway line to the Fayûm crosses the hills at one of these depressions.

On account of the regularity of the limestone strata in the Fayûm and Wadi Raiân, a violent upheaval cannot be supposed to have been the cause that produced these two depressions, and it is more likely that they are the results of erosion and scour.

In a passage I have already quoted from Mr. Petrie’s writings, he states that in prehistoric times the Nile was a vastly greater river than it is now, due to an enormous rainfall. Let us then assume the Pliocene sea-level at R.L. 60 to 70, according to Dr. Schweinfurth, and an enormous volume of water coming down from the Upper Nile Valley according to Mr. Petrie. The sea which then invaded the Nile Valley would have been in communication with the Red Sea, and may have had a tide of 5 metres range, which would have complicated the currents, and added to the scouring action. Below Wâstah, the channel of the Nile Valley, contained between the Libyan and Arabian Hills, is much contracted. Under these conditions the floods from the Upper Nile would escape sideways through the depressions in the Libyan Hills into the Fayûm and the Wadi Raiân; into the latter by way of the Wadi Muellah, and possibly by other connections with the Nile Valley of a low enough level.

A large volume of water would thus be forced westwards out of the Nile Valley, and would find its way towards the sea to the west of Alexandria. In its endeavours to dig out a channel for itself it would erode laterally, or scour down vertically according as the softer material was found in one direction or the other. The different points of delivery and volumes of the water contributing to the flow, and the nature of the rock met with in its path would determine the form the channel would take at the various stages of its development. Tremendous eddies would be produced by projections of hard rock and contractions of the irregular channels, which would lift material from the bed and produce deep holes.

Had this action not been arrested by the further upheaval of the land, perhaps a second Nile Valley would have been formed branching from the main valley at Behnesa, passing through the Wadi Raiân and Fayûm depression, and continuing through the Wadis Fadhi and Faragh, west of Memphis and Cairo, to the Natron Lakes, and thence to the sea west of Alexandria; or returning to the Nile Valley, or side of what is now the Delta, but was then sea, at some point south of Alexandria.

If this theory is a sound one, the remarkable depressions of the Fayûm and Wadi Raiân are paralleled on a small scale by the deep holes (bayarât) scoured out below the bridges or cuts in the Upper Egypt Basin embankments, or outside a breach in a Nile bank.

The section, given on Plate XVIII., of 50 miles of the Nile Valley and desert opposite Cairo, is taken from Mr. Cope Whitehouse’s article, entitled “The Pyramid Hill of Gizeh,” which appeared in the ‘Quarterly’ some time ago. It shows (assuming it on Mr. Whitehouse’s authority to be a correct representation of the ground) the channels, that I have named, in the arrested state of development which they had reached, when the flow of water, which was digging them out, was cut off.

After the upheaval had raised their borders above sea-level, the sea would be henceforward excluded from the depressions and be replaced by the waters of the Nile, which would have entered by the gap in the Libyan Hills at Lahûn. The upheaval continuing and the Nile at the same time scouring out its bed, a condition of levels would have come about, under which there would have been an annual inflow during the floods and outflow into the Nile on the floods subsiding.

In a long series of years there would result a thick deposit of Nile mud in the Fayûm, the richest deposit being found near the point where the waters first spread themselves out after passing through the comparatively narrow defile in the Libyan Hills. The tendency of the entrance of the waters, heavily charged with silt, into an extended basin filled with water would be to form a delta of Nile deposit similar to that which the Nile itself has formed in entering the sea, modified by the form of the basin bed, which would not have been uniform like that of the sea. On account of the momentum of the body of water leaving the defile and entering the lake, there would be formed a projecting ridge (contour R.L. 23) of deposit in the direction of the flow, while the deposit, resulting from the end and side spills, would form in gentle slopes with approximately parallel and rounded contours (R.L. 17 to 10) on both sides, and at the end of the projecting ridge as shown in Plate XIX.

Thus, in consequence of the former action of rain on the surrounding hills, greater or less at different points along the borders according as the inclination of the adjacent watersheds was towards or away from the depression, and in consequence also of the deposition of Nile mud by the annual entry of the river flood, the bed of the lake formed in the depression would take the shape shown by the contours on the diagram of the Fayûm, Plate XIX. The former of these processes of change of the bed and borders of the depression may have ceased before the latter commenced to operate, or both may have acted simultaneously or alternately, which would account for layers of Nile mud being found near the Hawârah pyramid lying below the water-borne detritus of the hills.

From a knowledge of the rules which govern the formation of a Delta, and the consequent raising of the level of the river which forms it, we might conclude that the Nile floods in past times were not as high as they are nowadays, though on the other hand we do not know that the floods were not greater in volume, and the probability is that they were. But whatever may be the truth about former Nile levels, the levels, at which Nile deposits are found in the Fayûm, furnish evidence of the maximum height to which the flood waters rose in the Lake.

At the commencement of the passage by which the waters entered the Fayûm, the highest Nile deposit is at R.L. 26·00. At Hawârah it is at R.L. 24·50, and along the ridge reaching out towards Medineh, R.L. 23·50. Probably, therefore, the water in the Lake reached about R.L. 26·50 at the commencement of the gorge, but the level of the Lake itself rarely, if ever, exceeded R.L. 25·00.

It will be as well to determine, before going further, whether the present volumes of the Nile flood would suffice to fill the Lake Fayûm to the level of R.L. 25·00, which I have assumed it must have reached to account for the Nile deposits on its borders at R.L. 24·50.

At the time we are considering, no artificial works existed for controlling the inflow and outflow of the Lake.

We have first to determine the lowest level to which the Lake would have been lowered by the outflow and evaporation at the end of the summer, and before the next rise of the river commenced. The Nile may have flowed at a lower level then (that is, in very early prehistoric times) than now, the summer volume was probably greater then than now, as the unbreached barriers in the upper reaches would have ponded up the water into reservoirs, which, slowly emptying themselves, would have helped to raise the summer level; the flow-out also from the Fayûm Lake would have raised at its exit the level of the summer Nile, at least during the winter months, but not necessarily during the summer months, as it may have expended itself sooner. There are thus three unknown elements in the problem, and nothing to witness to the former minimum levels in the same way that the Nile deposit does to the maximum levels. We are therefore forced to base the calculations on existing levels, and to suppose that the effect on the water surface of the former lower level of the Nile bed was counterbalanced by the increased volume of water flowing in the river bed. At any rate at some period sooner or later the present minimum level of the Nile must have been reached.

The probability is that the exit channel of the lake joined the Nile at or near Wâstah. Up to the end of April the rate of fall of the river exceeds the rate at which evaporation would lower a lake surface, but in May the river falls about 15 centimetres, and not at all on an average in June. Hence, up to the end of April the fall of the river would determine the rate of fall of the lake, but in May and June the fall due to evaporation would rule the rate.

The mean surface area of the Lake Fayûm between R.L. 19·80 and 25·00 may be taken as 2000 million square metres.

Evaporation during the ninety days of flood would tend to lower the level 70 centimetres.

The quantity of water required to raise the lake from R.L. 19·80 to 25·00 would therefore be 2,000,000,000 × (5·20 + 0·70) = 11,800 million cubic metres, or a daily average for ninety days of 131,111,111 cubic metres.

At the commencement of these ninety days the inflow would be small, increasing rapidly to the maximum; and again, as the lake level rose and the Nile began to fall in October, the inflow would gradually decrease to nothing by the end of the ninety days. Hence it would probably be necessary to suppose a maximum daily discharge into the lake of about 200 million cubic metres a day for part of the time.

Colonel Western, in a note on the Wadi Raiân, shows that for a certain number of years out of sixteen years (1872 to 1887, of which he had the statistics to work with) there is a surplus discharge in the Nile which might be abstracted without in any way interfering with the ordinary irrigation of the Delta. In his calculations he takes 565 million cubic metres in twenty-four hours as the discharge required by the Delta during September and the first half of October. He is, of course, referring to the conditions of the Delta at the present time. He gives the table which appears on the preceding page, to which I have added the corresponding gauge levels at Beni Suef and Magnûnah mouth for reference further on.

The month of August has not been given, as the conclusion was come to that there was no water to spare in August under present conditions.

The calculation, giving these figures, is made assuming that regulation on the Barrage below Cairo is not called in to assist; the discharges allowed to Lower Egypt, after abstracting the above quantities, being sufficient to give a water surface at the level required for irrigation without any heading-up. Now, the quantity required to fill the lake to R.L. 25·00, as found before, is 11,800 million cubic metres. This, let us suppose, would be made up thus:—

These discharges could be abstracted without affecting Lower Egypt irrigation, as it exists now, for eleven years out of sixteen. This, however, is not a quite correct statement as applied to each of the eleven years, since the discharges given in the table are the averages of those years in which a surplus discharge is available. Among these would be some very high years, in which it would be possible to fill the lake to a higher level than 25·00, and years when this level would not be reached.

Besides the years, for which the averages of surplus discharges are taken, there would be five years out of sixteen when the supply would fall short in September, the month of highest level.

There is no necessity in this stage to seek for a connection between the lake and the Nile for filling the lake, as the water would find its way in large volumes across all the low parts of the valley into the drainage depression along the edge of the Libyan Desert, now known as the Bahr Yûsuf.

The levels at which the Nile deposits are found in the Fayûm, the discharges which might be drawn off from the Nile, and the area of the Fayûm Lake are thus all in agreement with the supposition that the level of the Fayûm lake was yearly raised from about R.L. 20·00 to 25·00, and that the level attained was never sufficiently high to cause an overflow into the Wadi Raiân.

THE FAYÛM AS LAKE MŒRIS.

Judging then from the evidence furnished by Nile deposit and fresh-water shells, there is nothing to support the theory that there has been any great change in the Nile levels since the waters first found their way into the Fayûm. But whatever conditions of levels and volumes of Nile discharges we start with, we must at some date arrive at the period of present conditions. According to Mr. Petrie, however, there is good evidence (which I will give later on) to support the theory that in Herodotus’ time the Nile levels were 2 metres lower than now, and it is further probable that, at the time of the transformation of the Lake Fayûm into Lake Mœris, the Nile volumes were what they are now. I shall, however, discuss the subject, assuming that present conditions as to Nile levels also existed at the formation of Lake Mœris, and point out afterwards how the difference of 2 metres in the level at the time of Herodotus affects the conclusions.

The formation of Lake Mœris is credited to Amenemhat III. of the XIIth Dynasty, who gained a reputation for making great improvements in the Irrigation Department, and carrying out hydraulic works of immense benefit to the country, about 2500 B.C., or within 5000 years of to-day. Now, 5000 years, geologically estimated, is a very short time, and we may assume, without much chance of error, that he had practically the same general conditions to work with as regards relative levels of land and water and Nile discharges as we have to-day.

The Fayûm Lake would, in his time, have filled and emptied itself, and low Niles would now and then have occurred. But even without the occurrence of a low Nile it would have been observed that during the summer, when the surface of the lake in the Fayûm had reached its lowest level, there was a considerable area of land, formed of Nile deposit, laid bare. A shining light among the king’s subjects may have conceived a project for reclaiming this land from the annual inundation, submitted his project to the king and obtained his approval to its execution.

The problem would be that, while reclaiming the land, the advantages to be derived from a natural regulator to the Nile should not be lost. The return flow which took place from the lake would, while it was uncontrolled by artificial works, be greatest when there was least benefit to be derived from a raising of the Nile water-surface; and least in the summer months, when an addition to the Nile discharge would have been most needed. The effect of the uncontrolled early return-flow might even have acted disadvantageously in checking the fall of the Nile level in December and the following winter months, and thereby delaying the draining of the lands which had been inundated by the preceding flood.

Now, although the amount of water stored in the lake might, according to the project we are considering, become less in quantity than it was before control was introduced, still by husbanding the water till the season of low Nile, when an addition to the Nile was most required, the same benefits might be obtained from the reservoir during the summer months as were felt when the lake acted under nature’s guidance only; and in addition to this, the flood water would be more quickly drained off the inundated lands, and crops be sown earlier, than would have been the case when the return-flow from the lake commenced with the fall of the Nile.

The project would then consist of works for admitting water into the lake until it rose to a certain height and then excluding any more, with the exception of about 10 to 15 million cubic metres a day, which would be required to make good the loss by evaporation over an area of about 1500 million square metres. The same work could be adapted to hold in the water on the fall of the river, and let it flow back when required; or this duty might be performed by a separate regulator. Some point between Lahûn and Hawârah would be chosen to make a bank and regulator to bar the Bahr Yûsuf passage through the hills. Probably a convenient place was found near Hawârah pyramid, close to which the Labyrinth was built.

By limiting the level of the lake to R.L. 22·50, all the area above that level, which is that of the highest plateau in the Fayûm, would be left uncovered, and fitted for cultivation and habitations.

The regulator established and the level of the water in the lake being thereby brought under control, it would be safe to commence the occupation of the reclaimed land.

All this is speculation as to how the natural Fayûm Lake became transformed into the artificially controlled Lake Mœris of Herodotus. There is little to base speculation upon, and therefore the transformation process may be varied within certain limits at the choice of the speculator.

Mr. Petrie’s views, already given at length, suggest a modification of the foregoing, which I will give as an alternative idea.

The natural drainage channel for carrying off the overflow of the Nile, now the Bahr Yûsuf, being situate in the lowest lying lands, would of necessity be kept clear by the annual discharge of the waters from the inundated lands. On reaching the south end of the isolated piece of desert in front of Lahûn, part of its discharge would go east of this island, part to the west. The western discharge would, at Lahûn, either enter the Fayûm, or part would do so and part continue northwards. At the north end of the isolated piece of desert, the discharge, going northwards, would again divide up, some of it continuing to flow in the channel under the Libyan Desert, some finding its way back to the Nile near Wâstah. Under these circumstances the channel north of Lahûn would not be so likely to keep itself clear as the channel to the south of Lahûn. Thus the channel conducting the water to the Fayûm would remain clear, while that carrying the outflow would be less likely to do so. The outflow would also be more within soil (i.e. below the land surface) than the inflow and therefore under worse conditions for keeping its channel open. The outflow channel might therefore deteriorate, and, as there would be water flowing in it during the hot season at a low velocity, reeds might grow and obstruct the water-way. The draining of the Fayûm Lake would therefore be unsatisfactorily done, and the water would stand in it at a comparatively high level till the end of the summer. This would encourage the growth of rushes also in the Lahûn-Hawârah passage, which would check the inflow, and, while preventing the rise of the lake, would favour silt deposit. “This then,” in Mr. Petrie’s words, “was the state in which the great engineering monarchs 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.”

A channel to drain off the water at low Nile and reclaim the marshes would have been the first work to suggest itself, and the necessity for regulators, to prevent any excess of water from entering by the cleared channel, would then have been felt. The flow of water in the drain leading back to the Nile may have suggested the grand idea of utilising the lake as a regulator for the excesses and shortcomings of the Nile.

Amenemhat I., who was a sportsman, and prided himself on “hunting the lion and bringing back the crocodile a prisoner,” may have chosen the point which projected farthest into the Lake (now Medinet-el-Fayûm and Kom-Faris) for the site of his palace and garden. Here he would escape from the pestilential odours that he probably kept about him in his original home, and at the same time enjoy the desert air, cooled by the immense surface of the lake, on which he could indulge his taste for crocodile hunting. The natural attractions which so rare a combination of desert air and open space of water would afford, would probably, under the royal favour, have made the new watering place and sanatorium a fashionable resort for the aristocracy, who would soon have built villas on the borders of the lake along the esplanade of Crocodilopolis, or Shed, as its first name appears to have been.

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.

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.

The Edwah bank, however, does not stop at Biahmu, but (a fact Linant did not remark) continues in its first alignment to Kalabiîn, past Saliîn and Fidimîn, to a point a little to the north of Sinrû. (See Plate XXI.) Thence it curves round towards the south, and crosses the Abûksah Railway at a point half-way between Agamiîn and Abshiwâî (Abû Ginshû). At this crossing are extensive remains of an old town on the line of the bank. The remains of several smaller towns are also to be found between the railway and the point in the bank north of Sinrû, all on the line of the bank. From this length of bank other banks at different angles to the main bank seem to have existed; some appeared to go towards Medineh, others towards Abûksah in the direction of Lake Qurûn.

Following the main bank on the other side of the railway along contour R.L. 17·50 or thereabouts, a ravine is crossed, on the far edge of which, in the line of the bank, is a peculiar black mound, formed of layers of cinders or some material that has been blackened by fire. The bank is thence traceable for about a thousand metres more, continuing in a due southerly direction, and then it is lost among the thick plantations of date-trees which commence at this point and extend to Tobhâr.

Does it double back to Medineh through Talat and Sinbat; or continue along its contour through Tobhâr, Manâshi, Disyâ, Abgig, and to the desert near Azab? (See Map at end.) There were found no traces to show. A further examination of the ground on both sides of the Abûksah Railway has thrown no light on the matter. It would appear that the traces of the bank end somewhere in the triangle formed by joining the villages of Abû Ginshû, Agamiîn, and Sinrû.

I thought it might be possible that, either from near Sinrû or west of Agamiîn, the bank was carried up the slope, at right angles to the contours, to Medineh to close the side of the new area to be reclaimed, but I looked for its traces in vain. But, supposing the existence of this side-bank, the new area, enclosed by the bank joining Medineh, Sinrû (or Agamiîn), and Biahmu, and bounded also by the former bank from Biahmu to Medineh, would add about 10,000 feddans to that already reclaimed, bringing up the total to 27,000 feddans.

The want of a larger cultivable area would thus by these reclamations be partly met.

Now, as the artificial bank was formed along contour R.L. 17·50 (under the conditions assumed), and the water of the lake, as will be shown afterwards, never fell below R.L. 19·50, there would at lowest water be 2 metres depth of water up against the bank, and the most convenient point of embarkation and disembarkation for the inhabitants of Crocodilopolis on their way to Memphis would be at Biahmu, which they would reach by the road running along the top of the artificial bank formed between Crocodilopolis and Biahmu. They would take ship at Biahmu for the north-east corner of the lake, whence the desert route runs direct to Memphis. This is the direct road used to-day by the natives, who journey between Medineh (Crocodilopolis) and Bedreshên (Memphis), the road passing through Tamîyah, the site of which was, at the time that we are considering, 30 metres below water. (See Map at end.) It was therefore strictly correct to say that Lake Mœris lay between the Memphite and Arsinoïte Nomes.

The ruins at Biahmu, of which Plate XXII. shows the present condition, are not in the line of the main bank from Edwah to Kalabiîn, but about 300 metres to the north of it. It is probable, therefore, that they were placed at the end of a projecting bank, in connection with the main bank, alongside which boats could lie. The two colossal figures (Plate XXIV.) mounted on their pedestals would have formed splendid landmarks for ships crossing from the north shore of the lake.