ANCIENT TESTIMONY ABOUT LAKE MŒRIS.

Evidence concerning the existence of Lake Mœris, which has been briefly referred to in the Introduction, is to be gained from the following sources:—

The Egyptian monuments, in which are found inscriptions on stone and records on papyri.

The writings of Herodotus, who visited Egypt B.C. 450.

The writings of Diodorus Siculus, a Sicilian, and of Strabo, a Greek geographer and contemporary with Diodorus, about B.C. 25.

Lastly Pliny, A.D. 50 to 70.

It must be borne in mind, while reading their accounts, that, in attempting to give information as to the origin of Lake Mœris, they were undertaking a task beyond their powers, since, according to the scanty revelations of the monuments, which on this point are the only witnesses worthy of credence, the Lake Mœris existed 2000 years before Herodotus visited Egypt, and therefore must have been formed at a more remote date. What then these ancients may have been told as to the origin of Lake Mœris may well be classed with tradition, and be assigned its true value as such, but what they state, that they themselves saw, is as worthy of belief as statements found in the descriptions of any other sober historian’s personal experiences.

I am indebted to the Rev. Edwin Meyrick, M.A., for the translations of the passages from Herodotus, and to Mr. Edward Meyrick, of Marlborough College, for those from the other classics.

Translations from Ancient Authors, who have referred to Lake Mœris, and Arabic Tradition.

Herodotus, Book II. (B.C. 454).

“These twelve kings (who were governing Egypt at the time of which Herodotus was writing) agreed to leave a work which should make their names remembered, and, uniting all their powers, they built the Labyrinth, a little above the Lake Mœris, and situated as nearly as possible opposite the city called Crocodilopolis. (Here follows a description of the Labyrinth, in which it is stated to surpass the pyramids as a wonder of construction.)

“Adjoining the angle where the Labyrinth ends, is a pyramid, 240 feet high, on which large figures of animals are engraved. The entrance into this is subterranean.

“Now, the Labyrinth being such as I have described, the lake, named that of Mœris, causes still greater astonishment, on the bank of which this Labyrinth was built. The perimeter of this lake measures 3600 stadii, which is the same thing as 60 schœni. This measure is nearly equal to the entire seaboard of the whole of Egypt.

“This lake lies oblong north and south, being in its deepest part 50 fathoms deep. It tells its own story that it is artificially made, for about the middle of the lake stand two pyramids, out-topping the water 50 fathoms each, and that part of them which is built under water is as much more. On the top of each is a colossal figure in stone, seated on a throne. So these pyramids are 100 fathoms high. Now, 100 fathoms are exactly equal to a stadius, consisting of six plethra, seeing that the fathom is equal to 6 feet, or four cubits, a foot measuring four palms, a cubit six palms.

“The water in the lake is not derived from local sources, for the earth in that part is naturally excessively dry and waterless, but it is brought in from the Nile by a canal. It takes six months filling and six months flowing back. During the six months of the return flow, it yields a talent of silver each day to the Treasury, and during the flow in, twenty minæ from the fish.

“The people of the country also told me that this lake on its western face, inland along the mountain which is over Memphis, has an underground outlet into the Syrtis, which is in Libya. But when I nowhere saw the earth-mounds which came from this excavation (for this was much upon my mind) I questioned those who lived in the neighbourhood of the lake as to where the excavated material could be. They told me that it had been carried out, and without difficulty they led me to believe it. For I knew by report that a similar thing had taken place in Nineveh, the city of the Assyrians. For burglars contrived a plan to carry off the treasures of King Sardanapalus, son of Ninus, which were valuable and guarded in subterranean treasuries. These burglars then, starting from their own dwellings, and calculating the distance, tunnelled to the palace. And when night came on they carried out the material, which was removed from the excavation into the river Tigris, which flows past Nineveh, until they accomplished what they wished. In a similar way to this I heard that the excavation also of the lake in Egypt had been carried out (except that it was done by daylight, not by night), inasmuch as the excavators carried the material to the Nile, and the Nile, receiving it, would disperse it. In this way the lake is said to have been excavated.”

Strabo, Book XVII. (B.C. 24).

Writing of the Arsinoïte Nome he says, “This province is the most remarkable of all in appearance, natural properties, and embellishment. It grows olive-trees which bear fruit. It produces wine in abundance, corn, pulse, and a great variety of other grains. . . .

“It has also a remarkable lake called the Lake of Mœris, large enough to be called a sea, and resembling the open sea in colour; its shores are also similar in appearance to sea-beaches, whence we may suspect a community of nature between them and the district about Ammon. For they are in fact not far distant from one another or from Parætonium, and as there is good reason to suppose that the latter temple formerly stood on the sea-shore, so also this district must formerly have been littoral. Lower Egypt and the parts towards the Serbonian Lake were then covered by the sea, perhaps connected with the Red Sea by Heroöpolis and the Elanitic Gulf. . . .

“Thus, the Lake of Mœris is, from its size and depth, capable of receiving the overflow of the Nile at its rising, and preventing the flooding of houses and gardens; when the river falls, the lake again discharges the water by a canal at both orifices, and it is available for irrigation. There are regulators at both ends of the canal for controlling the inflow and outflow. Near these is an immense stone Labyrinth, a work comparable with the Pyramids; and the tomb of the king who constructed it. . . .

“Sailing 100 furlongs further one comes to the city Arsinoë, formerly called Crocodilopolis.”

Diodorus Siculus, Book I. Chap. LI. (about B.C. 20).

“He (King Mœris) dug a lake 600 furlongs above the city (Memphis), which is amazingly useful and incredibly large. Its circumference is said to be 3600 furlongs, and its depth in most parts 50 fathoms. . . . For as the rising of the Nile is irregular, and the fertility of the country depends on its uniformity, he dug the lake for the reception of the superfluous water. And he constructed a canal from the river to the lake 80 furlongs in length and 300 feet in breadth. Through this he admitted or let out water as required, the mouth being opened or closed by an elaborate and costly process (for it cost not less than 50 talents whenever any one wished to open or close the mechanism). This lake has continued to serve the Egyptians for this purpose down to our own times, and is called the Lake of Mœris after its constructor. When the king dug it he left in the centre a place on which he built a tomb and two pyramids, one for himself and the other for his wife, a furlong in height, expecting thus to leave an immortal reputation for his benefactions. The revenue of the fisheries in the lake he gave to his wife for her allowance for perfumes and cosmetics generally; they brought in a sum of a talent of silver daily; for there are said to be twenty-two kinds of fish in it, and the quantity taken is so large that the numerous hands engaged in the salt-curing industry can hardly keep pace with the work.”

Pliny, Nat. Hist., Book V. Chap. 9 (A.D. 50-70).

“Between the nomes of Arsinoë and Memphis was a lake, 250 miles (i.e. Roman miles) in circumference; or, as Mucianus tells us, 450 miles in circumference and 50 paces in depth, artificially constructed, called the Lake of Mœris, from the king who made it. Seventy-two miles distant from this is Memphis, formerly the capital of Egypt.”

Pliny, Nat. Hist., Book XXXVI. Chap. 16.

“There were two other pyramids near the Lake of Mœris, which is a large excavation.”

Arabic Tradition,

as given by Mr. Cope Whitehouse in his article entitled “The Expansion of Egypt” in the Contemporary Review, September 1887, translated from an Arabic manuscript which once belonged to Cardinal Mazarin:—

“Joseph, to whom may Allah show mercy and grant peace, when he was Prime Minister of Egypt and high in favour with Raiyan, his sovereign, after that he was more than a hundred years old, became an object of envy to the favourites of the king and the puissant seigneurs of the Court of Memphis, on account of the great power which he wielded and the affection entertained for him by his monarch. They accordingly thus addressed the king: ‘Great king, Joseph is now very old; his knowledge has diminished; his beauty has faded; his judgment is unsound; his sagacity has failed.’ The king said: ‘Set him a task which shall serve as a test.’ At that time el-Fayoum was called el-Hun, or the Marsh. It served as a waste basin for the waters of Upper Egypt, which flowed in and out unrestrained. The courtiers having taken counsel together what to propose to the king, gave this reply to Pharaoh: ‘Lay the royal commands upon Joseph that he shall divert the water of the Nile from el-Hun and drain it, so as to give you a new province and an additional source of revenue.’ The king assented, and summoning Joseph to his presence, said: ‘You know how dearly I love my daughter, and you see that the time has arrived in which I ought to carve out an estate for her out of the crown lands, and give her a separate establishment, of which she would be the mistress. I have, however, no territory available for this purpose except the submerged land of el-Hun. It is in many respects favourably situated. It is a convenient distance from my capital. It is surrounded by desert. My daughter will thus be independent and protected.’ ‘Quite true, great king,’ responded Joseph, ‘when would you wish it done? for accomplished it shall be by the aid of Allah, the all-powerful.’ ‘The sooner, the better,’ said the king. Then Allah inspired Joseph with a plan. He directed him to make three canals; one from Upper Egypt, a canal on the east, and a canal on the west. Joseph collected workmen and dug the canal of Menhi from Ashmunîn to el-Lahûn. Then he excavated the canal of el-Fayoum, and the eastern canal, with another canal near it called Ben-Hamed to the west. In this way the water was drained from el-Hun; then he set an army of labourers at work. They cut down the tamarisks and bushes which grew there and carried them away. At the season when the Nile begins to rise the marsh had been converted into good cultivable land. The Nile rose; the water entered the mouth of the Menhi canal and flowed down the Nile Valley to el-Lahûn; thence it turned towards el-Fayoum, and entered that canal in such volume that it filled it, and converted the land into a region irrigated by the Nile. King Raiyan thereupon came to see his new province with the courtiers who had advised him to set Joseph this task. When they saw the result they greatly marvelled at the skill and inventive genius of Joseph, and exclaimed: ‘We do not know which most to admire, the draining of the marsh and the destruction of the noxious plants, or the conversion of its surface into fertile and well-watered fields.’ Then the King said to Joseph, ‘How long did it take you to bring this district into the excellent state in which I find it?’ ‘Seventy days,’ responded Joseph. Then Pharaoh turned to his courtiers and said: ‘Apparently one could not have done it in a thousand days.’ Thus the name was changed from el-Hun, or the Marsh, to el-Fayoum, ‘the land of a thousand days.’”

This pun is not to be appreciated in the translation without a knowledge of Arabic. Elf is the Arabic for a thousand, and yôm for a day; elf-yôm being a thousand days. As the work took seventy days to complete, according to the tradition, it does not appear clear why it should have been called “the land of a thousand days” instead of “the land of seventy days.” But the tradition must not be criticised, as it will not stand it.

The name Fayûm is derived from an old Coptic word phiûm signifying a sea or lake; el is simply the definite article.

THEORIES AS TO WHERE AND WHAT LAKE MŒRIS WAS.

Postulates.—There seems to be a general agreement that Lake Mœris was in the Fayûm, the evidence being conclusive. There is, further, no disposition shown to question the fact, that the Labyrinth and the pyramid alongside it, were on the borders of Lake Mœris, and that the present capital of the Fayûm, Medineh or Medinet-el-Fayûm, occupies part of the site of the ancient town of Crocodilopolis, or, as it was called afterwards, Arsinoë.

There seems also to be sufficient evidence for accepting the conclusion, that the site of the Labyrinth was at the foot of the Hawârah pyramid.

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.

These statements are not in the original language in which they were made, and may be inaccurately translated, where accurate rendering is important. I have found for instance in different publications the two following translations of the same passage in Diodorus:—

(a) “A little south of Memphis a canal was cut for a lake, brought down in length from the city 40 miles.”

(b) “And a little above the city he cut a dyke for a pond, bringing it down in length from the city 320 furlongs.” (Translation by G. Booth.)

A canal and dyke are not synonymous terms, in all parts of England at any rate; nor are lake and pond.

Some of the statements are founded also on hearsay when they were first made, and the ancestors of the present inhabitants of the Fayûm may, for all that is known, have had as great a tendency to the widest possible departure from scientific accuracy of statement in their verbal representation of facts, as it is notorious that their modern successors have. Hence it is not surprising that human nature, which has a parental prejudice in favour of any theory to which it may have given birth, should take advantage of these weak points to the benefit of its offspring.

We will then proceed to discuss the present generation of theories, which exemplify this principle.

LINANT THEORY.

The most important of these theories is that of Linant de Bellefonds Pasha, once Minister of Public Works in Egypt.

His views will be found in Chapter II. of his ‘Mémoires sur les Principaux Travaux d’utilité publique exécutés en Egypte depuis la plus haute antiquité jusqu’à nos jours, 1872-1873.’

His theory, which defines the form and limits of Lake Mœris, appears to have been generally accepted after being propounded, and still to be the accepted theory with many, who have not, by a personal acquaintance with the Fayûm and its actual conformation and levels, corrected the ideas which they had accepted on the authority of Linant Pasha.

(For the names of places quoted from M. Linant’s writings I have adopted the more modern way of spelling, as otherwise the places might not be recognised. For instance, had it not been for the context, I should not have been able to recognise the village known as Abûksah in “Bogça.”)