The Fayûm and Lake MœrisBrown, R. H. (Robert Hanbury)
History
The Fayûm and Lake Mœris
Brown, R. H. (Robert Hanbury)
Fayyum (Egypt) -- Description and travel; Moeris, Lake (Egypt)
Using another distinct itinerary from the Nile Valley, the route
passes to Arsinoë (the modern Medinet-el-Fayûm) and Ptolemais
(the modern Talît), and then on to Behnesa, without any connection
being made with the Bakkhis-Dionysias route. Hence it is presumed
that these two routes did not cross each other. It is therefore
concluded that Dionysias can be identified neither with the ruins on
the Wadi Muellah (as Cope Whitehouse identifies it), nor with Lahûn,
and that it was probably on the west of Lake Mœris. Mr. Petrie
(to whom I am indebted for the whole of this reasoning) supposes
Bakkhis to have been at Dimeh (Dimay), and Dionysias somewhere at
the extreme south-west of the Raiân valley.
If this conclusion is right, and if the Fayûm, or the Wadi Raiân,
was the Lake Mœris of Ptolemy, the Lake has been placed too much
to the west on the map, and should have been shown on the east of
the line joining Bakkhis and Dionysias. In any case the Ptolemaic
evidence, when sifted, does not support Cope Whitehouse’s theory,
that the Wadi Raiân was the “Mœridis Lacus” of Ptolemy.
To show what little faith can be put in the identification of
some of the ancient towns with modern remains, I may mention that
Dr. Schweinfurth says of the monastery in the Wadi Raiân, that
it is “evidently the Bakkhis of Ptolemy.” Thus we have this
monastery identified as Dionysias by Cope Whitehouse, as Bakkhis by
Dr. Schweinfurth, whereas Flinders Petrie places both Dionysias and
Bakkhis on the far side of the Fayûm depression. Who shall decide
when savants disagree?
In his papers on Lake Mœris, Mr. Whitehouse makes reference to _two_
lakes, and I believe his theory of two lakes is based on some ancient
maps.[5] I have not seen the map or maps, but I should expect the
lakes represented to be intended for Lake Qurûn in the Fayûm,
and a corresponding lake in the Gharaq basin. The Gharaq basin is
the Fayûm depression repeated on a small scale, and at some period
of its development towards total reclamation from the waters that
covered it, it must have had a lake at its south and lowest end,
corresponding to the Birket-el-Qurûn, but of smaller dimensions.
The Gharaq basin is connected with the Fayûm depression by a gap in
its surrounding higher lands with sill at R.L. 16·00. Consequently
the basin would not have begun to dry up from evaporation till the
Fayûm Lake had fallen below R.L. 16·00, and probably the fall was
not continuous, but, through some accident at Hawârah or elsewhere,
the Fayûm Lake, after falling below R.L. 16·00, may have risen
again and re-drowned the reclaimed land in the Gharaq. This may have
occurred more than once, and have given rise to the name “Gharaq,”
or the “Flooded.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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