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