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)
To retain and to control the exit of the water, a regulator B and
its bank _c d_ might have been added, where shown on the map, or
anywhere between B and the end of the narrow band of cultivation at
C. There is, however, no evidence to show that such works did exist,
but Strabo’s statement, the presence of the Lahûn pyramid and
the situation of the villages Lahûn and Manshîyah make it perhaps
probable that there were some important works connected with the
lake in their neighbourhood.
The reason for the peculiar alignment of the present bank _g_ D B _c_
which closes the gap into the Fayûm, is difficult to imagine, as
the bank is at least three times the length it would have been, if it
had been formed in a direct line across the gap. But it has suggested
itself to me, that the length B _c_ may be part of the original bank
_d_ B _c_, that may have crossed from side to side of the valley of
exit, and on which the villages of Lahûn and Manshîyah were built.
Trying to find some explanation for the alignment of the existing
bank, it had also occurred to me, that the line of the bank may have
followed the ridge of the bar, that would have been formed across
the wider part of the entrance to the Fayûm by the high level water
flowing in. This bar would, if it had existed, have been the first
land to show above water on the subsidence of the floods, and may
have been chosen, on the occasion of one of the repeated breaches at
Hawârat-el-Maqta, as the most convenient line for forming a bank
to shut out the Nile flood. But this would have been at a later
date, after Lake Mœris had ceased to perform its functions of a
Nile regulator.
However, I think the former supposition, that the bank B _c_ was part
of an old bank, formed for quite another than its present purpose,
and that the bank _g_ B was subsequently made between Lahûn and the
desert (perhaps when the existing old Lahûn regulator was made),
a more likely explanation. The length B _d_ would have disappeared
after it ceased to perform any useful function.
There may have been both, or one, or neither of the regulators A and
B, but if there was a regulator at Hawârah at the head of the lake
at F, there would have been little to be gained except additional
security from the regulator A.
If then we suppose that the bank _c_ B _d_ and the regulator B
only existed to collect the flood waters, and turn them into the
lake, and that a regulator at Hawârah at F also existed to keep
excess water out of the lake, such an arrangement would agree with
Strabo’s statement that “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
regulating the inflow and outflow.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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