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)
The Edwah-Sinrû bank would have been subjected to most severe wave
action, and could not have stood, unless we suppose it to have
been well revetted with stone on the lake face. Probably it was,
but the stone has entirely disappeared, a thing not incredible, when
one considers how little has been left of the wonderful Labyrinth
described by Herodotus and others after him.
But if the conclusion, that the Nile water-levels have risen at
the rate of 4 inches a century, be a correct one, and if it may be
assumed that the rise has been continuous and uniform in historic
times, the levels at the time of the XIIth dynasty (B.C. 2500), when
Lake Mœris is supposed to have been formed, would have been about
4½ metres lower than at present. Under such conditions R.L. 23·50
would have been the highest level reached by the floods at the
Lahûn entrance; and therefore, at the site of the modern Medineh,
the water-level would have been somewhat lower. Such a state of things
would have permitted the establishment of the town “Shad” without
the necessity of any arrangements for controlling the admission
of the water. To what minimum levels the Nile fell, after it had
first flowed at higher levels, and how far back the change from a
deepening of its bed by scour to a raising of it by deposit took
place is a geological question; but if the Nile flood maximum ever
fell as low as about R.L. 18·00 at the Lahûn entrance, no water
would have entered the Fayûm, since the rock bed at Hawârah is
somewhere about this level. (Linant’s Hawârah sill at R.L. 21·00
is known to be higher than the bed of the natural channel, which runs
between the village of Hawârat-el-Maqta and the Hawârah pyramid.)
Imagination thus may draw another picture of a time when, after the
Fayûm deposit had been laid down by the Nile flowing at high levels,
the gradual scouring of the Nile bed lowered the flood water surface
to such an extent that the supply, which kept the Fayûm Lake full,
was gradually shut off, until, at last, the maximum flood level
falling below that of the lowest rock surface between Lahûn and
Hawârah, no water would have flowed into the Fayûm, and the lake
would have dried up and left the land barren for want of a water
supply.
After the opposite action set in and the Nile levels rose again,
the flow into the Fayûm would recommence and gradually increase
century by century, until at last levels would be reached favourable
to the establishment of the town “Shad” on the site of the
modern Medineh.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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