Chapter IV (2)

It is supposed by some that the ruins at Biahmu (Plate XXII.) are the remains of what Herodotus described as pyramids. Possibly they are, but it seems a somewhat feebly supported supposition. Though a colossus on the top of a pyramid is not what one would expect to find there, and the dimensions of the pyramids given by Herodotus are, of course, obtained second-hand and may be worthy of little reliance, still the evidence, that the Biahmu ruins are the remains of what he referred to, does not seem to me convincing.

RESTORATION OF A COLOSSUS, BIAHMU, FAYÛM.

Reproduced from Petrie’s ‘Hawara, Biahmu, and Arsinoë.’]

Mr. Flinders Petrie considers that these ruins are the remains of what was once a place of embarkation and disembarkation on the lake, consisting of a flight of steps, flanked by two colossi raised on high pedestals. In one of his publications he has pictorially reproduced these colossi, their pedestals and enclosure walls, in a most complete manner (Plate XXIII.), his only personal acquaintance with the figures consisting of a broken nose and fragments of stone drapery, discovered among the débris of their ruins. To one of the uninitiated, even after studying the evidence adduced by Mr. Petrie, there appears to be a great deal of esoteric ingenuity or imagination in the process of reproduction, but one or the other of these gifts is a necessity in dealing with anything Egyptological on account of the incompleteness of the historical records. Plate XXIII. gives a reproduction of Mr. Petrie’s restoration, and Plate XXII. is from a photograph of the ruins as they exist now. The reduced levels have been added by me.

In Mr. Petrie’s restoration he has shown the worshipper down below, standing on the general country level. My idea is that the interior of the courtyard was filled up to the level of the surrounding wall and formed a landing-place, as I have indicated in Plate XXIV. by the upper figure and the boats. If the water stood up against the courtyard wall, as I have shown, since there is no mortar in the joints of the masonry, the man below (as shown in Mr. Petrie’s unmodified representation) would have been drowned out.

This landing-place was probably connected at the back by a bank with the main bank running through Biahmu.

It appears that some say that the lake waters flowed into and out of the lake by one and the same channel, and that others say there were two canals, one for the inflow and another for the outflow. These two accounts may be reconciled by supposing that the former referred to the canal south of Abûsir-el-Malaq, which is a single canal, Plate XXI., and that the latter referred to the channels, one of which was for the inflow from the Nile near Ashment, to Abûsir-el-Malaq, and the other for the outflow from Abûsir-el-Malaq to Memphis or perhaps to the point on the Nile where Kosheshah Escape stands. Strabo is obscure on this point. He writes:—“Then follows the Heracleöte Nome, in a large island, near which is the canal on the right hand, which leads into Libya, in the direction of the Arsinoïte Nome; so that the canal has two entrances, a part of the island on one side being interposed between them.” Possibly this refers to the isolated bit of desert in front of and to the east of Lahûn, which is “a part of the island” interposed between the Bahr Yûsuf coming from the south and passing to Lahûn on the left of the island, and the Magnûnah canal or special lake-feeder, which passes on the right of the island, turns south towards Lahûn and leads into Libya in the direction of the Arsinoïte Nome.

MODIFIED REPRESENTATION OF THE BIAHMU RUINS RESTORED.]

I have consulted Smith’s ‘Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography,’ to find out what the editor considered to be the accepted views about Lake Mœris in 1868. Under “Mœris Lacus” I find that the views stated agree in the main with those favoured in this paper. Linant’s theory is not referred to, and probably had not been heard of by the editor. The following passage about the connecting canal occurs in the Dictionary, which can hardly be made to refer to the Bahr Yûsuf as the main lake-feeder, though assumed to do so in the passage itself:—“There are grounds for supposing that ancient travellers did not always distinguish between the connecting canal, the Bahr Yûsuf, and Mœris itself. The canal was unquestionably constructed by man’s labour, nor would it present any insuperable difficulties to a people so laborious as the Egyptians. If, then, we distinguished, as Strabo did, the canal from the lake, the ancient narratives may be easily reconciled with one another and with modern surveys. Even the words of Herodotus may apply to the canal, which was of considerable extent, beginning at Hermopolis (Ashmunîn) and running four leagues west, and then turning from north to south for three leagues more, until it reaches the lake.”

Now the old Magnûnah Canal, with its mouth on the river near Ashment, goes west for a little over three leagues to Abûsir-el-Malaq, and then turns _from north to south_ for three leagues till it reaches Lahûn. (Plate XXI.) As it is a remarkable thing to find a canal in the Nile Valley which runs from north to south, the near agreement of these figures and directions is a remarkable coincidence, if it is nothing more.

There is another coincidence which may well be accidental, but is worth noticing. Arab tradition is, I believe, the authority for placing the mouth of the connecting canal at Ashmunîn. “Joseph collected workmen and dug the canal of Menhi from Ashmunîn to el-Lahûn.”

Now the mouth of the old Magnûnah Canal, which I have been supposing may have been the canal of inflow, had one of its mouths near “Ashment.” Can a misprint have been responsible for “Ashment” being changed into “Ashmunîn,” or may it not have been changed during the process of handing down the tradition orally, the name of the larger town Ashmunîn being substituted when the lesser Ashment lost its importance and its notoriety after Lake Mœris ceased to be?

But all these speculations must be modified, _but not more than modified_, if what follows is a more correct view of the conditions of the Nile at the time of Herodotus.

Hitherto I have assumed that the levels of maximum and minimum Nile were the same in his time as they are now.

But it is supposed that the Nile levels at that time were about 2 metres lower than they are now, and it is necessary to consider in what way such a change of conditions would modify the views of what Lake Mœris was and did, as given in the foregoing arguments and calculations.

The supposition, or certainty, that the Nile in the time of Herodotus was about 2 metres lower in level than it is now, is based on the following observations, which Mr. Petrie has given me. He estimates that the rate of rise has been about 4 inches a century. This, he states, is shown by a Roman wall at Tanis and by the town-level of Naukratis, both old towns in Lower Egypt. The old tombs at Memphis are now under water. At Edfu the High Nile rises shoulder high on the walls, which shows a rise of 4 inches or more per century. At Aswân (Assouan) the records of High Niles on the Roman Nilometer show that they were lower than now by an amount calculated at a rate of 4 inches per century.

There is also, Mr. Petrie adds, other evidence of the same sort, but less definite, giving the same general result.

If now we suppose the Fayûm (Lake Mœris) filled to R.L. 20·50 and emptied to R.L. 17·50, there is nothing to be changed in the calculations, except the maximum and minimum surface levels of the lake. Thus there would be a rather, but not much, larger area reclaimed and the Edwah-Biahmu bank would have been formed along the edge of the lake at lowest water, instead of in two metres of water. This modified view of its formation would seem to be more probable than that which supposed it to have been formed in water.

If, however, we suppose the lake still filled to R.L. 22·50 as a maximum, while its lowest level reached R.L. 17·50, the discharges found to have been necessary to fill the lake (under the conditions previously assumed excepting as regards minimum level), must be increased by 50 per cent., and the figures representing the return-flow be doubled.

In all probability the maximum level of the lake was somewhere between R.L. 22·50 and 20·50, and may be taken as varying from R.L. 22·00 to 21·00.

The lake may have been chiefly filled by the Bahr Yûsuf and the flood waters inundating the Nile Valley, but, to fulfil the conditions of a six months’ flow-in and six months flow-out of the lake, under the new conditions supposed, and retaining a maximum lake-level of R.L. 22·50, the canal of supply would have to have its off-take from the Nile moved to a point about half-way between Beni Suef and Biba. Supposing the Bahr Yûsuf and the flood water of the Nile Valley filled this lake during the flood months and the Bahr Yûsuf ceased to flow with the end of the flood, the canal from between Beni Suef and Biba would have had to supply only about 10 million cubic metres a day to make good the loss by evaporation, if the lake-level was not to be allowed to fall below R.L. 22·50 till the return-flow to the Nile was required. But there is no reason to suppose this to have been a necessity. With a lowest level of 17·50 instead of 19·50, the problem of the lake as a relieving and supplementing reservoir to the Nile, with houses and cultivation above its highest levels, is much simplified, and a large margin is given between R.L. 20·50 and 22·50 for increasing the volumes given in my former calculations, to render the lake a more efficient safety-valve for excessive floods, and for moderating the fall of the Nile to low discharges by giving back to it a more abundant outflow.

Accepting this view of the range of the lake-levels, we shall have to look upon the Magnûnah Canal and its branches as channels of return-flow to the Nile for the commencement of the period of outflow, which would afterwards cease to carry any discharge in summer, when the lake-level had fallen below about R.L. 19·00. For the remaining period of outflow the Kosheshah Escape branch from Abûsir-el-Malaq to the Nile and the branch to Memphis skirting the Libyan Hills, would have carried all the discharge returning to the Nile Valley.

The peculiar isolated piece of Nile desert opposite Lahûn and the cultivated strip of land between it and the main desert, through which the Bahr Yûsuf flows into the Fayûm, seems to lend itself to the regulation of the entry and exit of the Nile waters. To control the entry of the waters a regulator A and cross bank _a b_ from the island desert across the Bahr Yûsuf to the main desert on the west could have been made. (See map, Plate XXI.)

The excess water, excluded from the lake by regulation on A, would have found its way along the east of the patch of desert as it does to-day.

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.”

The part A _b_ of one of these suggested banks exists to-day, as a lately abandoned basin bank, with regulators in it, but there is nothing, that I know of, to show that it existed in the time of Lake Mœris. At the western desert end, _a_, of the supposed bank, stands the village Tamma. Dr. Schweinfurth says this is certainly an ancient Egyptian name, and he describes some remarkable mounds of pure black Nile earth, containing no trace of bricks, sherds, stones from buildings, or other things, which lie just to the south of the modern village in four symmetrically placed hills, containing about 300,000 cubic metres.

Possibly the ancient Tamma was in some way connected with Lake Mœris, but the riddle of the mounds has not yet been solved. They appeared to me to be the remains of the mouth of a canal taking off from a bend of the Bahr Yûsuf, but the great height and contour of the mounds and the abruptness with which they commence and terminate are not to be easily accounted for. The alignment of the canal, if such it was, points towards the entrance valley to the Fayûm.

On the east of Lahûn village there are also some mounds of moderate height, but of short length, which are evidently the remains of two old parallel canals, both pointing in the direction of the Fayûm. The abruptness with which these banks begin and end is also remarkable.

Supposing then, that the Nile levels in the time of Herodotus were 2 metres lower than those of to-day, the conception of Lake Mœris must be modified as follows:—

The lowest level to which Lake Mœris fell in summer was R.L. 17·50 above mean sea, and it was filled to levels ranging between R.L. 20·50 and 22·50, but its level was never allowed to exceed the latter level. Probably there was a regulator and bank passing through Lahûn from west to east between the main and detached desert preventing the flow of the Bahr Yûsuf waters to the north, and so diverting them into Lake Mœris; and also another regulator at Hawârah to forbid the admission of an excessive volume into the lake (Plate XXI.). On each side of this latter regulator may have been sluices, on the right to feed a canal to irrigate during flood time the high land, between Hawârah pyramid and the present railway line, along the course of the old Bahr Wardan; and on the left to admit water into the reclaimed tract round about Crocodilopolis, perhaps along the present course of the Bahr Yûsuf, for irrigation and navigation.

The old Edwah-Biahmu-Sinrû bank, instead of having been formed in water, would have been thrown up along the edge of the water when at its lowest level. The Biahmu landing-place would have been projected into the lake to obtain a quay for embarkation and disembarkation and possibly a channel would have been dug between the two colossi, so that boats might come alongside even at low water; a channel about 2 metres deep being sufficient.

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.

The Nile continuing to rise, protecting banks to keep the waters of the lake, when at flood levels, from the cultivation and habitations would have been found necessary, and at last the capital itself would have been threatened by the gradually increasing level reached by the highest floods. Then, if not before, measures to regulate the inflow and to facilitate the outflow would be taken to protect the highest parts of the province from submersion, and means such as those suggested before would be resorted to to reclaim some of the invaded lands.

Since the foregoing was written, Brugsch Pasha, a leading Egyptologist, has delivered a lecture in Cairo to the Khedivial Geographical Society on the 8th April, 1892, from which I quote the following passage, showing that the Pasha’s conclusions, drawn from a study of the monuments, agree with the conclusions I have arrived at from a study of the levels and features of the ground in the neighbourhood of Hawârah.

“Nul doute que le vaste gouffre de 20-30 mètres de hauteur qui s’ouvre entre les bords occidentaux du désert de Hawara et les terrains cultivés du côté opposé est, qui, maintenant, porte le nom de “la Mer sans eau” (_Bahr-bela-ma_) formait anciennement une partie du lac Mœris. C’est ainsi que ce dernier avait acquis fortuitement une signification funéraire en rapport avec le culte des morts, qui, d’après la tradition en vogue chez les anciens Égyptiens, devaient passer en bateau le Nil ou un lac pour aborder au port de la nécropole et à l’entrée du monde souterrain. Hawara représentait depuis les temps de la XIIme dynastie le cimetière de la ville Crocodilopolis-Arsinoë, près de Medinet-el-Fayoum; les défunts étaient transportés sur les canaux jusqu’au lac, qu’ils traversaient pour arriver au port de la nécropole. Les textes que j’ai consultés lors de mon dernier séjour à Hawara, ne parlent de la terre du lac qu’en la mettant en rapport avec l’Osiris de la nécropole de Hawara.

“Un canal principal (ou si l’on veut plusieurs peut-être) conduisait l’eau du lac au pied du plateau de Hawara vers la métropole qui, à l’époque des Pharaons, s’appelait “Shad” et dont l’existence remonte au moins jusqu’au règne d’Amenemhê Ier, le fondateur de la XIIme dynastie. Les dernières fouilles que j’ai exécutées à Médineh, mettent ce fait hors de doute. Il paraît même que l’ancienne ville de Shad formait la résidence des rois de cette dynastie, dont les pyramides s’élèvent sur le sol de la terre du lac.”

This statement about the principal canal (or several canals), leading from the lake at the foot of Hawârah towards “Shad,” accords with my conceptions of the lake, but not with Linant’s; as in _his_ theory all this plateau between Hawârah and the modern Medineh, or ancient Shad, was lake, and a canal or canals could not have been made in the lake itself. If then this fact about a canal leading from the lake at the foot of Hawârah to Shad is proved beyond a doubt, Linant’s theory is disproved by Brugsch Pasha himself, though he previously states that no “savant sérieux” is opposed to it.

In this same paper, from which I am quoting, this further passage also occurs, which agrees with what I have imagined to have been the early history of the town, on part of the ruins of which Medineh now stands.

“La terre du lac, ainsi que je l’ai déjà fait remarquer, a dû exister au commencement de la XIIme dynastie, dont le premier roi, Amenemhè Ier, avait fondé au bord de la ville Médineh un sanctuaire au Dieu Sobk. Au delà de cette époque je ne trouve aucune trace de sa mention dans les textes de l’ancien empire: l’œuvre de l’arrosement du Fayoum par un canal du Nil doit donc être reportée au moins jusqu’à l’époque du roi que je viens de citer. Également à cette époque, la fondation d’un sanctuaire et d’un palais royal fait supposer l’existence d’une résidence, c’est-à-dire d’une grande ville à laquelle le canal Hounet fournissait ses eaux.

“Tout porte à croire que le canal fut creusé longtemps avant le XIIme dynastie, car une résidence ne s’établit pas dans un pays inhabitable ou qui venait à peine d’être arrosé. L’opinion que les rois de la XIIme dynastie doivent être regardés comme les créateurs du canal Hounet n’est plus à soutenir, le Fayoum ‘la terre du lac’ date certainement d’une époque de beaucoup antérieure à la XIIme dynastie, et les rois de cette maison royale, pour des raisons que nous ignorons, ont seulement choisi cette terre pour y transférer leur résidence et les temples de leurs divinités.”

How this view is made to accord with the Linant Lake conception is not clear, but it is not opposed to the idea that a natural lake, connected by a natural channel with the Nile Valley, existed and made the growth of the town “Shad” a possibility before the canal was remodelled, and control of the entry and exit of the waters introduced by the engineering monarchs of the XIIth dynasty.

TRANSFORMATION OF LAKE MŒRIS INTO THE FAYÛM OF TO-DAY.

Assuming that the conception of Lake Mœris, as given in this paper, is a true one, we have now to consider how the change to present conditions in the Fayûm came about.

In the passage quoted from ‘Hawara, Biahmu, and Arsinoë,’ Mr. Petrie states that “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 the inflow, and gradually drying up the lake.”

Mr. Cope Whitehouse, in one of his papers, points out that Mœris, in its character of regulator and reservoir, existed chiefly for remote provinces, and therefore required for its maintenance a strong central government with sufficient administrative skill and energy to take the necessary steps and to expend the necessary amount of money to secure the maintenance of the reservoir, canal, and regulators in working order. Under a careless government, or while anarchy, or internal or external troubles weakened administration, the private interests of individuals who were on the spot to assert themselves, would have prevailed over the public claims of the Northerners, powerless to keep watch over and to insist upon their rights from the distant towns of the Delta. A corrupt Public Works Department, uncontrolled by a chief with broad views of what was desirable in the general interests of Egypt, may have permitted each chief engineer of a nome to do what seemed good in his own eyes for the profit of the particular part of Egypt in which he was the Public Works officer. If we imagine that he had scruples, there have not been absent, in the modern history of the Irrigation Department of Egypt, instances of the application of means for overcoming scruples, and, as so much else in the customs of the country can be traced back to that far past time when Lake Mœris must have been languishing towards extinction, we may also suppose that the Eastern salve for tender consciences was applied and the scruples overcome.

But whatever the cause (and there is nothing but speculation, which can help us to imagine it), at some time or other, either by a gradual or sudden process, Lake Mœris ceased to perform its offices of regulator and reservoir, which had won for it the admiration of all who visited it. Having once reached the stage when it ceased to be useful in supplementing the low Nile, there would be nothing to prevent measures being taken to exclude all water, but such as was necessary for the irrigation of the reclaimed areas. Evaporation would lower the Lake level year by year, and leave more land uncovered. Year by year the Lake would contract itself, and retire to lower levels, until it had reached the present dimensions of the modern Lake Qurûn, whose water surface at the commencement of May 1892 was 43·50 metres below mean sea-level. The rate of the lake’s retreat was doubtless not uniform and continuous, but was retarded by accidents and breaches of the barrier, raised against the Nile floods, causing a return of the water over reclaimed lands. The deep ravines of the Fayûm are nature’s bold strokes on the face of the province, which record some of the victories of the water, in its efforts to fulfil the law imposed on it to find its own level, over man’s endeavours to control this law.

Evaporation by itself, had its results not been vitiated by other causes, would have lowered the lake surface by about 2 metres a year, but the drainage and waste from the reclaimed area under irrigation would have retarded the fall, and breaches would probably have occasionally converted the fall into a rise. It is therefore difficult to assign dates for different levels of the lake surface, but probably the old towns at different levels around the borders of the Fayûm, so far as their dates can be fixed, will, when their levels have been correctly ascertained, throw some light on this subject.

The former manner of conducting the irrigation of parts of the province would have caused a much larger proportionate discharge into the lake, than finds its way to it at present. Considerable areas were enclosed by banks, and inundated under the Basin system, known in the Fayûm as “Malaq,” in contradistinction to irrigation by small field channels, a system called “Misqâwi.” The contents of these small basins, when emptied, flowed into the lake. On the south side of the Fayûm there was, until late years, a large basin known as “Hod-el-Tuyûr” (the Basin of the Birds), which was formed by building an immense wall across a fold of contour R.L. 15·00. The top of this wall is about R.L. 16·00. The bed of the basin is at R.L. 12·00, so we may conclude that, when this wall was built, the lake levels must have been at any rate below R.L. 12·00. This basin was abolished in 1886, and ordinary perennial irrigation introduced over the area formerly included within the basin limits. Since then the fall of the lake surface has been more rapid, in spite of its annually diminishing evaporating area.

The existing lake, which is the rudiment of the large lake that once filled the whole of the Fayûm depression, is called Lake Qurûn, or el-Qurn, the Lake of the Horns, or the Horn, apparently so named from a rock that projects into the lake from its west side and called “el-Qurn.”

It is evident, from the levels of the rock bed underlying the Nile deposit near Hawârah, that the original course of the waters flowing into Lake Mœris (after it became Lake Mœris by introducing means of controlling its waters) must have been along the ravine which runs to the north of the modern village of Hawârat-el-Maqta. The bed of the present Bahr Yûsuf, at a point about a kilometre below that village, is rock at R.L. 21·00, and this rock joins the high desert on the south of the Bahr Yûsuf. But on the north it dips down, and close under Hawârat-el-Maqta has been found to have its original surface at R.L. 19·17, dipping still lower towards the north-east. Plate XXV. gives cross-sections of the entrance valley of the Fayûm, and also of the ravine behind Hawârat-el-Maqta.

“Hawârat-el-Maqta” signifies “Hawârah of the Breach,” and round about this village lay the battlefields where many a struggle was made by man to get the mastery of the water, until he at last prevailed. Massive walls and solid banks, retaining the Bahr Yûsuf in its high level channel, and barring the passage into ravines, scoured out by previous torrents of water bursting away from control, mark the sites of many a breach, and suggest sleepless and anxious nights of hard labour for the wretched irrigation officer in charge in the days when the water seemed to have asserted its rights to flow where it pleased.

On the left of the Bahr Yûsuf are the remains of a channel, which was clearly a temporary one for carrying the water, while a breach near Hawârat-el-Maqta was being repaired. Linant Pasha tells of the occurrence of one of these breaches on the west of Hawârat-el-Maqta as late as the commencement of this century (in 1819 or 1820). He states that this breach caused much damage. An attempt was made to close it during the floods, but in spite of all that could be done, and in spite of the energy of the people employed by Mehemet Ali, it was not till after six months at the time of low water that the closure was effected. It appears that the old bridge at Lahûn (the only one existing at the time) could not be closed, when the breach occurred, probably for want of suitable closing apparatus. This breach was down-stream of the rock bed in the Bahr Yûsuf.

When the level of Lake Mœris was kept up to levels above R.L. 17·50, the regulator at Hawârah near the Labyrinth, which I have supposed controlled the entry of the water into the lake, would have admitted the flood waters freely until the lake rose to the maximum allowable, say R.L. 22·00. If then closed, and supposing the Nile levels to have been 2 metres lower then than now, the regulator would probably have been subjected to a head of about 3 metres as a maximum, but afterwards when Lake Mœris ceased its functions and the lake fell to low levels, the regulator would have had to hold up a head of water equal to the depth of water on its floor, in order to exclude the water from the lake. The right and left side channels would have taken in water from above the regulator for irrigating the reclaimed tracts. The drainage of the irrigated areas would have commenced to form drainage channels, the right drainage following the bed of the original inflow channel into Lake Mœris. As the lake level continued to fall, the drains would have scoured themselves out to lower levels, and cut back. The canals too would then have breached into the deepening ravines.

CROSS SECTION OF THE ENTRANCE VALLEY TO THE FAYÛM AT THE OLD BAHR WARDAN MOUTH, 3 KILOMETRES ABOVE HAWÂRAT-EL-MAQTA.]

On the opposite sides of the ravine and in face of the village of Hawârat-el-Maqta, during one of my inspections, I came across the remains of two ancient canals, shown on the sketch map, Plate XXVI. Starting from the present edge of the ravine are two old canals, clearly distinguishable as such by the existing banks, which are of considerable height. In the angle between the two are the remains of an ancient town, and fragments of granite pillars. One of these fragments was part of the shaft of a large pillar of the clustered-stalk design.

Both these canals, after a few hundred yards, lose themselves in broken ground sloping down and tailing into the main ravine.

Probably the left canal was the first made, and, when it breached into the ravine on its left, the right canal was made to take its place, which in its turn also breached and found its way into the ravine. The take-off was then shifted farther up the Bahr Yûsuf to the position of the present head of the Bahr Sêlah. The dotted lines show the supposed continuations of the two old canals. To feed them, either the ravine must have been dammed below their present take-off from it, or else they must have been continued across the head of the ravine to the banks of the Bahr Yûsuf. The fact that the second diversion diverges from the old canal just where it leaves the ravine, suggests the former alternative, but more probably this was made the point of departure from the first channel so as to utilise the banks, which already existed, for crossing the ravine and avoid the necessity for making a new crossing.

Joined on to the breached end of the left canal there exist some curious vestiges of irrigation works, which have failed. It appears that there was originally an earth dam A B joining the banks of one or other of these two old canals with a point in the direction of or across the ravine. In the line of this bank where the height was greatest, was a thick masonry wall, now known as “Hêt Rozma.” This wall is made of brick and rubble stone of a very inferior quality, built in mortar made of lime and mud; it is 90 metres in length, 5 metres thick, and 6·70 metres high. (The top of this wall is at R.L. 21·35.) The bare end of the wall is evidently the original masonry end, as it was built, no part of the wall having been carried away when the bank, which must have joined its outer end, disappeared. The bank, of which this wall formed the centre, evidently breached and scoured out a hole, marked by the pool C below the breach. This breach was repaired by adding an inclined wall D E to the Hêt Rozma, continued by an earth bank E F to the bank of the old left canal. Again another bank G F seems to have been formed above this, and to have breached. The violent action of the water is shown by the circular hollow H, which has been scooped out of the level ground _upstream_ of this breach.

_Stanford Geog. Estab. London_

SKETCH MAP OF THE GROUND BETWEEN HAWÂRAT-EL-MAQTA AND HAWÂRAH PYRAMID.

_Note._—The ravines are not correctly mapped, but only sketched in to show generally how the ground is broken up.]

I give this description to indicate what interesting problems there are to solve, or lose oneself in conjectures about, in various parts of the Fayûm Province, and especially in the neighbourhood of Hawârat-el-Maqta and the wonderful Labyrinth.

Given then the actual conditions of a considerable difference of level, continually increasing, between the water at its entrance to the Fayûm, and the lake surface, and, from an irrigation point of view, a steep surface slope to the country under irrigation, ravines would commence to form along the lines where drainage and the water, discharged by canal breaches, would collect to flow towards the lake. Wherever also an inundated area, surrounded by banks, effected the discharge of the water contained in the basin, there would be made the beginning of a ravine, which may afterwards have been utilised as an irrigation or drainage channel.

The main drainage lines of the north and south were naturally formed along the lines, where the rounded concentric contours of the central part of the Fayûm double back to run along the north and south sides of the depression, as shown in the diagram (Plate XIX.). At many points the rock being reached, further deepening of the channel was checked. The rock being close to the surface along the upper part of the course of the south main drainage line, a deep ravine has not been formed, until after the village of Miniet-el-Hêt is passed.

But the north drainage line has been scoured out and cut back to the banks of the Bahr Yûsuf itself, so that deep ravines exist within a short distance of and parallel to its present watercourse. Into these ravines a breach would precipitate all the main canal supply, if such were to occur from negligence or from rashly permitting irrigation to be conducted from heads roughly constructed by the fellahîn in the Bahr Yûsuf banks.

Probably some small village channel, allowed to take off directly from the Bahr Yûsuf without a proper head, and used to irrigate some low lands along the slopes of the main ravine, caused a minor ravine to commence and grow, until, cutting back as far as its head, it eventually gave rise to the breach of 1820, which resulted in a widening out of the branch ravine until it attained its present dimensions.

It is, I think, evident that, when Lake Mœris ceased to be, Hawârat-el-Maqta was the key to the position and the point where the problem of the Fayûm irrigation had to be solved. It was necessary for the irrigation of the whole province, that the water-level should be held up at this point, so as to flow along the ridge between Hawârat-el-Maqta and Medineh, from which the whole province, with the exception of the land on the right of the north drainage line, was commanded. For the irrigation from the Bahr Sêlah or from the ancient canals, of which the Bahr Sêlah is the modern representative, it was necessary also that the water should not be allowed to run to low levels down the ravine at the back of Hawârat-el-Maqta. The principal operation then to be performed was to bar this ravine to the passage of the water, and to make the water flow forward along the ridge to Medineh at a high enough level at least to pass over the rocky bed, which is now found in the modern Bahr Yûsuf about a kilometre beyond Hawârah. This end being attained, the water would flow along the ridge, from the sides and end of which it would be distributed into the different branch canals covering the face of the province. Works to control the quantity of water given to each branch, and weirs to head-up the water at intervals along the canals of too rapid a slope would have been added as the want of them made itself felt.

The lake level would become lower year by year, and more land would be reclaimed and brought under cultivation.

At some period of this process, probably after a breach at Hawârat-el-Maqta, or on the failure of the regulator supposed to have formerly existed at Hawârah, the Lahûn bank and its old regulator would have been formed to exclude the excess of water and to control the discharge admitted into the Fayûm. (For sections of these banks, see Plate XXVII.)

I have suggested before that the part of the Lahûn bank which runs east and west was made in the time of Lake Mœris, and that the part from Lahûn to the south side of the gap, which crosses the Bahr Yûsuf at the old Lahûn Bridge, was subsequently made to shut out the Nile floods, when for some reason the means of regulation within the Fayûm at Hawârah ceased to be efficient.

The old Lahûn Bridge has three openings of 2·67 width, the floor level of two of them being at R.L. 21·97 and of the third at R.L. 20·72, so that this bridge could only have been constructed _after_ the discharge required by the Fayûm had fallen to the amount of its present requirements, or to even less, as the waterway is somewhat under what is desirable for the passage of 7 million cubic metres a day, the maximum discharge utilised in the Fayûm at the present day during floods.

BANK RIGHT OF LAHÛN BRIDGE, OR GISR GADALLAH.]

CROSS SECTIONS OF LAHÛN BANKS.]

It is evident, from the remains of canals along the north and south sides of the Fayûm, that at some time or other these slopes of the province were irrigated to higher levels than the limit of the present cultivation. On the right the old Bahr Wardan is traceable from its old mouth on the Bahr Yûsuf (Kom-el-Iswid) above the present Sêlah Head as far as the north-west corner of the Fayûm depression. It would appear that the water surface level of the Bahr Yûsuf at Hawârah must be lower now than when this canal was under conditions favourable for irrigation. Perhaps it worked when the regulator was, as supposed, at Hawârah, and before the Lahûn bank and old bridge shut out the high-level waters of the Nile flood.

On the south side of the Fayûm there are similarly the remains of an old canal within the limits of what is now desert. This was probably fed by an aqueduct formed along the top of the Minia wall, which held up the waters in Hod-el-Tuyûr. This wall and aqueduct were breached, and though the wall was restored, the aqueduct was not, and the supply was cut off from the high-level canal. The land depending on it consequently returned to desert. Large blocks of old masonry lying prone on the ground at some distance from the present wall show with what force the escaping waters must have rushed through the breaches to have been able to transport such massive blocks to so great a distance from their original position.