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Faiyum Oasis
The Faiyum Oasis (Arabic: واحة الفيوم Wāḥat al-Fayyum) is a depression or basin in the desert immediately west of the Nile, 62 miles south of Cairo, Egypt. The extent of the basin area is estimated at between 1,270 km2 (490 mi2) and 1,700 km2 (656 mi2). The basin floor comprises fields watered by a channel of the Nile, the Bahr Yussef, as it drains into a desert hollow to the west of the Nile Valley. The Bahr Yussef veers west through a narrow neck of land north of Ihnasya, between the archaeological sites of El Lahun and Gurob near Hawara; it then branches out, providing agricultural land in the Faiyum basin, draining into the large saltwater Lake Moeris (Birket Qarun). In prehistory it was a freshwater lake, but is today a saltwater lake. It is a source for tilapia and other fish for the local area.
Differing from typical oases, whose fertility depends on water obtained from springs, the cultivated land in the Faiyum is formed of Nile mud brought by the Bahr Yussef canal, 24 km (15 miles) in length. Between the beginning of Bahr Yussef at El Lahun to its end at the city of Faiyum, several canals branch off to irrigate the Faiyum Governorate. The drainage water flows into Lake Moeris.
When the Mediterranean Sea was a hot, dry hollow near the end of the Messinian Salinity Crisis in the late Miocene, Faiyum was also a dry hollow, and the Nile flowed past it at the bottom of a canyon, which was 8,000 feet (2,400 m) deep or more where Cairo is today. After the Mediterranean reflooded at the end of the Miocene, the Nile canyon became an arm of the sea reaching inland farther than Aswan. Over geological time, that sea arm gradually filled with silt and became the Nile Valley.[citation needed]
Eventually, the Nile valley bed silted up high enough to let the Nile periodically overflow into the Faiyum Hollow, forming a lake. The lake is first recorded from about 3000 BC, around the time of Menes (Narmer). However, for the most part, it would only be filled with high flood waters. Neolithic settlements bordered the lake, and the town of Crocodilopolis (now Faiyum) grew up on the south where the higher ground created a ridge.[citation needed]
In 2300 BC, the waterway connecting the Nile River to the natural lake was widened and deepened to make a canal now known as the Bahr Yussef. This canal, which fed into the lake, was meant to serve three purposes: controlling the flooding of the Nile, regulating the water level of the Nile during dry seasons, and serving the surrounding area with irrigation. There is evidence the pharaohs of the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt used the natural lake of Faiyum as a reservoir to store surpluses of water for use during the dry periods. The immense waterworks undertaken by the ancient Egyptian pharaohs of the twelfth dynasty to transform the lake into a vast water reservoir gave the impression that the lake was an artificial excavation, as classic geographers and travellers reported. The lake was eventually abandoned due to the nearest branch of the Nile dwindling in size from 230 BC.
Faiyum was known to the ancient Egyptians as the twenty-first nome of Upper Egypt, Atef-Pehu ("Northern Sycamore"). Its capital was Sh-d-y-t (usually written "Shedyt"), known to the Greeks as Crocodilopolis, and renamed by Ptolemy II Philadelphus as Arsinoe.[citation needed]
This region has the earliest evidence for farming in Egypt, and was a center of royal pyramid and tomb-building in the Twelfth Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom, and again during the rule of the Ptolemaic Kingdom. Faiyum became one of the breadbaskets of the Roman world.
For the first three centuries AD, the people of Faiyum and elsewhere in Roman Egypt not only embalmed their dead but also placed a portrait of the deceased over the face of the mummy wrappings, shroud or case. The Egyptians continued their practice of burying their dead, despite the Roman preference for cremation. Preserved by the dry desert environment, these Fayum mummy portraits make up the richest body of portraiture to have survived from antiquity. They provide a window into a society of peoples of mixed origins—Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Syrians, Libyans and others—that flourished 2000 years ago in the Faiyum. The Faiyum portraits were painted on wood in a pigmented wax technique called encaustic painting.
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Faiyum Oasis AI simulator
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Faiyum Oasis
The Faiyum Oasis (Arabic: واحة الفيوم Wāḥat al-Fayyum) is a depression or basin in the desert immediately west of the Nile, 62 miles south of Cairo, Egypt. The extent of the basin area is estimated at between 1,270 km2 (490 mi2) and 1,700 km2 (656 mi2). The basin floor comprises fields watered by a channel of the Nile, the Bahr Yussef, as it drains into a desert hollow to the west of the Nile Valley. The Bahr Yussef veers west through a narrow neck of land north of Ihnasya, between the archaeological sites of El Lahun and Gurob near Hawara; it then branches out, providing agricultural land in the Faiyum basin, draining into the large saltwater Lake Moeris (Birket Qarun). In prehistory it was a freshwater lake, but is today a saltwater lake. It is a source for tilapia and other fish for the local area.
Differing from typical oases, whose fertility depends on water obtained from springs, the cultivated land in the Faiyum is formed of Nile mud brought by the Bahr Yussef canal, 24 km (15 miles) in length. Between the beginning of Bahr Yussef at El Lahun to its end at the city of Faiyum, several canals branch off to irrigate the Faiyum Governorate. The drainage water flows into Lake Moeris.
When the Mediterranean Sea was a hot, dry hollow near the end of the Messinian Salinity Crisis in the late Miocene, Faiyum was also a dry hollow, and the Nile flowed past it at the bottom of a canyon, which was 8,000 feet (2,400 m) deep or more where Cairo is today. After the Mediterranean reflooded at the end of the Miocene, the Nile canyon became an arm of the sea reaching inland farther than Aswan. Over geological time, that sea arm gradually filled with silt and became the Nile Valley.[citation needed]
Eventually, the Nile valley bed silted up high enough to let the Nile periodically overflow into the Faiyum Hollow, forming a lake. The lake is first recorded from about 3000 BC, around the time of Menes (Narmer). However, for the most part, it would only be filled with high flood waters. Neolithic settlements bordered the lake, and the town of Crocodilopolis (now Faiyum) grew up on the south where the higher ground created a ridge.[citation needed]
In 2300 BC, the waterway connecting the Nile River to the natural lake was widened and deepened to make a canal now known as the Bahr Yussef. This canal, which fed into the lake, was meant to serve three purposes: controlling the flooding of the Nile, regulating the water level of the Nile during dry seasons, and serving the surrounding area with irrigation. There is evidence the pharaohs of the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt used the natural lake of Faiyum as a reservoir to store surpluses of water for use during the dry periods. The immense waterworks undertaken by the ancient Egyptian pharaohs of the twelfth dynasty to transform the lake into a vast water reservoir gave the impression that the lake was an artificial excavation, as classic geographers and travellers reported. The lake was eventually abandoned due to the nearest branch of the Nile dwindling in size from 230 BC.
Faiyum was known to the ancient Egyptians as the twenty-first nome of Upper Egypt, Atef-Pehu ("Northern Sycamore"). Its capital was Sh-d-y-t (usually written "Shedyt"), known to the Greeks as Crocodilopolis, and renamed by Ptolemy II Philadelphus as Arsinoe.[citation needed]
This region has the earliest evidence for farming in Egypt, and was a center of royal pyramid and tomb-building in the Twelfth Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom, and again during the rule of the Ptolemaic Kingdom. Faiyum became one of the breadbaskets of the Roman world.
For the first three centuries AD, the people of Faiyum and elsewhere in Roman Egypt not only embalmed their dead but also placed a portrait of the deceased over the face of the mummy wrappings, shroud or case. The Egyptians continued their practice of burying their dead, despite the Roman preference for cremation. Preserved by the dry desert environment, these Fayum mummy portraits make up the richest body of portraiture to have survived from antiquity. They provide a window into a society of peoples of mixed origins—Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Syrians, Libyans and others—that flourished 2000 years ago in the Faiyum. The Faiyum portraits were painted on wood in a pigmented wax technique called encaustic painting.