FAYOUM

Fayoum (Arabic: الفيوم‎‎ El Fayyūm, Coptic:  ̀Ⲫⲓⲟⲙ Phiom) is a city in Middle Egypt. Located 100 kilometres  southwest of Cairo, in the Faiyum Oasis, it is the capital of the modern Faiyum Governorate. Originally called Shedet in Ancient Egypt, the Greeks called it Crocodilopolis or Krocodilopolis, the Romans Arsinoë. It is one of Egypt's oldest cities due to its strategic location.

OLD PICTURE OF FAYOUM CITY

The modern name of the city comes from Coptic ̀Ⲫⲓⲟⲙ /Ⲡⲉⲓⲟⲙ epʰiom / peiom (whence the proper name Ⲡⲁⲓⲟⲙ payom), meaning the Sea or the Lake, which in turn comes from late Egyptian pꜣ-ymꜥ of the same meaning, a reference to the nearby Lake Moeris; the extinct elephant ancestor Phiomia was named after it.

Archaeological evidence has found occupations around the Fayoum dating back to at least the Epipalaeolithic period. The middle Holocene occupations of the area are most widely studied on the North shore of Lake Qarun, where archeologists did a number of excavations of Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic sites, as well as a general survey of the area. Recently a team from the UCLA/RUG/UOA known as the “Fayoum Project” has further investigated the area.

BIRDS ON LAKE QARUN

In the Pharaonic era, the city was called Shedet. The 10th-century Bible exegete, Saadia Gaon, thought el Fayoum to have actually been the biblical city of Pithom, mentioned in Exodus 1:11. It was the most significant centre of the cult of Sobek, the crocodile-god. In consequence, the Greeks named it Crocodilopolis, "Crocodile City", from the particular reverence paid by its inhabitants to crocodiles. The city worshipped a tamed sacred crocodile, named Petsuchos that was adorned with gold and gem pendants. The crocodile lived in a special temple pond and was fed by the priests with food provided by visitors. When the Petsuchos died, another replaced it.

Under the Ptolemies, the city was for a while called Ptolemais Euergetis. Ptolemy II Philadelphus (309–246 BC) rechristened the city as Arsinoë after the name of his sister and wife Arsinoë (316–270).

RAISING PIGONS IN FAYOUM

Under the Roman Empire, Arsinoë became part of the province of Arcadia Aegypti. To distinguish it from other cities of the same name, it was called Arsinoë in Arcadia. With the arrival of Christianity, Arsinoë became the seat of a bishopric, a suffragan of the Oxyrhynchus, the capital of the province and the metropolitan see. Lequien gives the names of several bishops of Arsinoë, nearly all of them associated with one heresy or another.

Fayoum has several large bazaars, mosques, baths and a much-frequented weekly market. The canal called Bahr Yussef runs through the city, its banks lined with houses. There are two bridges over the river: one of three arches, which carries the main street and bazaar, and one of two arches, over which is built the Qaitbay mosque, that was a gift from his wife to honour the Mamluk Sultan in Fayoum.

LAKE KAROUN

Lake Karoun / Qarun

Lake Moeris (Ancient Greek: Μοῖρις, genitive Μοίριδος) is an ancient lake in the northwest of the Fayoum Oasis, 80 km (50 mi) southwest of Cairo, Egypt. In prehistory, it was a freshwater lake, with an area estimated to vary between 1,270 km² (490 mi²) and 1,700 km² (656 mi²).

It persists today as a smaller saltwater lake called Birket Qarun. The lake's surface is 43 m (140 ft) below sea level, and covers about 202 square kilometers (78 sq mi).

It is a source for tilapia and other fish from the local area. The lake is a magnet to migrating fowl from Europe thus a heaven for hunters.

WATER WEEL

When the Mediterranean Sea was a hot dry hollow near the end of the Messinian Salinity Crisis in the late Miocene, Faiyum was a dry hollow, and the Nile flowed past it at the bottom of a canyon (2,400 m deep or more where Cairo is now). After the Mediterranean refolded at the end of the Miocene, the Nile canyon became an arm of the sea reaching inland further than Aswan. Over geological time that sea arm gradually filled with silt and became the Nile valley.

Eventually, the Nile valley bed silted up high enough to let the Nile in flood overflow into the Fayoum hollow and make a lake in it. 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 floodwaters. The lake was bordered by Neolithic settlements, and the town of Shedet grew up on the south where the higher ground created a ridge.

FISHERMEN ON LAKE KARUN / QARUN

In 2300 BC, the waterway from the Nile to the natural lake was widened and deepened to make a canal, which is now known as the Bahr Yussef, a project started by Amenemhat III, or perhaps by his father Senusret III. This canal fed into the lake and meant to serve three purposes: control the flooding of the Nile, regulate the water level of the Nile during dry seasons, and serve the surrounding area with irrigation. There is evidence of ancient Egyptian pharaohs of the twelfth dynasty using 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 huge water reservoir gave the impression that the lake was an artificial excavation, as reported by classic geographers and travelers. The lake was eventually abandoned due to the nearest branch of the Nile shrinking from 230 BC.

SKELETON OF A WALE

Wadi El Hitan in Fayoum Oasis

Wadi El Hitan (Arabic: وادي الحيتان‎‎, "Whale Valley") is a paleontological site in the Faiyum Governorate of Egypt, some 150 km southwest of Cairo. It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2005 for its hundreds of fossils of some of the earliest forms of whale, the archaeoceti (a now extinct sub-order of whales). The site reveals evidence for the explanation of one of the greatest mysteries of the evolution of whales: the emergence of the whale as an ocean-going mammal from a previous life as a land-based animal. No other place in the world yields the number, concentration and quality of such fossils, as is their accessibility and setting in an attractive and protected landscape. This is why the UNESCO added it to the list of protected World Heritage sites .

The fossils found at the site may not be the oldest but their great concentration in the area and the degree of their preservation is to the extent that even some stomach contents are intact. The presence of fossils of other early animals such as sharks, crocodiles, sawfish, turtles and rays found at Wadi El-Hitan makes it possible to reconstruct the surrounding environmental and ecological conditions of the time, adding to its justification to be cited as a Heritage site.

FOSSILS IN THE DESERT

The first fossil skeletons of whales were discovered in the winter of 1902-3. For the next 80 years they attracted relatively little interest, largely due to the difficulty of reaching the area. In the 1980s interest in the site resumed as four wheels drive vehicles became more readily available. Continuing interest coincided with the site being visited by fossil collectors, and many bones were removed, prompting calls for the site to be conserved. The remains display the typical streamlined body form of modern whales, yet retaining some of the primitive aspects of skull and tooth structure. The largest skeleton found reached up to 21 m in length, with well-developed five-fingered flippers on the forelimbs and the unexpected presence of hind legs, feet, and toes, not known previously in any archaeoceti. Their form was serpentine and they were carnivorous. A few of these skeletal remains are exposed but most are shallowly buried in sediments, slowly uncovered by erosion. Wadi El-Hitan provides evidences of millions of years of coastal marine life.

Watch the amazing "Wales In the Desert" Documentary below

NOTE:  In my previous post the reference to the documentary was somehow 

difficult to notice and therefore was missed by most readers