The Fayum Landscape

Ten Thousand Years of Archaeology, Texts, and Traditions in Egypt

Claire J. Malleson

• Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781617979460
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Archäologie

Located some one hundred kilometers southwest of Cairo, the Fayum region has long been regarded as unique, often described in terms that conjure up images of an idealized Garden of Eden. In An Egyptian Landscape, Claire Malleson takes a novel approach to the study of the region by exploring the ways in which people have, through millennia, perceived and engaged with the Fayum landscape.Distinguishing between the experienced landscape of state and bureaucratic record and the imagined landscape of myth, meaning, and observers' personal influences and expectations, Malleson questions in detail where those perceptions come from. She traces religious practices, follows the tracks of myths and traditions, and investigates the roots of stories found in texts from the pharaonic, classical, and Medieval Islamic periods. She also reviews many, more recent travel writings on the region from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. The work of each author is presented in its historical and cultural context, and Malleson integrates what is known about ancient activities in the Fayum, based on the archaeological evidence from the many monuments and ancient settlements that exist in the region. Scholars and students of archaeology and landscape studies as well as general readers interested in Egypt's history and archaeology will find this book highly engaging and enlightening.

1

The Landscape: The Fayum

This province is the most remarkable and interesting of all the provinces of Egypt.¹

—Major R.H. Brown (1892)

Other visitors . . . have also written in praise of the Fayoum, as “a true earthly paradise,” “the garden of Egypt,” “paradise of the desert.” The stress has always been on the fertility and beauty of the land—by no means the only attraction of the Fayum to the modern visitor, but surely attraction enough, especially after the concrete desert of Cairo.²

—R.N. Hewison (2008)

For millennia the Fayum has been viewed as somehow different from the rest of Egypt. Not part of the Nile Valley but not remote enough to be considered one of the Western Desert oases, the Fayum has many unique aspects to it. The amazing qualities attributed to the region by Herodotus, the ‘father of history,’ in the fifth century bc were a source of fascination for later Classical scholars such as Pliny and Strabo, and attracted the first European pilgrims and explorers to the Fayum. The ideas they developed about the region, particularly those relating to Biblical events, became popular topics of debate in early Egyptology. The Fayum was the site of some of the earliest organized archaeological investigations in Egypt, by the British ‘father of Egyptian archaeology,’ Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Amazingly rich discoveries of well-preserved Ptolemaic and Roman administrative and literary papyri, and life-like portraits found on Roman mummies in the region (known as the Fayum Portraits), meant that the Fayum became a major focus of attention for scholars studying those periods of Egyptian history. The Fayum is also home to some of the oldest archaeological remains discovered in Egypt. Around the shores of the lake, major Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites were noted during the early years of formal archaeology in Egypt, and have been under serious investigation since the mid-twentieth century.

The Fayum region is located to the southwest of Cairo and the Nile Delta apex, currently covering four thousand square kilometers. A lake, now known as Birkat Qarun, is situated in the northwest of the region and was historically fed by the Bahr Yusuf channel. The region is covered in 456 irrigation canals and drainage channels totalling 2,220 kilometers in length. In 2001 there was around 1,437 square kilometers of cultivatable land. These numbers are increasing every year. The region is separated from the Nile Valley by low-lying desert hills that are broken opposite Beni Suef where the Bahr Yusuf turns west to flow through a wide shallow valley toward the capital of the region, Madinat al-Fayum (ancient Shedet/Crocodilopolis/Arsinoë/Ptolemais Euergetes). The Fayum lands are essentially an inland delta, sloping gently down from the high point at the region’s capital (c.23 meters above sea level), toward Birkat Qarun, which at the turn of the twenty-first century was 8 meters deep, with the surface at 45 meters below sea level³ (see plates 1 and 2).

The geological history of the region has been much debated, and theories of how it was formed (created) have a colorful history. Following many decades of debate, geologists now generally agree that the Fayum depression—including the Qarun and Rayan basins—was formed by wind erosion over 1.8 million years ago in the early Pleistocene Period.⁴ The Bahr Yusuf, which may well be a remnant channel of an older course of the Nile, is thought to have broken through the hills to the west of the Nile during the mid-Pleistocene (c.40,000 years ago).⁵ The annual flooding of the Nile gradually carved many small rivers and channels into the basin, including two especially deep ravines now known as the al-Wadi and al-Bats drains, which, when viewed on a map, resemble two ‘horns’ or ‘arms’ emanating from the main river channel into the region (see plate 2). Over millennia, this flooding also deposited deep layers of fertile Nile silts into the region, spreading across the higher ground closer to the Nile Valley and down into the deepest part of the depression in the west. There was no escape for the flood waters, so a lake formed. The level of the waters of this lake varied each year through different seasons due to the annual Nile flood, and the average level has varied a great deal through history.

1. Google Earth image showing the Fayum in Egypt.

The major archaeological sites in the region are (see plate 3):

• Madinat al-Fayum (šdt/Crocodilopolis/Arsinoë/Ptolemais Euergetes): The capital of the region. Only a very few archaeological remains have ever been recorded, but there was probably a temple for Sobek here from at least the early Old Kingdom, and the city has been continuously occupied since then. The area where the majority of the archaeological remains have been found is known as Kiman Faris (Mounds of the Horseman).

• Kom W, Kom K: Two primary areas of prehistoric occupation remains on the north side of the lake.

• Widan al-Faras, Umm al-Sawan: Old Kingdom quarry sites.

• Qasr al-Sagha: Old Kingdom quarry town, Middle Kingdom temple and mining town.

• Seila: Old Kingdom pyramid, dated to reign of Sneferu.

• Abgig/Bebig: The site of the ‘obelisk’ of Senwosret I.

• Lahun/Kahun (r-ḥnt/Hetep-Senwosret/Sekhem-Senwosret/Ptolemais Hormou?): Pyramid of Senwosret II with associated cemeteries and town, which was reoccupied in the New Kingdom. The cemeteries were revived and expanded in the Ptolemaic/Roman Period.

• Biahmu/al-Sanam: Site of the ruins of two colossi of Amenemhat III.

• Kom Khelwa: Middle Kingdom elite tombs.

• Hawara: Pyramid of Amenemhat III, Ptolemaic and Roman cemeteries, and the ‘Labyrinth’—so named by Herodotus, this monument gained legendary status. It is most likely that the ‘Labyrinth’ refers to the ruins of the mortuary temple of Amenemhat III.

• Madinat al-Gurob (mr-wr): Predynastic cemeteries, New Kingdom Palace town and cemeteries, Ptolemaic cemeteries.

• Madinat Madi (ḏ3/Narmouthis): Middle Kingdom temple of Renenutet and Sobek, Ptolemaic town and temple.

• Umm al-Burigat/Tebtunis (Tutun): Middle Kingdom cemeteries, Ptolemaic and Roman town and temples.

• Kom Aushim (Karanis): Ptolemaic and Roman town, temples, and cemeteries.

• Dimai (Soknopaios Nesos): Ptolemaic and Roman town and temples.

• Qasr Qarun (Dionysias): Ptolemaic town and temple, Roman fort.

• Kom Umm al-Atl (Bacchias): Ptolemaic and Roman town and temples.

• Kom/Kharabet Ihrit (Theadelphia): Ptolemaic and Roman town, and temples.

• Madinat Watfa (Philoteris): Ptolemaic and Roman town and temples.

• Kom al-Kharaba al-Kebir (Philadelphia): Ptolemaic and Roman town, temples, and cemeteries.

• Birkat Qarun (?w3ḏ-wr?/Aqna/Tenhamet/Lake Moeris): The Fayum lake.

• Bahr Yusuf (ḥnt?/ḥnt mr-wr/Manhi canal): The primary watercourse into the region from the Nile.

Egyptological research about the Fayum has generally centered on either the issue of ‘Lake Moeris’ and the ‘Labyrinth,’ two highlights of the famous account of the Greek writer Herodotus,⁶ or the aspects of Greek and Roman social and economic history revealed in the many rich archives of Ptolemaic and Roman papyri found in the region.⁷ The impression given by the strong focus on the lake and the Labyrinth is that the lake was always seen to be the dominating feature of the Fayum landscape, and that the Labyrinth was thought to be the most significant monument in the archaeological landscape of the region. By looking at a wider range of sources, however, it is clear that perceptions of the Fayum landscape have not always been dominated by these features. The stimulus for much of the research in this book was my sense of discomfort with the lack of balance in past approaches to the Fayum landscape and the occasionally excessive amount of attention devoted to ‘unwrapping’ Herodotus’s account of the Fayum.

This book is a history of ideas, a history of changing perceptions, and a history of the human–land relationship. It shows that when archaeology, texts, and oral traditions are brought together, those ideas, perceptions, and relationships are revealed to be both deeply imbued and manifested in the landscape, intertwined and overlapping into a rich palimpsest of historical nuances.

Ten Thousand Years of History

The archaeological materials, texts, and accounts included in this book cover a long span of history from 7500 bc to around ad 1900.⁸ History is not a step-by-step linear sequence of events; changes in society, culture, or life can occur rapidly or slowly, they can ‘regress’ or become cyclical. People do not one day suddenly think, “Wow, I’m living in Ptolemaic Egypt, I should think this way, have these ideas and these perceptions today, instead of the ones I had last year when we were ruled by the Persians,” but the inevitability of creating divisions, of breaking up that span of time into smaller chunks of time, is unavoidable when dealing with such a long history. The break-points in this book are based on the long-accepted divisions for the history of Egypt, which fall loosely in line with major changes in scripts and languages found in the texts examined here—from Egyptian hieroglyphs and Hieratic, to Demotic, Persian, Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Arabic, and finally European languages—although those divisions sometimes have very blurred lines. The continuation of ideas from one period into the next, and the fascination with far older beliefs that often resulted in ignorance of more recent ideas, has played a major role in shaping the ways people have engaged with and thought about the landscape of the Fayum.

The ‘text-less’ prehistorical periods (Epipalaeolithic, Neolithic, and Predynastic, c.7530–3000 bc) act as an introduction to the primary phase of traditional Egyptian history: the pharaonic period from the start of the Early Dynastic to the end of the Late Period (3000–332 bc). Both texts and archaeological remains are considered throughout the book. The archaeological remains provide tangible evidence of ways in which people physically interacted with the landscape. The locations of settlements, cemeteries (including pyramids), and temples provide some indications of what the landscape was actually like. In the case of the Fayum, the ever-changing level of the lake was the major factor governing people’s choices, coupled with the natural resources of the region (stone for construction and the lake and land for procuring and producing food). The locations of, and spatial relationships between, architectural remains of houses, temples, cemeteries, and pyramids reveal a great deal about the ways in which the people of the region exploited and lived on the land, but it is the written record that illuminates the ways in which they thought about the landscape of the Fayum.

There is very little, if any, pharaonic material that can be considered to be ‘geography’ as we understand it today, and there are few written descriptions of landscapes. By studying the names given to the region, however, it is possible to gain insight into the contrasting ways the landscape of the Fayum was perceived. As outlined by Christopher Tilley, “place names are of such vital significance because they act so as to transform the sheerly physical and geographical into something that is historically and socially experienced. The bestowing of names creates shared existential space out of the blank environment.”⁹ Thus, by studying the names of the region, the perception of the Fayum landscape held by the ancient Egyptians is revealed. While there have been detailed studies of the religious geography (or sacred landscape) of the Fayum,¹⁰ which firmly establish the primary role played by the crocodile god Sobek, there have been no studies of the way in which the names allocated to the Fayum, or different parts of the region, reflect ancient perceptions of the Fayum landscape. The textual material ...