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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 examined in Chapter Three derives from hieroglyphic inscriptions on private stelae and statues, as well as seal impressions and hieratic documents. This selection of sources includes examples of formulaic statements made to promote the image of the individual, as well as more private materials that reflect less structured ideas. Major groups of material presented include documents from Middle Kingdom Lahun, the New Kingdom Wilbour Papyrus, private statues and stelae from all periods, and the Greco-Roman Book of Fayum.
The most significant point arising from the pharaonic materials is that they make a clear distinction between the ‘imagined’ and the ‘experienced’ landscapes, the sacred landscape and the physical landscape in which people lived. Administrative texts and religious texts use different names.
The Names (3000–332 bc)
The place names used to describe the Fayum (the lexicography) yield information on how the region was perceived by the ancient Egyptians. Names of towns, cities, villages, and areas or locales can be hugely revealing about what people thought of a landscape. Often they are explicit descriptions of small locales, for example ‘Lake Land,’ ‘Lake Opening,’ and ‘Great Green.’
Naming transforms what is a purely physical geographical landmass or area into something tangible, something with a boundary, something imbued with meaning. To quote Christopher Tilley: “The bestowing of names creates a shared existential space out of the blank environment.”11 By looking at textual and inscriptional evidence from Fayum monuments, and writings associated with individuals known to have lived in or had close ties to the Fayum, it is possible to gain insight into the institutions based in the region, as well as the activities that took place there. One thing that is important to bear in mind is that place names change a lot over time. There have been several previous studies about place names in the Fayum, usually relating to the issue of the name of Lake Moeris, but not many acknowledge that it is not appropriate to attempt to allocate a name to a place and assume that that place held that name, or the same meaning, throughout history. Pharaonic history in particular tends to be treated as one entity, often due to a lack of nuanced information, and people have tied themselves in strange knots attempting to figure out which name refers to which place, forgetting that even in a short space of time a place name can morph into something different simply due to small events, new stories, or shifting ideas.
Each of the various names given to the Fayum region during the pharaonic period, and to localities or specific places within it, provides significant information about the way the area was perceived.12 Each of the various different names given to the Fayum was almost always restricted to specific contexts. In other words, different types of people used different names for places at different times. Texts that have a religious aspect (for example, texts from temples, priestly titles, and statue inscriptions dedicated to Fayum deities) use different versions of the name than texts that clearly relate to administrative activities, such as the titles of officials.
šdt (Shedet) was the name of the primary cult center for the crocodile god Sobek, and t3-š (Lake Land) was the name used for the region in religious contexts, while š-rsi (Southern Lake) was the name given to the region in administrative texts. Some of the names for localities in the Fayum obviously carry meaning but appear to have been used only in restricted circumstances. For example, despite the fact that the name š-sbk (Lake of Sobek) is clearly linked to the primary deity, the crocodile god Sobek, it appears as a place name only during the Middle Kingdom and exclusively in administrative texts. The lake does not appear to have been specifically named. It was of course the only major inland lake in Egypt, so ‘Lake’ (š) was appropriate, but the idea that the lake was an embodiment of location in the realm of the gods may possibly be found in the name w3ḏ-wr (Great Green).
t3-š—Lake Land
This is the most prominent name for the Fayum, found almost exclusively in religious texts, priests’ titles, and inscriptions dedicated to deities from the Middle Kingdom onward. This usage, in inscriptions, probably accounts for the fact that it is the best known name for the region. Other names occur on less permanent materials, such as papyrus. There are three primary variants of the ‘spelling’ of this name, each of which includes the lake hieroglyph (Gardiner sign N37) and either the land hieroglyph (N16) or the hills hieroglyph (N25). Visually, this group of signs clearly depicts a lake with land and hills—highly appropriate for the Fayum.
š-rsi—Southern Lake
The second commonly found name for the region appears in the Third Dynasty, but is generally found only in administrative contexts. š-rsi, ‘Southern Lake,’ is found with a variety of spellings, and the differences occur predominantly in hieratic spellings of the name. All the variants include the lake hieroglyph (N37) and the combination sign for ‘south’ (M24). Some hieratic examples indicate that the name may sometimes refer not to the region as a whole, but to a specific place, as the town sign (O49) is included.
š-sbk—Lake of Sobek (sometimes š n sbk)
It would be natural to assume that the names š-sbk and š n sbk referred to a lake connected to the crocodile cult within the Fayum region. While this may be possible, the name is found almost exclusively in hieratic administrative texts from Lahun, all dated to the Middle Kingdom, with just a few examples occurring later in the New Kingdom, all of them still clearly administrative. The hieroglyphs found in the name include the lake sign (N37), but also frequently the land hieroglyph (N23) as well as the crocodile hieroglyph to denote Sobek (I3 or I4).
wp-š—Lake Opening
One of the names that really plays on using hieroglyphs as visual images is wp-š. This name, ‘Lake Opening,’ is not only clearly describing a place within a landscape, but it also relies on the actual signs to convey a more complex pictorial visualization of this specific landscape. The name is only found in the New Kingdom Wilbour Papyrus and the Twenty-fifth Dynasty victory stela of Piy, but it is especially interesting for this study. ‘Lake Opening’ could mean one of two things. It could refer to a place where a lake opens out into several parts, divides perhaps or separates, or a place in which a lake splits up into rivers or canals. ‘Lake Opening’ could also refer to the beginning of a lake, the point of origin, or the rivers that run into the lake to create it. In the case of the Fayum lake, this could be the place in which the main tributary splits at the western end of the Gurob–Hawara corridor into the al-Wadi and al-Bats ravines. The writing of the name includes the bull horn hieroglyph (F13), which almost appears to be a visual onomatopoeia, with the bull horns resembling those two ravines running north and south from the end of the Bahr Yusuf (see plate 2). It could perhaps refer to the ‘opening’ of the region at the eastern end of that corridor, where the mountains of the Western Desert divide and the Bahr Yusuf turns west into the region. In most texts this area around Lahun does seem to be the area to which the name was attached. What is of even greater interest is the fact that the Arabic name for the lake, may be a corruption of Birkat al Qurun, ‘Lake (of the) Horns,’ suggesting that this image of the rivers dividing and resembling horns persisted throughout history. Based on the texts we can be certain that this name refers to a specific locality in the landscape around Lahun.
š—Lake
There are a few instances in which the name š, or ‘Lake,’ appears alone, with no additional descriptive words, and in the examples relating to the Fayum the name clearly refers to a lake in the region. Since this name was used in both religious and administrative contexts in the Middle and New Kingdoms, the use of the name seems to have been somewhat flexible. Within the administrative examples there is a difference between very explicit references to a place or town (in the Wilbour Papyrus and Onomasticon of Amenemope) where a town sign is used, and more ambiguous examples on the statue of Sobekhotep (Berlin 11635),13 where ‘lake’ might refer to either a place or a lake. In religious contexts ‘lake’ refers simply to a lake associated with a deity. The name is written simply, for example, Sobekhotep was ḥ ʻty- n š, Mayor of (the) Lake. Here ‘lake’ is found written with the small tongue of land hieroglyph (N21). In other instances the hilly land hieroglyph ( N25) is used. It is possible that in most instances this was simply an abbreviated form of t3-š given the religious context of most of the texts.
ḥnt—Henet
ḥnt is a somewhat ambiguous term, the translation of which is still not entirely clear, largely due to the fact that it is sometimes written using the ‘lake’ or ‘pool’ ideogram (N37) and sometimes with the ‘canal’ or ‘channel’ ideogram (N36). For a long time it was translated as ‘swampy lake,’14 meaning a generally watery landscape (but not a marsh). In more recent years this has been revised, and the term is now translated as ‘waterway.’15 The term appears fairly frequently in the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts as an area or place within the landscape of the afterlife that has to be crossed, but it is clear from an examination of the Middle Kingdom Lahun papyri and the New Kingdom Wilbour Papyrus that there was a ḥnt that was a clearly defined type of body of water (within the Fayum). The Lahun papyri refer just to the ḥnt, but assuming that these documents were primarily internal correspondence then it is probably safe to suggest that anyone reading the letters would know which ḥnt was being referenced. The ḥnts in the Wilbour Papyrus are all more clearly designated with a location, for example, the ḥnt east of Spermeru (a town south of the Fayum) and the ḥnt of mr-wr. This may seem like a tautology—‘canal of the great canal’—but if mr-wr was the name of a town (see below), it is more acceptable.
The more descriptive name r-ḥnt (or r-n-ḥnt), ‘Mouth of the Henet,’ appears in funerary texts as a locality in the landscape of the afterlife, and in both religious and administrative documents as a place in the Fayum. The Twenty-fifth Dynasty Victory stela of Piy names r-ḥnt as the area of the Fayum in which wp-š is located:
pw ir.n ḥm.f r wp-š m r-ḥnt (His Majesty went north to Wep-She in Ra-Henet)
It is instructive to note that in this instance the ḥnt in question was not described using a locality, it is not the henet of somewhere (as the ḥnt of mr-wr was, for example), but that the word ḥnt is a part of the place name itself. In the Book of Fayum it is apparent that this refers to the entrance area of the Fayum, near Lahun, and it is always assumed that the name Lahun is a modern form of the ancient name r-ḥnt.
mr-wr—Mer-wer
It has long been accepted that the New Kingdom palace-town at modern Madinat al-Gurob was named mr-wr, ‘Great Canal,’ as this name appears soon after the founding of the town in the Eighteenth Dynasty. It is clear from Gurob papyri and the Wilbour Papyrus that mr-wr is a town. In all examples the town determinative hieroglyph is part of the name. The occurrences of the more specific ḥnrt or pr-ḫnty (usually translated as Harem) in mr-wr refer to an institution probably located in the Royal Palace at Gurob. This place name is so overtly descriptive of a local feature in the landscape that it is hard to imagine that the Mer-wer, ‘Great Waterway,’ is anything but the river course running from the Nile into the Fayum, known now as the Bahr Yusuf.
p3-ym—Pa-yum
Perhaps the most fascinating name for the Fayum (or an area within the Fayum) is p3-ym, ‘The Great Lake/Sea,’ which incorporates a Semitic word for sea (ym). This name is phonetically almost identical to the Coptic root of the modern name Fayum. However, p3-ym occurs only very rarely prior to the Ptolemaic Period. In the Wilbour Papyrus, p3-ym (if indeed the name in that manuscript is p3-ym) does seem to refer to an area of the Fayum close to the entrance at the Nile–Fayum divide. In the Book of Fayum, p3-ym is a place within the sacred landscape, where Ra was thought to have been born.
w3ḏ-wr—Wadj-wer (Great Green)
Whether or not this name applies to a location or place in the Fayum landscape is debatable.16 A considerable amount of evidence suggests that ‘Wadj-wer’ was used to refer to the Mediterranean, but several Fayum texts, especially the Hymn to Sobek and the Book of Fayum, clearly designate it as being within the Fayum. It seems to refer more to a location in the landscape of the gods, the ‘Great Green’ (sea/lake) in which the gods dwell, and where Ra is born.
šdt—Shedet
It is usually stated that the ‘capital’ of the Fayum was known as Shedet (šdt), but every occurrence of this name is linked to the principal deity of the region, the crocodile god Sobek. The name never occurs independently in administrative texts. šdt was very specifically, and above all else, the dwelling place of Sobek, and the name first appears at the beginning of the First Dynasty. The root of this name could lie in several words, each of which provides insight into how this location or place was perceived by the ancient Egyptians. šd (Artificial Lake), šdyt (Pool/Well), and šdy (Ditch) all seem potential candidates, and each suggests a very different type of landscape feature. It is entirely possible that the use of the root šd reflects a general notion of a body of water within the landscape, fitting in perfectly with all the names given to the region. The root of this name, šd, which implies something that is not natural, may well be at the root of the myth that appears in the account of Herodotus and the Book of Fayum, drawn from the creation mythology first found in the Hymn to Sobek, in which the idea that the lake was dug by men or gods is an important theme.
That the main variants of the writing of this name depend on which deity is being referred to becomes apparent when its use is analyzed. With just one exception, if the deity is Sobek as a form of Horus then the Shedet ‘determinative’—a ‘booth’ with the bucranion emblem (a bull’s head) on it—is used. An example can be found on a fragment in the Petrie Museum, from Hawara (UC14794, see plate 4). The inscription reads ḥr ḥry-ib šdt, or ‘Horus dwelling in Shedet.’ If only Sobek as a sole deity is referred to, then that determinative is not used, as can be found in the false door of Ka-nefer, an Old Kingdom priest of Sobek of Shedet (BM1324):
ḥm nṯr sbk šdt (Priest of Sobek of Shedet)
Part of the inscription on the lap of the Middle Kingdom statue of Ren-seneb demonstrates this most clearly,17 as here both Sobek and Horus are referred to individually, and Shedet is spelled differently for the two gods:
ḥtp di nsw sbk nb iwnw sbk šdt ḥr ḥry-ib šdt (An offering which the King gives to Sobek Lord of Innu, Sobek of Shedet, and Horus who dwells in Shedet).
In the Middle Kingdom Hymn to Sobek, the earliest occurrence of the specific Fayum form of Sobek, Sobek-Shedty, appears. As this writing is not restricted to either hieratic or hieroglyphs, the spelling cannot be said to be a result of different scripts. Early occurrences of šdt in the Pyramid Texts are some of the only examples in which the town-sign determinative was used, suggesting that the location was indeed not only a location in the sacred landscape but also a town. The designation of ‘capital’ for Shedet is questionable given the total lack of any individuals with administrative roles linked to the town, other thanpriestly roles.
Based on the early occurrence of the name, this town (or cult center) was clearly founded by at least the Fifth Dynasty, and the name reflects one aspect of ancient perceptions of the landscape. The possible roots of the word—ditch, artificial lake, or well-like-pool—all carry the notion that the body of water in question is not necessarily natural. The location of šdt, at the end of the Bahr Yusuf where the river divides into numerous smaller channels running toward the Fayum lake, on the highest and probably driest area in the region, is a natural and obvious location for a major town. It would have been an ideal location from which to monitor goods traveling from anywhere in the region toward the Nile, and vice versa. For this reason, the lack of people with administrative titles associated with the town is especially perplexing. In fact, it strongly suggests that the region was administered from outside.
The name of the Fayum lake has changed over time. As is shown above, the ancient name is not really understood, if it indeed even had a name other than ‘Southern Lake.’ The earliest occurrence of what is perhaps the most ‘famous’ name for the lake seems to be in Herodotus’s Histories, where he appears to name it Lake Moeris or Lake of Moeris. Later, what may be a name for the lake (although this, too, is unclear) appears on medieval Islamic maps, where the names Aqna and Tenhamet appear as ‘labels’ for the Fayum lake. The name Birkat Qarun does not seem to have been recorded before the eighteenth century.
The Bahr Yusuf was perhaps originally named mr-wr, as explained above, but in most medieval Islamic texts it is named al-Menha canal or the Manhi canal. The name Bahr Yusuf appears in the thirteenth century, and almost certainly derives from local legends that attribute the creation of the channel to the prophet Joseph.
There is just one ancient dedicated ‘map’ depiction of the Fayum region: The Book of Fayum, which is one of the most spectacular papyri to have been found in Egypt. Its contents have roots in far more ancient traditions, but the preserved copies of the papyrus date to the Roman Period. The document is a visualization of the religious landscape of the Fayum, and takes the form of a pseudo-map of the region with every sacred aspect included: the lake, the land, shrines, and temples. The text is heavily laden with religious meaning and is almost incomprehensible, in part because it is almost certainly a Roman version of far older writings and the scribes may well not have understood much of what they were transcribing. This text, discussed in Chapter Three, conveys deep-rooted beliefs about the sacred landscape of the Fayum, which may, in its entirety, have been thought of as a ‘temple’ of Sobek. The river was believed to be the embodiment of the mother goddess (the Celestial Cow), from whom the sun god Ra was born into the lake, in order to allow him to rejuvenate each night as he passed through its waters, and to sustain the gods each day with offerings as he passed across the sky. Osiris, the embodiment of the fertility of the land, was protected from the malevolence of the god Seth, the embodiment of the desert, by Horus in his crocodile Sobek form along the banks of this river, known as the Henet.
Changing Landscape
The most influential piece of writing on the Fayum ever produced, the Greek account of Herodotus, was written in about 445 bc during the Late Period, when Egypt was under Persian rule. From the moment it was first disseminated, this account deeply affected the way people viewed the Fayum. At the very least, it shaped how the Fayum was written about. The actual influence on the people living in the Fayum is impossible to gauge. It is difficult to write about the Fayum without mentioning Herodotus, and indeed most written accounts of the Fayum begin and end with considerations of his account and the remains of the sites and monuments he described. In Chapter Four, the account is placed in its historical and cultural context.
Following what is traditionally seen as the end of the classical Egyptian pharaonic period were the Ptolemaic and Roman periods (332 bc to the fourth century ad). Because the Fayum was undoubtedly a place of interest for the rulers of the time, this period is especially significant in the history of the Fayum, not least because the landscape was dramatically transformed by major interventions into the hydrology of the region. There are many standing remains of temples and towns from the period. Astounding quantities of papyri have been found in the region that provide extraordinarily rich and detailed accounts of life in the Fayum during this period. The textual and archaeological records extend as late as the early Byzantine Period in the fifth to the sixth centuries ad. As a result, the Ptolemaic and Roman Fayum has been studied extensively. Due to the abundance of material, texts from the Fayum have been used to study the Ptolemaic and Roman history of Egypt as a whole. While there are well-preserved remains of temples (now heavily restored), several of the settlements and cemeteries have sadly been lost, not only due to the passage of time and major changes in land use, but also as a result of the activities of individuals in search of caches of papyri and other saleable artifacts.
One positive result of the ‘recovery’ of such vast quantities of papyri is that a great deal is known about the administration of the towns and temples of the region in this period, and several detailed studies of the settlement systems and landscape of the Fayum have been completed.18 The scholarly work on the huge corpus of texts from this period is outlined in Chapter Four, alongside descriptions of the relevant archaeological remains in the region. As with the textual evidence from the Ptolemaic and Roman Fayum, the amount of archaeological exploration that has taken place on sites dating to this period is extraordinary; the results are summarized here. Outside the study of administrative materials in their own right, much of the focus of the work on the Fayum texts has been on understanding the names used for the Fayum and its villages/towns, and on locating those places, particularly the hundreds of known villages, as well as Lake Moeris and the Henet of Moeris.19
Alongside the study of the ‘internal’ records from the Fayum in Chapter Four is an examination of the contemporary writings of so-called ‘classical scholars’—the geographical and historical works of Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Pomponius Mela, Pliny, and Claudius Ptolemy—as well as a small selection of letters that record the activities of visitors to the Fayum during the first and second centuries ad. During the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, the Fayum was a prime tourist attraction. Drawn by the descriptions in the account of Herodotus, many visitors went to the region to see the crocodiles, the lake, and the Labyrinth. Their accounts and letters attest to the enduring perception of the Fayum as being embodied by these three aspects. It is these works that had such a great effect later on European writers, primarily due to the status of Greek and Latin writings in the early European education system. The views held by Greco-Roman visitors seem utterly disconnected from what is known about the reality of urban and rural life in the Fayum at this time, and they seem to overlook totally the many contemporary ‘wonders’ of the region. The Ptolemaic and Roman temples must have been truly wonderful then, and the towns would have been bustling hubs of society, but the motivation behind the accounts was historical, and as a result we have no accounts describing perceptions of the Fayum landscape as it was at that time. Instead, the visitors’ accounts are of a temporalized imagined ancient (sacred) landscape.
Legendary Landscape
Writings that have rarely been included in accounts of Egypt (although they are attracting increasing attention) are the works of medieval Islamic scholars, which are presented in Chapter Five. This material dates from the eighth century to the mid-fifteenth century ad, spanning a gap often left blank in histories of Egyptology. Following the Islamic conquest of Egypt in ad 642, the earliest medieval account of the history of Egypt (dating to c. ad 790) was written by Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam. During this time, the science of geography was rapidly advancing and many renowned Islamic scholars contributed a great deal to the understanding of the nature of the earth and its dimensions. It is the contributions of the ‘historical’ geographers (more anthropological works) that are of greatest interest. These individuals produced works that are easily classifiable as human geography in today’s terms. They studied the routes from one province of the Islamic empire to another, recorded borders, and took copious notes from merchants and travelers regarding the locations of towns, their produce, and their taxation systems. They recorded tales about ‘marvels’ of different nations (monuments, natural wonders), noted the most significant ancient monuments and stories about them (for example, the pyramids), and generally commented on the nature of different regions of the countries. These authors provide insight into the perceptions of Egypt held by visitors from elsewhere in the Islamic world. Only a very few of these scholars were native Egyptian Arabs, and if they were, it is likely that their Muslim Arab identity was stronger than their Egyptian identity. The Fayum region during this period was, like many parts of Egypt, still predominantly occupied by Coptic Egyptians. The Muslim Arab ruling elite remained confined to Cairo and the north, and their perceptions of the Fayum region were colored by several factors, notably the shared beliefs found in the Bible and the Qur’an, their nationality, their location in Egypt, and their reason for being in Egypt.
The religious ties between Islam and Christianity are vividly represented in medieval Islamic accounts of the Fayum, and indeed these accounts are the only records of what are certain to be Coptic Christian traditions about the Fayum landscape. The most significant aspect of the Fayum in the eyes of medieval Islamic scholars was that it was created by the prophet Joseph—an important figure in both the Bible and the Qur’an. It is likely that Coptic tradition linked Joseph to the creation of the region. This story, when told to Muslim visitors, was easily accepted because it involved a familiar figure. The medieval Islamic scholars, like all travelers, often compared the landscape of the region they were visiting with that of their home nation. More than one scholar noted that the river of Fayum was more remarkable than the Euphrates or Tigris, even though the reality may well have not been so idyllic.
One of the most significant elements of their ideas about the landscape of the Fayum is their perception of its location. Cairo (Fustat) was one of the most important cultural centers of the Islamic world, and most scholars probably did not venture beyond its outskirts, collecting their information about Egypt from merchants who traveled throughout the country. Thus the medieval Islamic perception of the Fayum was based on the experiences of people who traveled to the region from Cairo, resulting in a strong directional perspective. Their perception of the region was shaped by the route taken by the merchants to the region from Cairo, across the desert. This journey from Cairo to the Fayum, crossing the desert, led to a perception that the Fayum landscape lay outside the landscape of Egypt both physically and psychologically. It was distant and hard to reach, and not really integrated into Egypt.
The medieval Islamic perception of the region developed over time, with writers borrowing ad hoc from each other, often repeating the accounts of earlier scholars without question. The end result was that the Fayum landscape was perceived to be divine, having been created by Joseph with inspiration from God. It was also distant from ‘their’ Egypt (Cairo) and reachable only after undertaking a dangerous journey. The perception that the region was divine and linked to Joseph was also held by some of the later European scholars, somewhat ironically based primarily on different sources.
Explored Landscape
The final group of materials to be considered (presented in Chapter Six) comprises works of ‘modern’ European writers, generally in the form of travel accounts. From the sixteenth century, European travelers started to visit Egypt in increasingly large numbers. Their perception of the landscape was shaped by what they had read in the classical accounts of Herodotus, Pliny, and Strabo, and to a large extent they divorced the modern Egypt of the Mamluks from the ancient Egypt of the pharaohs. Modern Egypt was a place that, in their eyes, needed transforming, while ancient Egypt needed studying. Their perception of the Fayum was frequently shaped by their ‘knowledge’ of the Labyrinth and Lake Moeris of Herodotus. The travelers who were in Egypt to experience its modern, exotic, ‘oriental’ culture, not its ancient culture, visited the Fayum for its rich game hunting. Their perception was naturally shaped by the rich resources the region provided for these activities.
These writings are typical early orientalist works, and are studied in an appropriate context. Works such as those by Edward Said (1978), Donald Reid (2002), and Elliot Colla (2008), have influenced the way these accounts are treated here. To a large extent their perceptions of Egypt shaped the approach taken by early Egyptologists, and many of these perceptions are still apparent today. In Chapter Six the accounts are placed firmly in their cultural and historical context. They are not taken at face value—the ‘views’ of the landscape they portray do not always reflect reality. Rather, they reveal perceptions of the Fayum landscape shaped by the writers’ cultural sphere, nationality, social status, personal studies, and ‘place’ in Egypt.
The Transmission of Texts
One of the key factors affecting the history of the study of the Fayum is the unavoidably monumental effect the ‘Classical’ Greek and Latin accounts had on early Egyptology. This makes it is appropriate here to outline how the Classical texts were transmitted and received, in order to fully appreciate how and why they played such a huge role in shaping perceptions of ancient Egypt, especially the Fayum.
The beginnings of Classical scholarship lie in the early records of what had previously only been orally transmitted (Greek) poetry in the seventh century bc, resulting in small-scale circulation of written works. By the fifth century bc a book trade existed in Athens, and small private collections were forming. In the fourth century bc the first academic institutions with libraries were founded, with the Mouseion and its library in Alexandria established in 280 bc by Ptolemy Philadelphus. By the end of the second century bc the great age of Greek Classical scholarship in Alexandria had come to an end, but people continued to study the older works. The partial destruction of the library in Alexandria in the first century bc did not prevent it from being used. Strabo, for example, was able to study in Alexandria.20 Inspired by the Greek scholars, Latin literature had started to appear in the third century bc. Education consisted primarily of the study and interpretation of Greek poetry. In addition, an interest in history began to develop. Under Augustus the book trade flourished and the appearance of the codex and use of parchment provided easier production and greater durability of texts. As a result, many works were copied, ensuring better preservation of the texts. The rise of Christianity but lack of suitable Christian texts led to the use of Greek Classical works in religious education.21
Between the fourth and seventh centuries ad Greek texts were translated into Syriac in the East, and Greek and Latin books were preserved in monasteries in the West. During the eighth century a revival of learning and education occurred in Europe, schools were attached to cathedrals and monasteries, and copies of Classical Latin texts started to be reproduced again.22 Perhaps ironically, given the value that had been placed on Greek works during the Roman Period, Latin—rather than Greek—began to be viewed as the language of education and religion, and knowledge of Latin became a marker of cultural status.23
The fact that scientific and philosophical works were highly valued by Islamic scholars meant that the Classical age of Islamic scholarship included many studies of Greek works, and during the ninth century ad many Greek Classical texts were translated into Arabic and Persian. The focus on astronomical, mathematical, and geographical texts, however, meant that the more literary works (for example, Herodotus’s Histories) were overlooked. Contemporaneous with this Islamic translation movement in the East, there was a revival of learning in the Byzantine West during the mid-ninth century. By the mid-eighth century, paper making, learned from the Chinese by the Arabs, had passed across into Western Europe, facilitating greater ease of reproduction. During the ninth to twelfth centuries the Classical Latin texts were copied and studied. Many Greek Classical texts found their way to Italy, sparking a brief interest in them in the ninth century. By the twelfth century, education had shifted from the monasteries into cathedral schools, Greek texts found their way into the curriculum via Latin translations (often based on Arabic translations), and Islamic learning was filtering into Europe via Spain. It should be borne in mind that education was essentially aimed at the instruction of the clerical classes, namely men destined for service in the church who needed to be versed in Latin in order to preach the Bible.24
By the thirteenth century the first universities had been established, and they, too, focused on the education of men destined for the Church. During the Renaissance, Classical texts were translated into several contemporary European languages, making them far more accessible. Alongside this advance, the educated classes increasingly valued knowledge of Latin as a means of impressing social peers. The early fifteenth century saw the earliest European collecting expeditions to the East in search of new manuscripts for the study of Greek and Latin Classical and Biblical texts, and some of the first court patronage of book collections and libraries.25 The first Greek grammar was produced by the English Franciscan friar Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century, but it was not until the fifteenth century that scholars really showed any great interest in the Greek works, when the desire to read the authors referred to in the Latin works led to the employment of many Greeks as translators and teachers. Several Greek works were translated into Latin in Italy during the early years of the Renaissance, and in 1457 Pope Nicholas V (who established the collection of manuscripts in the Vatican library) ordered translations of Herodotus, Strabo, and Ptolemy.26
The invention of the printing press in the late fifteenth century led to a huge increase in the availability of Latin texts. The press at the Sorbonne in Paris produced large numbers of Latin texts and the Aldine press in Venice was dedicated to the production of Greek works. The increasingly tight Church control over the Bible led to a decline in its use as a Classical text—no longer could scholars debate the meaning and translations of the work. In 1590 Pope Sixtus V oversaw the production of the Latin Vulgate Bible, which, after a few changes by his successor Clement VIII, became the standard (unchangeable) text for the Catholic Church until 1926. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries both Greek and Latin studies flourished in France, Budé producing Latin translations of Greek works, and both Latin and Greek texts were translated into French.27 The first partial translation of Herodotus’s Histories into Latin was by the Italian scholar Battista Guarino in the early fifteenth century, and by 1452 a full translation had been completed by Lorenzo Valla.28
Following the Renaissance rediscovery of the many Egyptian obelisks in Rome, during the sixteenth century European scholars and pilgrims started to make trips to Egypt. Interest in travel to Egypt for exploration and to see the ancient monuments described in Classical works started to grow, and visitors started collecting antiquities for their patrons. By the mid-seventeenth century many of these travelers were publishing accounts of their exploits, which led to increased interest in travel, exploration, and collecting in Egypt. Work by Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher triggered a surge of interest in the translation of hieroglyphs, which previously had been shrouded in mystery;29 Kircher unfortunately made no real advances. This increasing fashion for travel to collect antiquities and manuscripts increased the desire to gain access to more of the Classical geographical works and to acquire information on the countries to which the collectors were traveling. While traveling, scholars encountered local (oral) folklore, which during the Middle Ages was accorded similar importance to the Classical texts.30 There can be no real doubt that early Renaissance travelers to Egypt held this view, and the stories included in many early European accounts display a blend of Classical and oral traditions. Due to the epic nature of the events and heroic deeds of the characters, folklore often captured the imaginations of travelers and their readers more readily.
The first ever Description de l’Égypte was written by the French diplomat and historian Benôit de Maillet in the late seventeenth century,31 although this title is now synonymous with the far grander and more ambitious monument of a ‘book’ produced by the much later Napoleonic expedition in the early nineteenth century. The eighteenth century can easily be viewed as the birthplace of Egyptology as it is understood today. The works of travelers/explorers such as Englishman Richard Pococke and Danish naval officer Frederick Norden became guides for future travelers and included highly detailed accounts of the sites and monuments they encountered in Egypt. Naturally, they wanted to discover new sites and ‘wonders,’ but they also all sought to discover the ‘famous’ sites known from the Bible and the Classical Greek and Latin histories of Egypt. The Labyrinth and Lake Moeris of Herodotus were high on that list. This led many travelers and scholars to the Fayum, and eventually resulted in exploration of the region as a whole and the discovery of the numerous other (more tangible) Ptolemaic and Roman remains it contained.
The earliest ‘Western’ studies of medieval Islamic historical and geographical works were undertaken by (principally French) orientalists and philologists in the nineteenth century. They looked primarily at the language itself—medieval Persian or Arabic. The works were also valued for the insights they provided into the early Islamic state, medieval Islamic history, and medieval science, and for their contribution to Western understandings of the early Islamic faith. Certain genres became the focus of interest for specific groups of scholars, that is, mathematics, astrology, astronomy, geography, cartography, or history. Simultaneously, during the early to mid-nineteenth century Egyptology as we understand it today was becoming established. Egypt became more easily accessible to Europeans after the invasion of Napoleon in 1798. During the late nineteenth century the Service des Antiquités was founded. There was initially interest in the value that some of the Arabic and Persian material held for Egyptologists. Gaston Maspero, the second head of the Antiquities Service, studied the French translation of the anonymous Akhbar al-zaman (l’Abrégé des merveilles),32 acknowledging the value of the work. His wider knowledge of Islamic works is apparent in the fact that he noted that many passages were borrowed or copied from al-Mas‘udi, Maqrizi, and Murtada. This interest was only briefly held in Egyptology, however, and only rarely since Maspero have Egyptologists considered these texts. A summary of the few works that have considered medieval sources is presented by Okasha El Daly (2005). It includes Penny Wilson and David Jeffreys, but the list is not long.33
The quest to ‘find’ the wonders described by Classical scholars is not really over: relatively recent publications show that Lake Moeris and the Labyrinth are still topics of debate.34 Advances in Egyptology mean that far more attention is now paid to broader questions relating to the history of occupation in the region and the use of the Fayum landscape. One serious barrier to producing long histories of the Fayum (or indeed any area of Egypt) is the almost complete fragmentation of the study of the history of Egypt into many distinct subjects: Egyptology (the history, language, and art of ancient Egypt), Egyptian archaeology (more scientific studies of material culture, ancient technology, settlements, and activities of daily life), Classical history/archaeology (Ptolemaic and Roman periods), Classical studies (the traditional Classical Greek and Latin texts), Coptic studies (Coptic as a language and Christianity in Egypt), and Medieval studies (texts and archaeology of Arab–Islamic Egypt).
The Landscape: The Fayum
The natural form of the Fayum region—an inland delta contained within the boundary of desert hills—not only makes it an ideal case study for a long history of the relationship between people and the clearly bounded land they inhabit and experience, but also is responsible for major developments in the ways in which humans interact with their environment. From the earliest exploitation of natural resources in Egypt with the beginnings of agriculture in the Palaeolithic/Neolithic, to the first land-altering interventions into the hydrology of Egypt in the Ptolemaic Period, and some of the earliest excavations in Egypt during the nineteenth century ad, the Fayum landscape has always invited people to take advantage of it and to speculate on how it came into being. The ways people have lived in, altered, and studied the land of the Fayum region have shaped and been shaped by their perceptions of the landscape. It is that relationship which forms the focus of this book.
