THE FAYUM DEPRESSION. 63 



was dammed at its entrance into the gorge, the " sea" became gradually reduced 

 to a semicircular morass, and would dry up altogether but for the sluices which 

 admit the water required for irrigation purposes. It was no slight matter to 

 have thus reclaimed an extensive district, where as many as one hundred and 

 fifty villages are said to have flourished. But according to the most i)robable 

 supposition, supported by a careful survey of the whole region, the more elevated 

 portion of the reclaimed land was converted into the famous Lake Moeris, which was 

 one of the wonders of the old world, and which, centuries after its disappearance, 

 must still be ranked amongst the most astounding works of man. The remains of 

 embankments in some places 200 feet broad at their base, and 60 feet high, 

 appear to represent on the east side the outer enclosures of the vast basin which 

 during the floods received the discharge of the Bahr-Yusef, estimated at about the 

 twenty-sixth part of the whole Nile. At the angles of the embankment are 

 still visible the remains of pyramids recording the fame of Amenemha III., by 

 wliom this stupendous reservoir was created some forty- seven centuries before the 

 opening of the Suez Canal. Herodotus, who may perhaps have seen though he 

 did not measure it, gives it an enormous circumference, far greater in fact than 

 that of the whole Fayum. According to Linant, it occupied an area of 120 square 

 miles in the eastern portion of the Fayum, and at the end of the floods its volume 

 must have exceeded 100,000,000 cubic feet. A small portion of this prodigious 

 storage may have served to irrigate the western Fayum ; but nearly all the 

 overflow taken from the Nile during high water was distributed over the plains 

 during the dry season, and sufliced to irrigate 450,000 acres of land. None of 

 the great modern reservoirs can be compared with this great work, either for 

 size or skilful design. Most of them are merely artificial lakes, which receive the 

 whole fluvial discharge, and distribute the excess to the lower river basin. But 

 the stream itself is continually sapping the foundations, and too often bursting 

 the banks of its reservoir. It would, however, be difficult now to restore Lake 

 Mceris, whose bed has been so greatly raised by alluvial deposits that the retain- 

 ing walls and embankments would have to be carried several yards higher than 

 formerly. 



The Bahr-Yusef is continued under diverse names to the delta, but in its 

 lower course the discharge is very slight. Nearly all its feeders, as well as the 

 other channels and watercourses, are gathered up by the main stream at the head 

 of the delta, whence they again ramify in a thousand branches over the plains of 

 Lower Egypt. Hence at this point the Nile presents much the same appearance 

 as in Nubia, or still higher up at the Khartum confluence. It glides in a slow 

 and regular current between its banks, reflecting in its stream the trees, gray mud 

 villages, and here and there a few white buildings. Nothing sudden or abrupt 

 in this vast and sleeping landscape, whose monotony is broken only by a few 

 dhahahiyé, or Nile boats, and above which is suspended an everlasting azure 

 firmament. On either side the narrow plains, the cliffs, the ravines, and terraces 

 succeed each other in endless uniformity. In this land of simple outlines, little 

 surprise is caused even by the regular forms of the pyramids skirting the western 



