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above mean sea. In Amenemhat’s time, which was 4,000 years ago, 
the level was 4 metres lower, or at 22J metres above mean sea. This 
was the highest possible level the lake could have attained in his day. 
In the course of time the level of the Nile valley rose by about 10 
centimetres per century, but the frequent occasions on which the canal 
was kept closed during poor and low floods gradually sited up the 
channel and made it less capacious. As there are no Nile shells above 
the contour of 22J metres above mean sea (except a few on the south 
side of the lake which have evidently been blown up by the north 
west winds in sand drifts) it is evident that the gradual silting up of 
the channel more than kept pace with the rising level of the Nile. 
Eventually the silting up exceeded the rise, and that at an accelerated 
rate, the canal became weaker and weaker, and the Fayoum Province 
gradually occupied the site of the lake. Lake Moeris had lasted over 
2,000 years. 
The connection between the Nile and the germ of the future Lake 
Moeris was in existence in King Menes’s time, as I have been informed 
by professor Sayce, but it was King Amenemhat, of the Xllth dynasty, 
who widened and deepened the canal, cleared away the rocky barriers, 
and converted the trifling lake of King Menes’s time into the mighty 
inland sea which controlled the highest floods of the Nile. Those 
ancient Pharaohs were giants in hydraulic engineering. They were, 
moreover, as wise as they were courageous. 
Sir Hanbury Brown has well described the action of the lake. It 
had a surface of 2,500 square kilometres, and being drained back into 
the Nile and kept at a low level it was able to take from a very high 
flood 20 milliards of cubic metres of water. It was quite capable of 
reducing a very high flood to moderate dimensions ; and if injudiciously 
or maliciously opened in a low flood, it was capable of depriving Lower 
Egypt of any flood irrigation at all ; and in those days they had prac- 
tically no irrigation except flood irrigation. 
The Wady Kayan, as already stated, is a depression in the Lybian 
hills immediately south of the Fayoum. It has, at a level of about 29 
metres above the sea, a surface of 700 square kilometres, or about one 
quarter the area of the ancient lake. Like the ancient lake, the lowest 
point of the Wady is 41 metres below sea level. When filled with 
water the greatest depth will be 70 metres. The uppermost four or 
five metres only will be utilised annually, or some 3 milliards of cubic 
metres of water out of a total volume of 20 milliards. Just as the 
