Today We Learn About The Fayyum...

First, an introduction:

The Fayyum is a natural basin and oasis in Egypt's Western Desert with a salty and shallow dead sea at its center. It's about two hours southwest of Cairo. The Fayyum was the site of some of Egypt's earliest experiments in food production although the region was only sparsely populated during the Pharaonic Era (3000-300 B.C.E.). During this time temple complexes, pyramids, palaces and hunting lodges were built. However, the lack of fresh water meant that the Fayyum could never support a large population. That is, until the campaigns of Alexander the Great and the beginning of Ptolemaic rule over Egypt. The Ptolemies drained the marshes in the area and linked the region to the Nile valley through canal systems which provided the region with year-round access to fresh water. By 200 B.C.E., according the Roman geographer Strabo, between 10 to 20 percent of the country's population was found here and it was now one of the richest agricultural lands in the world. Thousands of Greeks migrated to Egypt under the service of the Ptolemies and settled in the Fayyum and hundreds of towns were built.

Last Friday my Graeco-Roman history class took a field trip to the Fayyum to see some of the archaeological sites.

The first site was the town of Karanis which was established in the 3rd century B.C.E. and flourished until the 4th and 5th centuries C.E. At its height the town had a population of 2 to 3 thousand people. The town consists of multi-story mud brick and palm log houses. All that can really be seen now are the remains of the brick houses and as well as the towns two major temples which are both dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek. Thousands upon thousands of pottery shards litter the floor. This is the best preserved and most fully excavated town from this era.

Some ruins...


Temple of Pnepheros and Petesuchos (local versions of Sobek)...


A bath in the Painted House with fragments of fresco still surviving...


The second site we visited was another temple dedicated to the god Sobek called Qasr Qaroun. This is also from the 3rd century B.C.E.

Sobek...


The third site was a pyramid built in the 19th century B.C.E. called Hawara. Its pretty large and what makes it especially cool is that, well, it looks like a big pile of dirt. That is until you get closer and see that it's actually made from thousands of very small bricks. It's still a good 80 or 90 feet tall, maybe more. What survives is actually the eroded core of the pyramid. Hawara was also the site for the regions necropolis- where lots of papyrus was found (a huge portion of what we know about ancient Egypt comes from these papyri). Extraordinary Egyptian art was also found here- the famed "Fayyum Portraits" which were wooden portraits that were placed over the heads of mummies. This was a common practice in the Roman Empire but because of the dry climate they have only survive here. Also here was the legendary "Labyrinth". Although archaeologists are unsure of what the building was it certainly had hundreds of rooms and porticoes (which is why the visiting Greeks named it the Labyrinth) and was probably a palace or administrative center. Unfortunately nothing remains of this amazing structure.

Hawara...


Fayyum Portrait ...

Another Fayyum Portrait...


Finally, the last and most impressive structure we saw was the Pyramid of Meidum. This is a pyramid that was never completed because it suffered a collapse while it was being built. It has no inscriptions so Egyptologists can only estimate its age. They date it to around 2600 B.C.E.

The way they figured this out was that the pyramid seems to have been built originally as a step pyramid by the last pharaoh of the 3rd dynasty- like the Step Pyramid of Saqqara- and a later pharaoh, Snefru (the first pharaoh of the 4th dynasty), added the outside limestone coat, giving it its true pyramid form. The first pyramid to be built after the Pyramid of Saqqara was the Bent Pyramid and was also built by Snefru. It's called the Bent Pyramid because the bottom half is at an angle of 60 degrees while the top half is scaled down to an angle of 43 degrees. The Meidum Pyramid has an angle of 60 degrees throughout. They think that the Meidum Pyramid was being built at the same time and that its collapse was what prompted the Pharaoh Snefru to change the degree of the Bent Pyramid in mid-construction, in order to prevent another collapse. This also explains why the burial chamber was never finished and why it has no inscriptions.

If it had been completed with its limestone encasing it would have been nearly as tall as the Pyramid of Giza- reaching almost 400 feet. As it is , what remains is over 300 feet tall. What looks like a hill under the pyramid is actually what remains of the collapsed limestone.

Meidum...


The Bent Pyramid...


And of course, this post would not be complete without a picture of camels riding in a truck bed: