Testimonials
Hello

USA Travelers: "This is an awesome experience"

1
- 18
Trip Advisor
TripAdvisor
1194 reviews of Memphis Tours Egypt in Cairo
Memphis Tours Egypt
© 2012 TripAdvisor LLC
powered by TripAdvisor

El Fayoum History

Named after the Coptic word phiom or pa ? yom ,meaning lake or sea, the triangular depression of the Fayoum looks like a delta .
Near to Cairo, and easily accessible along several well paved highways, the fayoum can be explored in a series of pleasant day trips and offers a wide variety of activities ranging from boating , swimming, and fishing, to visiting antiquities, bird watching, and looking at fossils .
Although a visit to the Fayyum is usually confined to one day and includes the pyramids of Hawarah and al-Lahun, it is well worth extending the tour to include the ancient 12 Dyn., Ptolemaic and Roman towns surrounding the oasis.
The Fayoum is now heavily cultivated and within the last 80 years many sites, originally in the desert, have become surrounded by cultivation. After 2000 years of recession the water level of Lake Qarun is again rising, probably because of the stability of the level of the Nile since the construction of the High Dam at Aswan. This has caused the submergence of many fields and houses and the lakeside road has had to be raised considerably and rebuilt.
Fayoum Today
Today, the Fayoum is still a prosperous, growing province . As in the past, agriculture is its main industry .Produce from the Fayoum has a special status on the Egyptian market. The tomatoes always seem to be bigger orange sweeter, ducks and more tender .
Coptic monasteries , abandoned for centuries , have been revitalized and restored .In many of them, where once a single monk lived amid the ruins, full religious communities are creating important centers once again. Leisure tourism is on the increase around the lake and historical tourism at the ancient sites has grown in the past years.
The Fayoum has five major population centers with five cities, 163 villages, and 1620 hamlets .Over 1989000 people live here 51% of which are men .Over 340000 feddans are under cultivation .
Today tourism boasts several hotels .there are many schools of higher education ,many hospitals .

Geology.
The geological history of the Fayoum has been studied in some detail as the measures of the Gabal Qatrani and Qasr Qarun 20km to the NW of Birkat al-Qarun produce a whole sequence of Early Tertiary strata from the late Eocene to late Oligocene. These show the development of the area from purely marine through brackish marshland to high forest and savannah. The lowest late Eocene strata are marine deposits with abundant remains of sharks and early whales but the latest Eocene shows a brackish coastal marshland with whales and sea-cows among the marine types, and giant tortoises and crocodilians representing the land forms. Of particular note are fossils of Gigantophis, a 12m python, and, most important of all, Moeritherium, the elongated primitive elephantid, whose dynasty was to produce such gigantic forms in later geological ages. The early Oligocene deposits show that the Fayoum was well inland and covered with lush tropical forest.

The Fayoum is a depression :its floor is well below the average level of the Western Desert and well below sea level. It is surrounded by escarpment, rainfall is scarce, and it relies on springs and canals for its water. It is more habitable than other oases simply because it is the closest depression to the Nile Valley and its escarpment is at its lowest and narrowest in the southeast corner, near the Nile.
Build Your Trip