The Faiyum Travel Guide | Egypt

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 Fayyum 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.

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 toursm 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 .

The geological history of the Fayyum 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 Fayyum 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.

Things to see:

1-The lake 
Located in the northwestern and lowest section of the Fayoum depression ,Birket Qarun covers approximately 214 square kilometers (135 square miles), stretches 40 kilometers (25 miles) from east to west , and is 45 meters (144 feet) below sea level.The modern lake is ten times smaller than it was a million years ago, in Pleistocene  times.

2-Fossils
The Fayoum contains by the earliest known and the most important fossil deposits in the world including shells, sharks, whales marshland creatures like sea-cows, giant turtles , crocodilians, trace fossils, and mammals, including primates.

3-Ancient  water wheels churn and groan, lifting the water that rushes throughout the fayoum over an intricate and ancient canal system.The farmers toil in lash green fields at tasks .

4-Khawand Asal-Bay, built in 1499 (usually referred to as the Mosque of Qayt-bay).

5-Asal-Bay was the favourite concubine of Sultan Qayt-bay, mother of Muh. IV and sister of Sultan Qansuh I.

6-Mosque of the Amir Sulayman, called locally Sidi Muhammad, built in 1559 known locally as al-Mu'allagah. Sulayman was the inspector of the district. Built partly in brick in the local style.

7-Kom Aushim
The first village to greet visitors upon arrival from Cairo is the small hamlet of Kom Aushim located a few kilometers north of Karanis.Kom Aushim Museum contains material recovered from Karanis and other sites around the Fayyum. 

8- Karanis 
Is one of the largest Greco-Roman cities in the Fayoum. Founded in the third century B.C and originally inhabited by the mercenaries of Ptolemy the second s army , Karanis, with a population of about 3000, prospered for seven centuries .It declined only during turbulent times of the fourth and fifth centuries.

Things to see in Karanis:

The two temples in Karanis were dedicated to forms of the crocodile god.Living crocodiles were kept in the sacred lakes of these temples and were fed grain, meat, and wine mixed with milk and honey. They participated in ceremonies and were mummified after death.

The Northern Temple 
This temple was cleared in 1925. In limestone, it has two pylons and consists of three rooms. In an outer court several cult objects were found, including a headless female deity, a hawk-headed crocodile and a limestone altar with a bearded god on each side. This court leads into an inner court and a sanctuary with a large stone altar. An inner room approached from the W was probably used for oracular purposes.

The Southern Temple
Located in the southern part of the ancient town, the limestone Temple of Pnepheros and Petesouchos is the lager of two temples found on the site. It was dedicated to two local crocodile gods, Pnepheros and Petesouchus.There are some inscriptions of the reigns of Nero, Claudius and Vespasiun. Around the temples are remains of the Town with a well preserved Bath-house.

9-The Obelisk

Moved from its former site in the village of Abgig, the red granite obelisk created in honor of Senusert the first of the Twelfth Dynasty now stands at the northern entrance to Medinet Fayoum .

10-Church of Abu 'a1-Saylayn (St. Mercurius), containing the tomb of Anba Abram, a popular Coptic saint. 

11-Deir al-'Adhra (Monastery of the Virgin) to the N can be recognised by its domes. It was founded probably by Bishop Butrus (Peter) of the Fayyum in the 12C or the patriarch Cyril III in the 13C, but it has been unoccupied since the 18C. The old Church oi al-'Adhra is in the SE of the courtyard; inside are three haykals, to the Virgin (centre), St. Anthony (N) and St. Michael (S).

12-the New Church of Abu '1-Saylayn (St. Mercurius)
It contains the tomb of Anba Abram, a popular Coptic saint

13- Deir al-Malak Ghubrayal (Monastery of the Angel Gabriel) can be seen on the skyline (4km). It is one of the earliest monasteries in the Fayyum having been built in the 7th or 8C. Enclosed within a wall, the court is reached through a gate by the lodgings of the priest and his family. The church is ancient and reuses earlier material including Corinthian columns from some earlier temple.

14-Hawarah (Hawarah al-Maqta'). 
Hawara (Great Mansion ) or Arsinoiton polis, city of the Arsinoans, was the site of the pyramid complex of Amunemhet  the third .

Pyramid Complex ol Amenemhat III. There does not appear to have been a causeway or valley temple attached to this pyramid. Of the Pyramid of Amenemhat 111 only the mud-brick core with brick filling between stone walls remains; the limestone casing has long since disappeared. It was originally 58m high and 100m sq. with a slope of 48°45'; there is still a splendid view of the Fayyum from the top of the pyramid. The entry is to the S (now inaccessible) and was intended to mislead the tomb robbers, with false burial shafts. 

The quartzite sarcophagus had a curved lid and a panel design at the foot, but the tomb had been robbed and the body destroyed and burnt. It was excavated with great difficulty by Petrie who found the chamber half full of water. Fragments of vases with the name of Amenemhat III upon them were recovered.Apparently it was not finished at his death and was completed for him by his daughter Sobek-Nefru who came to the throne as the last ruler of the 12 Dyn. after the depletion of the male line.

 This site was famous for its Mortuary Temple, known in Classical times as the Labyrinth, said to have been carved from a single rock. It was still in existence when Herodotus visited Egypt; he saw it and thought that it far surpassed the pyramids as a building. Now little remains of the vast structure, said to have contained over 3000 rooms, except piles of debris and a vast quantity of chipped stone fragments.It was near here in a cemetery in the desert to the N that Petrie found the Fayyum portraits, painted in wax encaustic on flat boards and dating to the Roman period. Painted during life and attached to the coffins after death, they are among the earliest portraits known (now in the EM and BM and elsewhere).

15-al-Lahun

The town of Lahun has been dominated since ancient times by the Bahr Yusif, the canal which divers water from the Nile and carries it to Lahun where it is dispersed throughtout the Fayoum.In fact, an ancient papyrus indicates that the name of the town is taken from the ancient Egyptian Ra-Hunt, meaning the opening of the canal.

Pyramid Complex of Senusert II, also of the 12 Dyn. The Valley Temple, 1.6km to the E, is very ruined. On the edge of the cultivation c 2km NE are the remains of an extensive mud-brick town, Kahun, probably built to house the temple officials although Petrie, who excavated it, thought it was for the workmen. Against the E face of the pyramid the MortuaryTemple, now also much destroyed, probably in the 19 Dyn., is of red granite and decorated with inscriptions and carvings. The Pyramid ofSenusert II stands on a natural outcrop of rock and is built of mud brick, originally with a stone casing which was extensively robbed in antiquity The entrance is on the S side (now inaccessible) to confuse the tomb robbers; the burial chamber is lined with red granite slabs and contained a red granite sarcophagus. To the NE is a Subsidiary Pyramid. Around both pyramids is a mud-brick wall. 

Things to see around Al lahun:
Deir al-Hammam, the most picturesque of all the monasteries in the Fayyum.Deir al-Mari Girgis (Monastery of St. George), the most recent foundation in the area, the church and cells being built in 1914. There was a monastery of St. George in Sidrnant in the 13C but by the 15C it had been abandoned.

References :
1-Veronica Seton-WILLIAMS AND  Peter Stocks,Atlas,street atlas of Cairo, maps, plans, and illustrations A &C Black(publishers)Limited 1993
2-Cassandra Vivian , The Western Desert of Egypt, the American University in Cairo press 113 Sharia Kasr el Aini Cairo Egypt,2000