The Fayum Landscape

Claire J. Malleson

Description

Located some one hundred kilometers southwest of Cairo, the Fayum region has long been regarded as unique, often described in terms that conjure up images of an idealized Garden of Eden. In An Egyptian Landscape, Claire Malleson takes a novel approach to the study of the region by exploring the ways in which people have, through millennia, perceived and engaged with the Fayum landscape.
Distinguishing between the experienced landscape of state and bureaucratic record and the imagined landscape of myth, meaning, and observers’ personal influences and expectations, Malleson questions in detail where those perceptions come from. She traces religious practices, follows the tracks of myths and traditions, and investigates the roots of stories found in texts from the pharaonic, classical, and Medieval Islamic periods. She also reviews many, more recent travel writings on the region from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. The work of each author is presented in its historical and cultural context, and Malleson integrates what is known about ancient activities in the Fayum, based on the archaeological evidence from the many monuments and ancient settlements that exist in the region.
Scholars and students of archaeology and landscape studies as well as general readers interested in Egypt’s history and archaeology will find this book highly engaging and enlightening.

Sujets

• Islam
• History
• Egypt
• Histoire
• Middle Est

Informations

• Publié par: The American University in Cairo Press
• Date de parution: 19 avril 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781617979460
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 9 Mo

Extrait

THE FAYUM LANDSCAPE
THE FAYUM LANDSCAPE
Ten Thousand Years of Archaeology, Texts, and Traditions in Egypt


CLAIRE J. MALLESON










The American University in Cairo Press Cairo New York
This electronic edition published in 2019 The American University in Cairo Press 113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt 420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018 www.aucpress.com

Copyright © 2019 by Claire J. Malleson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978 977 416 883 3 eISBN 978 1 61797 946 0

Version 1
For my parents
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Timeline

1. The Landscape: The Fayum
2. Academic Landscape: Theory in Archaeology and Geography
3. Landscape of the Lake: The Ancient EgyptianFayum (7500–332 bc )
4. Changing Landscape: Herodotus and the Greco–Roman/Late Antique Fayum (450 bc – ad 642)
5. Legendary Landscape: Medieval Islamic Accounts ( ad 860–1442)
6. Explored Landscape: Western Accounts (Seventeenth–Nineteenth Centuries)
7. Ten Thousand Years of Archaeology, Texts, and Traditions

Notes
Further Reading
Complete Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Black-and-White Figures
1. Google Earth image showing the Fayum in Egypt. 3
2. Google Earth image of Lahun area. 51
3. Google Earth image of Kahun town. 52
4. Google Earth image of Biahmu. 56
5. Seated statue of Rameses II at Kiman Faris (Crocodilopolis), 1980. 59
6. Remains of the temple of Sobek at Kiman Faris (Crocodilopolis),1980. 60
7. Google Earth image of Madinat Madi. 61
8. Google Earth image of Hawara. 62
9. Google Earth image of Madinat al-Gurob. 75
10. Map of Greco-Roman towns in the Fayum. 113
11. Google Earth image of Tebtunis. 115
12. Google Earth image of Bacchias. 116
13. Google Earth image of Dimai. 117
14. The temple and enclosure walls, Dimai. 118
15. Google Earth image of Qasr Qarun. 119
16. Google Earth image of Theadelphia. 120
17. Google Earth image of Karanis. 141
18. Lucas graffiti in Qasr Qarun. 201
Color Plates
Between pages 130 and 131:
1. Google Earth images of the Fayum, 1996, 2006, 2016.
2. GIS Elevation map of Fayum.
3. Google Earth map of principal Fayum sites.
4. Block from Hawara, Petrie Museum UC14794.
5. Map of the northern Fayum lake basins.
6. Fragments of inscription from Giza Mastaba G2150, Ka-nefer.
7. Kahun town.
8. Biahmu Pedestal, 2006.
9. Hawara Pyramid, 2006.
10. Fragments of the Fayum Papyrus, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.
11. Fragments of the Fayum Papyrus, Pierpont Morgan Library.
12. The Lahun dike, 2017.
13. Qasr Qarun temple.
14. The Ptolemaic temple at Madinat Madi.
15. The dromos at Madinat Madi.
16. Fayum portrait, Petrie Museum UC19609.
17. Fayum portrait, Petrie Museum UC19613.
18. Google Earth map of locations mentioned by European travelers.
19. Fishing boats on Birkat Qarun, 2006.
20. Crimson sunset over Birkat Qarun, 2006.
21. Postcard of painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme, Madinat al-Fayum, 1868.
Acknowledgments
A great number of people supported me in this project, both during my PhD studies and while I was revising the text. I would particularly like to thank Nigel Fletcher-Jones and Neil Hewison from the American University in Cairo Press, who not only suggested they might like to publish my thesis but also provided invaluable advice, feedback, and encouragement. My PhD supervisors Steven Snape and Matthew Fitzjohn and my examiners Chris Eyre and Marco Zecchi offered many wise words and posed very helpful, difficult questions. Campbell Price, Cordula Werschkun, and Peter M. Robinson were endlessly supportive while I was preparing my PhD, as were my friends and colleagues in the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology and the libraries at the University of Liverpool. My colleagues in the Department of History and Archaeology in the American University of Beirut have not only made me feel enormously welcome, but have also provided some crucial advice on parts of this book. Since 2007 I have worked with many archaeological missions in the United Kingdom and Egypt, and I owe a lot to the teams at Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project, Chester Amphitheatre, Giza (Ancient Egypt Research Associates), Tell al-Retaba, Elephantine (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut), Madinat al-Gurob, and Sais. My friends and family have known me at my best and my worst during this process, and I owe a great deal to Daniel Lawson, Pier Paolo Raffa, to my “five brothers and a million sisters” who keep me smiling, to my five “children” Rory, Benjamin, James, Amelia, and Robert, to my brother Tom, and to Emma and Niki. Many colleagues, friends, and family have read various drafts of this study as it progressed, and I am exceptionally grateful to everyone who offered their time and advice so generously, especially Ruth Binney and Marco Zecchi. Last, but certainly not least, I want to thank the people who first inspired me to ‘do’ Egyptology and Archaeology: Mark Lehner, José Pérez-Accino, Jan Picton, Mick Oakey, Keith Hazell, Naomi Payne, Neil Faulkner, and Patricia Graham.
Timeline

Chronology up to end of Roman Period based on Shaw (2000) unless noted otherwise (dates are approximate up to 664 bc ).
Palaeolithic 700,000–7000 bp Fayum Epipalaeolithic Cultural Phase (Qarunian) 1 7530–6090 bc Early Fayum Neolithic Cultural Phase (Fayumian) 2 5480–4260 Late Fayum Neolithic Cultural Phase (Moerian) 3 4620–3640 Lower Egyptian Neolithic and Egyptian Predynastic Period 5300–3000 Early Dynastic Period (First–Second Dynasty) 3000–2686 Old Kingdom (Third–Eighth Dynasty) 2686–2160 First Intermediate Period (Ninth–Tenth Dynasty) 2160–2055 Middle Kingdom (Eleventh–Thirteenth Dynasty) 2055–1650 Second Intermediate Period (Fourteenth–Seventeenth Dynasty) 1650–1550 New Kingdom (Eighteenth–Twentieth Dynasty) 1550–1069 Amarna Period 1352–1327 Ramesside Period 1295–1069 Third Intermediate Period (Twenty-first–Twenty-fifth Dynasty) 1069–664 Late Period (Twenty-sixth–Thirtieth Dynasty) 664–332 Ptolemaic Period 332–30 Macedonian Dynasty 332–310 Ptolemaic Dynasty 305–30 Roman Period 30 bc – ad 395 Late Antique/Byzantine/Coptic Period ad 395–642 Ummayads 661–750 Abbasids 750–868 Tulunids 868–905 Ikhshidids 935–69 Fatimids 969–1171 Ayyubids 1169–1250 Mamluks 1250–1517 Ottomans 1517–1867 Muhammed Ali Pasha 1805–48 Khedival/Royal Egypt 1867–1953 Republic of Egypt 1953–Today
1
The Landscape: The Fayum
This province is the most remarkable and interesting of all the provinces of Egypt. 1
—Major R.H. Brown (1892)
Other visitors . . . have also written in praise of the Fayoum, as “a true earthly paradise,” “the garden of Egypt,” “paradise of the desert.” The stress has always been on the fertility and beauty of the land—by no means the only attraction of the Fayum to the modern visitor, but surely attraction enough, especially after the concrete desert of Cairo. 2
—R.N. Hewison (2008)
F or millennia the Fayum has been viewed as somehow different from the rest of Egypt. Not part of the Nile Valley but not remote enough to be considered one of the Western Desert oases, the Fayum has many unique aspects to it. The amazing qualities attributed to the region by Herodotus, the ‘father of history,’ in the fifth century bc were a source of fascination for later Classical scholars such as Pliny and Strabo, and attracted the first European pilgrims and explorers to the Fayum. The ideas they developed about the region, particularly those relating to Biblical events, became popular topics of debate in early Egyptology. The Fayum was the site of some of the earliest organized archaeological investigations in Egypt, by the British ‘father of Egyptian archaeology,’ Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Amazingly rich discoveries of well-preserved Ptolemaic and Roman administrative and literary papyri, and life-like portraits found on Roman mummies in the region (known as the Fayum Portraits), meant that the Fayum became a major focus of attention for scholars studying those periods of Egyptian history. The Fayum is also home to some of the oldest archaeological remains discovered in Egypt. Around the shores of the lake, major Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites were noted during the early years of formal archaeology in Egypt, and have been under serious investigation since the mid-twentieth century.
The Fayum region is located to the southwest of Cairo and the Nile Delta apex, currently covering four thousand square kilometers. A lake, now known as Birkat Qarun, is situated in the northwest of the region and was historically fed by the Bahr Yusuf channel. The region is covered in 456 irrigation canals and drainage channels totalling 2,220 kilometers in length. In 2001 there was around 1,437 square kilometers of cultivatable land. These numbers are increasing every y