Fayum

Fayum, also spelt Faiyum, is a city in the Fayum Oasis, which is the capital of the Fayum Governate of Egypt.
The Fayum Oasis is a large Depression, 50 miles (80 km) southwest of Cairo, which covers an area between 500 to 650 square miles.

The Fayum Oasis is also known as the Fayyum, Fayoum or Al Faiyum.
In Ancient Egypt, it was the 21st of the Nomes of Upper Egypt
Its capital was Crocodilopolis, renamed under the Greek Ptolemies as Arsinoe.
It started to fill up with Nile floodwater, and was first recorded under the Pharaoh Menes (3,000 BCE.)

A 15 miles (24 km) long canal, known today as the Bahr Yussef Canal, was built to connect with the Nile and irrigate the Fayum.
It was built by the Pharaoh Amenemhat III (1860-1814 BCE), who is also known as Moeris.

The canal was designed to drain into Lake Moeris in order to act as a reservoir when the Nile was low, and help ease flooding when the Nile was high.
It also irrigated the Fayum and brought rich mud washed down from the Nile, which produced a fertile agriculture.

Click here for Mummy Portraits of the Fayum at the British Museum (c.30 BCE-250 CE)
The population in the Fayum continued to embalm and mummify their dead, instead of cremating them as was the custom elsewhere in the Roman Empire.
During the period of Roman occupation, between 1st century BCE and the 3rd century CE, a portrait of the deceased was painted on wood with a pigmented wax and placed over the Mummy.
They are the few surviving examples of Roman Panel Paintings to survive from the Roman Period.
The dry Desert environment has preserved these 2000 year old portraits, excavated from various Roman necropolises, and today we can see what the inhabitants actually looked like.

Lake Moeris in the Fayum