Fossils, Pottery and Ancient Lakes: Fayoum from Prehistory to Today
Kenzy Fahmy
Less than 100km south of Cairo and just west of the Nile lies the town of Fayoum, a place steeped in ancient history, both human and natural. In a country like Egypt, the word history takes on new meaning, and Fayoum is a perfect example of why that happens to be the case.
The story of this quaint little pseudo-oasis begins not thousands of years ago, but tens of millions, at a time when the desert here was still a seabed. Its story takes us through the very beginnings of human settlement to the foundation of the very first Egyptian Kingdom, through Greek and Roman conquests to the birth of the Christianity and Islam, and finally, it takes us all the way up to present day Egypt.
What’s in a name?
The name “Fayoum” comes from the Coptic Phiom or Payom, meaning sea or lake, a reference to Moeris, the ancient body of water that allowed for life in the area to flourish. But Fayoum has had many names. The ancient Egyptians named it Shedet after Menes, the Pharaoh who united Upper and Lower Egypt, founded the city as a crocodile sanctuary while on a hunting trip; legend has it that he was attacked by his hunting dogs and carried to safety by a crocodile.
It was known as Krokodilopolis to the Greeks, in tribute to Sobek, the ancient Egyptian crocodile god who was worshipped as chief deity of the area, and Arsinoe to the Romans, after the Queen who ruled Egypt alongside her brother-husband, Ptolemy II. These are just a few of the names she has carried over the course of her long life.
Waterways, wheels and irrigation
Fayoum is known to most as an oasis, and it can certainly feel like one, but it isn’t. The city, which lies within a depression of about 40m below sea level, is connected to the Nile until today by an ancient canal called Bahr Yusef (the Sea of Joseph) that extends all the way down past Minya to a small town called Dairut. The canal was a natural offshoot of the Nile since prehistoric times and was later enlarged and extended in order to increase water flow to Lake Moeris, also known as Qarun, which served as a way to regulate the flooding and water levels of the Nile, provided the area with irrigation and was likely also used as a reservoir during times of drought. But Lake Qarun is now almost as saline as the sea, thanks to years of evaporation and a lack of flowing freshwater, and is no longer the source of life it once was.
Agriculture and irrigation have been the heart of the city’s foundation and development since the very beginning, and the iconic waterwheels that dot its canals are central to that. Over 200 wooden waterwheels, first introduced during Ptolemaic times, can be found all through the city and out into the fields, most, if not all, of which are still in use today. This type of waterwheel, different to the animal-driven Sakias that are used in other parts of the country, can now only be found in Fayoum and have become an important symbol of the ancient city.
Tunis Village and Fayoum Pottery
Sources are unclear as to exactly when the village was founded and by whom, but Tunis is said to have been founded by two unnamed Egyptian poets in the 60s. However, it was the Swiss potter Evelyne Porret who made Tunis Village what it is today. Porret, whose father was a Christian missionary stationed in Cairo, had made a number of trips to Fayoum during the 60s and 70s where she met and married Egyptian poet and songwriter, Sayed Hegab; the couple eventually decided to buy a plot of land in the village and moved there sometime around the 1980s.
It was around this time that Porret opened her now-famous pottery school, the Ptah Association for Training Urban and Rural Children in Ceramic Works. The school has since taught hundreds, if not thousands, of locals the art of pottery making, providing them with a valuable source of income and turning Tunis Village into a popular spot along the tourist trail, with a number of gorgeously rustic and eco-friendly lodges and hotels opening their doors over the years.
Evelyne Porret passed away in 2021, leaving behind a beautiful and incredibly inspiring legacy. She was loved, and mourned, by many. Her funeral was attended by local residents of the village as well as by people from around the world, it was even broadcast live by a number of local media outlets.
Tunis is a wonderful testament to, and continuation of, Fayoum’s long history of pottery production. Fragments of ancient pottery can, until today, be found littering the desert that surrounds the city, remnants of the ancient city of Karanis. The potters of Tunis village are keeping the craft alive and well, embellishing their pieces with palm leaves and livestock, symbols of daily life in the village.
The Valley of the Whales
Leaving the lush greenery of the village and heading out into the desert we find a different world, one far more ancient. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005, Wadi Hetan (Valley of the Whales) is a treasure trove of fossils that reveal the evolution of prehistoric whales and other ocean-dwelling animals. Nowhere else in the world can you find such a high concentration of well-preserved and easily-accessible fossils. The Wadi Hetan Fossil and Climate Change Museum at the entrance of the park houses a thoughtfully curated collection of fossils that are also well worth exploring.
The fossils here, the first of which was discovered in 1902, date back to around 40 million years ago when the desert was still under water. What was once the Tethys Sea is now an open-air museum that tells the story of prehistoric life moving from land to water, from water to land. The sea gradually receded, over millions and millions of years, leaving behind complex layers of sediment which make up the sandstone, limestone and shale formations we see today.
Within these formations lie the fossils of prehistoric sea life, from sea cows, sharks and turtles, to the almost entirely intact skeletons of archaic whales. The youngest formation, known as Qasr el-Sagha, formed around 39 million years ago, shows that sea levels were already growing to be quite shallow, uninhabitable to large marine animals like sea cows and certainly whales. What remains, many millennia later, plays out almost like a story book covering the Earth’s history one ancient chapter at a time, each step perfectly preserved by the arid desert environment.