Early Egypt and the Fayum

Abstract

THE statements about the Fayum question in NATURE of October 30, pp. 624.5, were already familiar to me, but they do not appear to invalidate the six reasons which are as I have stated (p. 514) for the received view of the Nile-fed lake. For example, the sandy island flagged over with stones for a quay is exactly what fishermen need for drying fish away from the jackals. A discussion of details would much exceed a journal correspondence. But the appeal to “hard geological facts” involves, to begin with, a solution of the problem of interpretation. There must first be some common understanding about the traces of a Nile-fed lake level, which would appear from (1) a lake rising and falling 8 or 10 feet every year, with margins varying over about a furlong of sands; (2) with a general rise of level 4 or 5 feet every 1000 years; and (3) the ground being later dried up and subjected to 2000 years of high-wind denudation without any vegetation covering it, and some hundreds of rain storms. At least it is certain that the traces of it would be quite different from those of the old permanent estuarine lake of pre-human date, both physically and biologically. When we know what to expect, we may then know how to interpret the present appearances.