Faiyum

Al - Fayyūm (also Fayum, Fayoum, Fayum or Fayyum; Schedet ancient Egyptian, Greek Crocodilopolis, Arsinoe; الفيوم Arabic al - Fayyūm ) is a large city with 316 772 inhabitants ( 2006 census ) in northern Egypt, about 90 kilometers south-west of Cairo. It is in the same, large sink ( Fayyum basin ) in 24 m above sea level, 250 km from the Mediterranean coast.

Inhabited since at least 6000 years oasis town on the edge of the fertile Libyan desert is now the capital of the government of al - Fayyum. Since the 1950s, their population has grown fourfold. Archaeologically, the area is known, among other things by the numerous discovered mummy.

The Fayyum basin ( Coptic: pa iom " the sea" ) is considered the " vegetable garden of Cairo " and was in prädynastischer time a vast marshland. In the Middle Kingdom, these marshes were drained under the kings Amenemhat II and Senusret II by channel systems and dykes to make the area into farming land.

Within the basin

In the northeast of the basin, the ancient settlement Bakchias is (now Kom Umm el- Atl ), whose heyday in the Greco- Roman era was.

At the eastern entrance to the Fayyum basin today's El- Lahun, near which an ancient necropolis of the Middle Kingdom and the ancient city Hetep - Senusret was discovered with many important discoveries lies.