Faiyum Governorate, Governorate in Upper Egypt
Faiyum is a province in the Nile Valley with a wide depression southwest of Cairo that contains a large saltwater body, fertile fields and stretches of desert. The landscape shifts between green farmland along narrow channels and dry plains reaching toward the horizon.
Between 1938 and 1756 before the common era this depression served as an important district near the capital of the Middle Kingdom. Later rulers built waterworks to reclaim more farmland and regulate the connection to the Nile.
Farming communities near the water use channels and ditches that follow ancient patterns for watering orchards and vegetable plots. Fishermen work from wooden boats to bring in catches from the salty lake each morning.
Travelers find smaller towns and villages scattered along the channels and around the lake shore, many accessible by paved country roads. Some parts of the desert margins lie away from main routes and require preparation in hot weather.
The salt in the lake comes not from the sea but from thousands of years of evaporation in this closed depression. Fish living there adapted to the high salt levels and now support a commercial catch.
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