and eighty millions of square
yards. Mr. Cope Whitehouse believes that the water was freely admitted
into the whole of the depression, which it filled, with the exception of
certain parts, which stood up out of the water as islands, from one
hundred and fifty to two hundred feet high. He believes that it was in
places three hundred feet deep, and that the circuit of its shores was
from three hundred to five hundred miles. It is to be hoped that a
scientific expedition will ere long set this dispute at rest, and enable
the modern student distinctly to grasp and understand the great work of
Amenemhat. Whatever may be the truth regarding "Lake Moeris," as this
great reservoir was called, it is certain that it furnished the ancients
one of the least explicable of all the many problems that the remarkable
land of the Nile presented to them. Herodotus added to the other marvels
of the place a story about two sitting statues based upon pyramids,
which stood three hundred feet above the level of the lake, and a famous
labyrinth, of which we shall soon speak.

Whether the reservoir of Amenemhat had the larger or the smaller
dimensions ascribed to it, there can be no doubt that it was a grand
construction, undertaken mainly for the benefit of his people, and
greatly conducing to their advantage. Even if the reservoir had only the
dimensions assigned to it by M. de Bellefonds, it would, according to
his calculations, have contained water sufficient, not only for
irrigating the northern and western portions of the Fayoum throughout
the year, but also for the supply of the whole western bank of the Nile
from Beni-Souef to the embouchure at Canopus for six months. This alone
would in dry seasons have been a sensible relief to a large portion of
the population. If the dimensions exceeded those of De Bellefonds, the
relief would have been proportionately greater.

The good king was not, however, content merely to benefit his people by
increasing the productiveness of Egypt and warding off the calamities
that occasionally befell the land; he further gave employment to large
numbers, which was not of a severe or oppressive kind, but promoted
their comfort and welfare. In connection with his hydraulic works in
the Fayoum he constructed a novel species of building, which after ages
admired even above the constructions of the pyramid-builders, and
regarded as the most wonderful edifice in all the world. "I visited the
place," says Herodot