of the inundation, believed that they crowned the summits of
two pyramids rising out of the middle of a lake. Near Illahun, Queen
Sovkunofriuri herself has left a few traces of her short reign.

The Fayum, by its fertility and pleasant climate, justified the
preference which the Pharaohs of the XIIth dynasty bestowed upon it.
On emerging from the gorges of Illahun, it opens out like a vast
amphitheatre of cultivation, whose slopes descend towards the north till
they reach the desolate waters of the Birket-Kerun.

[Illustration: 389.jpg THE RUINED PEDESTAL OF ONE OF THE COLOSSI OF
BIAHMU]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Major Brown.

On the right and left, the amphitheatre is isolated from the surrounding
mountains by two deep ravines, filled with willows, tamarisks, mimosas,
and thorny acacias. Upon the high ground, lands devoted to the
culture of corn, durra, and flax, alternate with groves of palms and
pomegranates, vineyards and gardens of olives, the latter being almost
unknown elsewhere in Egypt.

[Illustration: 390.jpg A VIEW IN THE FAYUM IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE
VILLAGE OF FIDEMIN]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Golenischeff.

The slopes are covered with cultivated fields, irregularly terraced
woods, and meadows enclosed by hedges, while lofty trees, clustered in
some places and thinly scattered in others, rise in billowy masses
of verdure one behind the other. Shodit [Shadu] stood on a peninsula
stretching out into a kind of natural reservoir, and was connected with
the mainland by merely a narrow dyke; the water of the inundation flowed
into this reservoir and was stored here during the autumn. Countless
little rivulets escaped from it, not merely such canals and ditches as
we meet with in the Nile Valley, but actual running brooks, coursing and
babbling between the trees, spreading out here and there into pools
of water, and in places forming little cascades like those of our own
streams, but dwindling in volume as they proceeded, owing to constant
drains made on them, until they were for the most part absorbed by the
soil before finally reaching the lake.

[Illustration: 391.jpg THE COURT OF THE SMALL TEMPLE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Major Brown.

They brought down in their course part of the fertilizing earth
accumulated by the inundation, and were thus instrumental in raising the
level of the soil. The water of the Birkeh rose or fell according to th