FAIYÛM
Egypt.
An oasis 103 km SW of
Cairo and 38 km W of the Nile, with which it is connected by Bahr Yusuf. Its name has survived through
Coptic from the New Kingdom name meaning sea, referring to Lake Moeris (now Qarün) at the edge of the
oasis. The Greeks called it Limné, which formed the
twenty-second nome of Upper Egypt. Situated on a lake,
it has always attracted hunters and fishermen. Owing to
the interest of Ammenemes III (1842-1797 B.C.) in irrigating this district, the nome became one of the most
fertile parts of Egypt. Its capital was Shedit (consecrated
to Sobek, the crocodile god); the Greeks therefore called
it Crocodilopolis (Herod. 2.148-50). Here Ptolemy II
Philadeiphos organized his Greek and Macedonian veterans as farmers and when his sister-wife Arsinoë Philadeiphos died, she was decreed to be the patron deity of
the nome. Its capital, the present El-Faiyûm, bore the
name of Arsinoë while the nome began to be called
Arsinoite (
Strab. 27.1.38). The Moeris Lake Papyrus
depicts a plan of the whole nome.
The ruins of the Egyptian temple in the old city indicate that it was dedicated to Sobek and to Renenutet,
goddess of harvest, by Ammenemes (Amenemhat) III,
and that it was also in use during the Ptolemaic period.
Apart from the great number of papyri found here or
in the neighborhood, the most important finds from the
Roman period are the portraits executed in tempera or
encaustic on mummy wrapping or on wooden boards
over the faces of the dead bodies. The technique of these
portraits reached its zenith in the Byzantine period. The
Christian Copts of the 2d c. A.D. made of Arsinoë an important center of the new religion and, under Commodus,
it was inhabited by more than 10,000 monks. It is from
here that most of the Coptic sculpture and reliefs come.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
B. Grenfell et al.,
Fayoum Towns and
Their Papyri (1900); E. Kiessling, “Zum Kult der Arsinoö
in Fayfim,”
Aeg. 13 (1933) 542-46; H. Ranke, “The
Egyptian Collection of the University Museum,”
Univ.
Mus. Bull. 15.2-3 (1950) 59, 90-91
I; J. Bingen, “Anses
d'amphores de Crocodilopolis Arsinoë,”
Chronique
d'Égypte 30 (1955) 130-32I; H. Riad, “Le Culte d'Amenemhat III au Fayoum à l'epoque ptolémaique,” ASAE
55 (1958) 203-6I; A. F. Shore, Portrait Painting from
Roman Egypt (1962)1, with bibliog; E. Brunner-Traut &
V. Hell, Aegypten (1966) 485ffM; K. Michalowski,
Aegypten (1968) 494.95 M
S. SHENOUDA
