Of Amenemha, the first king of this house, who ruled over Upper and Lower Egypt (2380-2371 B.C.), a colossal figure of red granite is still in existence, which was discovered in Lower Egypt at Tanis (San), not far from Lake Menzaleh.¹⁵⁴ His power must have extended up the Nile over the adjacent part of Nubia, for a pillar discovered there informs us that he intrusted an officer with the superintendence of the gold mines in Nubia.¹⁵⁵ His successor, Sesurtesen I. (2371-2325 B.C.), erected a temple to Ammon at Thebes, and set up obelisks, i. e. pointed monolithic pillars, dedicated to the sun-god, in Lower Egypt, in Fayum, and at Heliopolis. The obelisk at Fayum, not far from the ancient Arsinoe, was about forty feet in height; it has been broken by the fall into two pieces. The obelisk of Heliopolis is sixty feet in height; it still towers over the ruins of this city, near the village of Matarieh. It is not the first obelisk erected in Egypt, for the inscriptions of Chufu mention an obelisk erected by that king, but it is the oldest which has come down to our time. The inscription, repeated on all four sides, runs thus: – "Horus, the life of that which is born, the child of the sun, Sesurtesen, who is beloved by the spirits of Heliopolis, who will live for ever, the golden hawk, the life of that which is born, this gracious god has erected this obelisk at the beginning of the great festival. He has erected it who assures us of life for ever."¹⁵⁶ That this king also ruled in Nubia, and forced his way far up the Nile above Egypt, is proved by a monument in Nubia on the cataracts of the Wadi Halfa; a pillar, on which is depicted Sesurtesen, representing Nubians and negroes, the prisoners of eight nations or tribes, to the god Horus.¹⁵⁷ In the rock tombs of Beni Hassan is buried an officer of this king, Amenj, overseer of the canton of Hermopolis (Ashmunein). The inscription tells us that Amenj had served the king when on a campaign to destroy his enemies; that he had approached the land of Cush, and reached the limits of the earth. The king had returned in peace after the overthrow of his enemies. Afterwards Amenj with 600 warriors had conveyed the produce of the goldmines from the canton of Hermopolis to the stronghold of Coptus. He had loved his canton; and all the works required for the house of the king he had carried out in his canton by his own arm, and had paid in the tribute. He had laboured, and the canton had been in full activity. He had not afflicted the children, or ill-treated the widows; he had not disturbed the fishermen, or hindered the herdsmen. Famine had never prevailed, because every plot had been planted. He had caused the inhabitants to live, had given gifts without regarding the great before the small.¹⁵⁸ The fragment of a seated colossus of Sesurtesen I., of black granite, is to be seen in the museum at Berlin; his colossus of red granite is at Tanis. A third statue of this king has been found at Abydus.¹⁵⁹

Amenemha II. and Sesurtesen II. carried on the campaigns of the first Sesurtesen in the south of Egypt. A monument in the valley of Hamamat exhibits battles with the Punt, i. e. with the tribes of the Arabians and the negroes.¹⁶⁰ Sesurtesen III., who succeeded Sesurtesen II., completed the subjugation of Lower Nubia. To protect the new border of the kingdom, he caused fortresses to be erected a little above the falls of the Wadi Halfa, at Semne and Kumne, about 250 miles south of Syene. A pillar discovered in this district has the following inscription: – "Southern border; erected in the eighth year, under the rule of his holiness King Sesurtesen III., who gives life for all eternity. No negro shall pass over it on his way, except the boats laden with the oxen, goats, and asses of the negroes."¹⁶¹

The third Sesurtesen was followed by the third Amenemha (2221 to 2179 B.C.). Inscriptions in the Wadi Maghara, in the peninsula of Sinai, tell us that Amenemha III. caused the copper to be conveyed from the mines there by 734 soldiers, in the second year of his reign; and inscriptions in the valley of Hamamat show that the quarries there were frequently used by this king.¹⁶² Near the fortifications of his predecessor, on the rocks of Semne and Kumne, are found numerous records of the height reached by the Nile in the reign of Amenemha III. Here we read – "Level of Hapi (the Nile) in the fourteenth, sixteenth, thirtieth years, &c., under his holiness King Amenemha III., who lives for ever." From these observations we find that the average height of the inundations at that time was more than twenty-four feet higher than at present; and the greatest height reached under Amenemha III. was twenty-seven feet above the greatest height of modern times.¹⁶³

Herodotus tells us the following story; – Among the successors of Menes, Moeris carried out some remarkable works; he built the north gateway in the temple of Hephaestus, excavated a great lake, and erected pyramids in it. "The priests told me that under the rule of Moeris, the Nile overflowed the land below Memphis, although it had only risen to the height of eight cubits, but now the water does not cover the land unless it reaches a height of sixteen or at least fifteen cubits; and it seems to me that if the land were raised again in the same proportion, the Egyptians who live in the Delta below the lake of Moeris would be in distress. The circuit of the lake of Moeris is about 3,600 stades, or sixty schoenes, and the depth in the deepest place about fifty fathoms. The lake extends from north to south. That it was the work of human hands, is clear from the nature of it. About the middle are two pyramids, each of which rises about fifty fathoms out of the water, and on each is a stone colossus seated on a throne. The water of the lake does not arise from springs, for the whole district there is entirely without water, it is introduced by a canal from the Nile. For six months the water flows from the Nile into the lake, and again for six months from the lake into the Nile. While it runs out the fishery brings in a talent of silver a day for the King's treasury; but when the water flows into the lake the product is a third of a talent only.¹⁶⁴"

Diodorus tells us that king Moeris erected the north gateway at Memphis, the splendour of which excelled all others; and above the city at about ten schoenes distance he excavated a lake of marvellous utility and incredible size. The circuit was 3,600 stades, and the depth in most places was fifty fathoms. "Who would not ask, when contemplating the vast extent of this work, how many myriads of men were required to complete it, and for how many years? But no one could ever speak in worthy terms of the utility of the lake and the advantage it is to the inhabitants of Egypt and the wise prudence of the king in making it. As the Nile does not rise evenly, and the fruitfulness of the land depends on the evenness of the overflow, Moeris excavated this lake to receive the superfluous water, in order that an excessive inundation might not create marshes and morasses, or a deficiency of water imperil the fruitfulness of the soil. He carried a canal 300 feet in breadth from the river for eighty stades (about ten miles) to the lake, through which he first admitted the superfluous water and then drew it off. In this way he procured for the tillers of the soil the desired medium in the water, since the mouth of the canal was sometimes closed, sometimes opened, which was both a difficult and costly thing to do. The lake has remained to our time, and is still called by the name of the constructor, the lake of Moeris. In the middle, the king who excavated it left a place on which he built his own tomb, and two pyramids. One was erected for himself, the other for his wife. On these he placed stone statues of himself and his wife, sitting on thrones, in the impression that by means of this work he would be for ever held in grateful remembrance."¹⁶⁵

Of the lake above Memphis, Strabo gives the following account: – "The canton of the city Arsinoe, which was formerly known as the City of Crocodiles, surpasses all others in the beauty of its appearance, in fruitfulness, and also in the wonders to be seen there. It alone is covered with green and large olive trees, whereas there are no olives in the rest of Egypt; it produces a considerable amount of wine, and corn, and pulse, and many other cereals. In it also lies the wonderful lake of Moeris, which in size and colour is like a sea, and has shores like the shores of the sea. Owing to its size and depth this lake is able to receive the superfluous water at the time of the inundation, so that it does not overflow the inhabited and planted districts. On the other hand, when the river begins to subside, after it has poured the overflow into one of the two mouths of the canal, the lake and the canal together retain the water required for irrigation. This takes place in the natural course of things, but there are also artificial sluices at both mouths of the canal, by which the persons in charge regulate the rise and fall of the water." Tacitus also mentions "the excavated lake which receives the overflow of the Nile."¹⁶⁶

From these accounts the object of the work is clear. It was intended to regulate the inundation by a large reservoir, and so to increase its beneficent effects upon the soil of Egypt. The inundation was to be reduced for the Delta by drawing off a part of the water, which had risen into this basin in the neighbourhood of Memphis, in order that the land in this district might not be rendered swampy, and the marshes might have time to dry. This basin could also retain a portion of water in the superabundant years of excessive inundation, in order to supply the deficiencies of other years when the water did not reach the highest plots. Further, the reservoir might be used to irrigate the arable land in the neighbourhood during the waterless months, when there was no inundation.

A few miles above Memphis the Libyan range is divided by a depression. This cleft leads from the Nile into a spacious urn-shaped valley, now called Fayum, of which the western part is filled by a large lake. On the ruins near this lake, the name of King Amenemha III. is frequently read. If we remember that the careful observations of the rise of the Nile from the reign of this king tend to show that he was busily engaged with the irrigation of the land, that the Egyptians call this lake the lake of inundation (meri), and that the king Mœris of the Greeks owes his name to this title (suten en meri), we may regard Amenemha III. as the author of the wonderful hydraulic structures at Fayum. The great reservoir, which he constructed, is no longer in existence, but the remains of it can be traced in dams and in the modern lake of Fayum, the Birket-el-Kerun. The urn-shaped valley of Fayum offered a situation for a basin near the Nile, which might receive and preserve part of the inundation, and the depression in the Libyan range secured a natural path for the canal, required to feed the basin from the Nile, and the Nile from the basin. For the site of the basin the nearest part of the valley was selected; it was enough that the bed of the reservoir was not lower than the lowest level of the Nile. No deep excavations were needed; all that was required was to enclose a large part of the valley with strong dams; and the earth necessary for erecting these could be taken out of the enclosed space. These dams must have been massive enough to retain a large body of water, and prevent it from breaking out into the western, and far lower part of the valley, and at the same time of sufficient height to prevent any overflow even in the times of the highest inundations. At the eastern entrance into Fayum we find running from the valley of the Nile the remains of long, rectilinear, and very massive banks, in which modern research has recognised the original enclosure of the lake of Moeris. The breadth of the dams appears to have been carried to 150 feet; whereas the height can hardly have exceeded thirty feet.¹⁶⁷ When Herodotus tells us that the depth of the basin in the deepest part was fifty fathoms, it is obvious that the statement rests on the computation that the two pyramids in the middle of the lake were of the same height under as above the surface. The same authority allows a circuit of about 450 miles for the lake, but from the remains we cannot allow a greater circuit than 150 miles.¹⁶⁸ The Egyptians were sufficiently skilled in the erection of strong dams, and structures of such an extent could not be in excess of the resources of a country which had erected the great pyramids. Finally, when Herodotus asks what had become of the earth dug out of this great lake, the answer is that there was no complete excavation, but merely the enclosure of a certain space of land, and what was taken out of this was at once applied to the construction of the dams.

The statement of the priests about the height of the inundation in the reign of Moeris, which Herodotus has preserved for us, and from which he has drawn the conclusion that the soil of Lower Egypt must have risen since that reign from seven to eight cubits in height, is much exaggerated. The deposit of mud in consequence of the inundation raises the soil only about four inches in 100 years, that is, about three-and-a-quarter feet in 1,000 years. Supposing the basin of Amenemha to have been completed 1,500 years before Herodotus travelled in Egypt, the difference in the required height of the inundation might reach three or four cubits, but not seven or eight. Yet the raising of the soil, and more especially of the bed of the great basin, which rose far more rapidly than the surface of the land, brought about the decay, and at last the ruin, of this reservoir. The bed of the basin in which the water remained the whole year through, and not for three or four months only, must have been raised by the deposit at a peculiarly rapid rate; at the present time it shows a height of eleven feet as compared with the land outside the remains of the dams.¹⁶⁹ With this rise in the bed, the value of the basin diminished in proportion as the amount of water which the reservoir was capable of receiving was lessened. It was useless to raise the height of the dams, for the influx of the water from the Nile depended on the level of the bed of the connecting canal, and of the basin. These causes along with the disaffection of later times must have brought about the decay of the reservoir, the value of which Diodorus places so high, and which was in existence in the time of Tacitus. At a later period the dams must have been neglected, so that at the time of some extraordinary inundation, a breach was made towards the west, which filled the western and lowest part of Fayum with water. This is the origin of the Birket-el-Kerun, the water of which is still sufficient to convert the largest part of Fayum into one of the most fertile and blooming districts of Egypt. The level of the Birket-el-Kerun is seventy feet lower than the canal which once connected the reservoir with the Nile.¹⁷⁰