UPPER EGYPT. CAIRO TO ASWAN BY THE UPPER EGYPT RAILWAY. The journey from Cairo to Luxor by train occupies a few minutes over 14 hours, the distance being about 420 miles; the journey from Luxor to Aswân occupies 10 hours, the distance being about 130 miles. The Nile is crossed at Nag' Hamâdî by an iron bridge 1,362 feet long. The ordinary gauge is used from Cairo to Luxor, and at narrower gauge from Luxor to Aswân; this necessitates a change of carriage at Luxor. The following are the الجيزة الحوامديه البدرشين مزغونه العياط المتانيه کفر عمار الرقه بنى حدير 3,128 1,644 1,131 + 2 * The formula for converting kilometres into miles is The passenger for the Fayyûm changes carriages here. Y THE FAYYUM. At Wasta, a town 55 miles from Cairo, is the railway junction for the Fayyûm. The line from Wasța runs westwards, and its terminus is at Medinet el-Fayyûm, a large Egyptian town situated a little distance from the site of Arsinoë in the Heptanomis, called Crocodilopolist by the Greeks, because the crocodile was here worshipped. The Egyptians called the Fayyûm Ta-she "the lake district," and the name Fayyûm is the Arabic form of the Coptic 0, "the water." The Fayyûm district has an area of about 850 square miles, and is watered by a branch of the Nile called the Bahr-Yûsuf, which flows into it through the Libyan mountains. On the west of it lies the Birket el-Kurûn. This now fertile land is thought to have been reclaimed from the desert by Amenemḥāt III., a king of the XIIth dynasty. The Birket el-Kurûn is formed by a deep depression in the desert scooped out of the Parisian limestone, which has become covered in great part by thick belts of salted loams and marls. On these Nile mud has been deposited. The Birket el-Kurûn is all that is left of the ancient Lake Moeris,§ and its water surface is about 130 feet below sea level. Its cubic contents are estimated at 1,500,000,000 of cubic metres. * Heptanomis, or Middle Egypt, was the district which separated the Thebaid from the Delta; the names of the seven nomes were: Memphites, Heracleopolites, Crocodilopolites or Arsinoites, Aphroditopolites, Oxyrhynchites, Cynopolites, and Hermopolites. The greater and lesser Oases were always reckoned parts of the Heptanomis. In Egyptian, Neter het Sebek. From the Egyptian m § From the Egyptian mer-ur. www. Pa-iuma. |