Lake Moeris of Ancient Egypt

An ancient example of flood control, irrigation, and the use of hydraulic locks is seen in the ancient Egyptian management of water in the Faiyum (Fayum, Fayoum) region, called Lake Kunis or Lake Moeris by later Greeks. 

The Fayum area is lower than the nearby Nile river, and a canal between the river and the  depression was dug before 2900 BC.  King Amenembat improved the canal and built a diversion dam on the Nile. The Ha-Uar dam allowed Nile water at flood stage to be diverted to fill the  Fayum and form Lake Moeris, estimated to be about 17,000 acres in size.  Gates at both ends of the canal were used to control the flow of water, and at flood stage the water flowed from the Nile to the lake, and at other times the water flowed from the lake to the Nile.  This provided flood control, provided water to the Nile system during the dry season, and sustained irrigation around the lake.  From the book the Hydraulics of Open Channel Flow, by Hubert Chanson. 

The Greek historian Herodotus of the fifth century B.C. described it thus:

This lake has a circuit of three thousand six hundred furlongs, or sixty schoeni, which is as much as the whole seaboard of Egypt. Its length is from north to south; the deepest part has a depth of fifty fathoms. That it was dug out and made by men's hands the lake shows for itself; for almost in the middle of it stand two pyramids, so built that fifty fathoms of each are below and fifty above the water. . . The water of the lake is not natural (for the country is exceeding waterless) but brought by a channel from the Nile; six months it flows into the lake, and six back into the river.

The Lake Moeris project and its control dams and canal was abondoned in about 230 BC because the branch of the Nile it was connected to had decreased in size.

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[Deborah]

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