Al-Fayoum Oasis | Western Desert

A very beautiful city contains lots of pleasure and fun, you can’t resist its beauty.Named after the Coptic word phiom or pa-yom, meaning lake or sea, It also looks like the Delta. Welcome to Al-Fayoum Oasis, one of the closest cities to Cairo and also a great one to discover. People always explore Al-Fayoum there in a series of day trips with plenty of amazing activities starting from boating, swimming, and fishing, to visiting antiquities, bird watching, and looking at fossils.

The farmers toil in lush green fields at tasks that seem to imitate the drawings and reliefs of ancient tomb paintings. Ancient ruins stand at the desert fringes as haunting reminders of the long and interesting history of Al- Fayoum.

In prehistory, people lived in Al- Fayoum more than who lived in Delta, the land was lush and there was plenty water for planting and living.

During the Qarunian period Southwest Asians, whom we call Epi-Paleolithic Qarunians, migrated to the area and established residence. Hunting and fishing were the main jobs there.
InNeolithic times during Early Neolithic Fayumian and Late Neolithic, the agricultural communities flourished and they dined on gazelle, hartebeests, or catfish, cooked in rough-faced bowls or cooking pots.

Around 4000 B.C. the climate in Al-Fayoum began to dry that made the people over years left their drought-stricken homes and migrated to the Nile Valley.
By 3500 B.C., some people lived east of the Nile in what is now Maadi-Digla, a modern suburb south of Cairo.

When the Nile Valley became dominant, Al-Fayoum was easier for life along the river, especially because of the summer floods.
During the Pharaonic times, Fayoum was known as Ta-she, or She-resy (the Southern Lake) and was dedicated to the crocodile god. That God was Sobek to the ancient Egyptians, Souchos, Pnepheros, Petesouchos, and Soknopaios to the Greeks and Romans. In fact, the crocodile god played a pivotal role in life in the Fayoum until the Christian era. It was believed that the lake was the primeval ocean where life in all its forms began. The crocodile was the power of that creation.

During the Greek times, many things changed and there were developments. Fayoum was known as “the Marsh,” before it was named the Arsinoite Nome by Ptolemy Philadelphus in honor of his second wife (and sister). It was divided into a number of merides (districts), including Heracleides in the north, Themistos in the west, and Polemon in the south.