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Faiyum الفيوم
Clockwise from top: a fishing boat on Lake Qarun, Whale Valley, trees fighting desertification, Sobek Temple
Faiyum Location within Egypt
Coordinates: 29°18′30″N 30°50′39″E / 29.308374°N 30.844105°E / 29.308374; 30.844105Coordinates: 29°18′30″N 30°50′39″E / 29.308374°N 30.844105°E / 29.308374; 30.844105
Country	Egypt
Governorate	Faiyum
Elevation	23 m (75 ft)
Population (2012)
• Total	349,883
Time zone	UTC+2 (EET)

Faiyum (Arabic: الفيوم‎ el-Fayyūm  pronounced [elfæjˈjuːm], borrowed from Coptic:  ̀Ⲫⲓⲟⲙ or Ⲫⲓⲱⲙ Phiom or Phiōm from Ancient Egyptian: pꜣ ym "the Sea, Lake") is a city in Middle Egypt. Located 100 kilometres (62 miles) southwest of Cairo, in the Faiyum Oasis, it is the capital of the modern Faiyum Governorate. Originally called Shedet in Egyptian, the Greeks called it Koine Greek: Κροκοδειλόπολις Krokodilópolis, the Romans Arsinoë.^[1] It is one of Egypt's oldest cities due to its strategic location.^[1]

Name and etymology

pꜣ-ymꜥ in hieroglyphs

Its name in English is also spelled as Fayum, Faiyum or El Faiyūm. Faiyum was previously officially named Madīnet El Faiyūm (Arabic for The City of Faiyum). The name Faiyum (and its spelling variations) may also refer to the Faiyum Oasis, although it is commonly used by Egyptians today to refer to the city.^[2][3]

The modern name of the city comes from Coptic .mw-parser-output .script-copticfont-family:"New Athena Unicode","MPH 2B Damase","FreeSerif","Arial Coptic",Quivira,Analecta,Antinoou,"Sophia Nubian","Noto Sans Coptic","Segoe UI Historic","Segoe UI Symbol" ̀Ⲫⲓⲟⲙ /Ⲡⲉⲓⲟⲙ epʰiom/peiom (whence the proper name Ⲡⲁⲓⲟⲙ payom), meaning the Sea or the Lake, which in turn comes from late Egyptian pꜣ-ymꜥ of the same meaning, a reference to the nearby Lake Moeris; the extinct elephant ancestor Phiomia was named after it.

Ancient history

Archaeological evidence has found occupations around the Fayum dating back to at least the Epipalaeolithic. Middle Holocene occupations of the area are most widely studied on the north shore of Lake Moeris, where Gertrude Caton Thompson and Elinor Wight Gardner did a number of excavations of Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic sites, as well as a general survey of the area.^[4] Recently the area has been further investigated by a team from the UCLA/RUG/UOA Fayum Project.^[5][6]

In ancient Egypt, the city was called Shedet.^[1] The 10th-century Bible exegete, Saadia Gaon, thought el-Fayyum to have actually been the biblical city of Pithom, mentioned in Exodus 1:11.^[7] It was the most significant centre of the cult of the crocodile god Sobek (borrowed from the Demotic pronunciation as Koine Greek: Σοῦχος Soûkhos, and then into Latin as Suchus). In consequence, the Greeks called it "Crocodile City" (Koine Greek: Κροκοδειλόπολις Krokodeilópolis), which was borrowed into Latin as Crocodīlopolis. The city worshipped a tamed sacred crocodile called in Koine Petsuchos, "the Son of Soukhos", that was adorned with gold and gem pendants. The Petsoukhos lived in a special temple pond and was fed by the priests with food provided by visitors. When Petsuchos died, it was replaced by another.^[8][9]

Under the Ptolemaic Kingdom, the city was for a while called Ptolemais Euergétis (Koine Greek: Πτολεμαὶς Εὐεργέτις).^[10]Ptolemy II Philadelphus (309–246 BC) renamed the city Arsinoë and the whole nome after the name of his sister-wife Arsinoe II (316–270 or 268), who was deified after her death as part of the Ptolemaic cult of Alexander the Great, the official religion of the kingdom.^[11]

Under the Roman Empire, Arsinoë became part of the province of Arcadia Aegypti. To distinguish it from other cities of the same name, it was called "Arsinoë in Arcadia".

With the arrival of Christianity, Arsinoë became the seat of a bishopric, a suffragan of Oxyrhynchus, the capital of the province and the metropolitan see. Michel Le Quien gives the names of several bishops of Arsinoë, nearly all of them associated with one heresy or another.^[12]

The Catholic Church, considering Arsinoë in Arcadia to be no longer a residential bishopric, lists it as a titular see.^[13]

Fayyum was the seat of Shahralanyozan, governor of the Sasanian Egypt (619–629).^[14]

Faiyum mummy portraits

Portrait of a man, c. 125–150 AD. Encaustic on wood; 37 cm × 20 cm (15 in × 8 in)

Faiyum is the source of some famous death masks or mummy portraits painted during the Roman occupation of the area. The Egyptians continued their practice of burying their dead, despite the Roman preference for cremation. While under the control of the Roman Empire, Egyptian death masks were painted on wood in a pigmented wax technique called encaustic—the Faiyum mummy portraits represent this technique.^[15] While previously believed to represent Greek settlers in Egypt,^[16][17] modern studies conclude that the Faiyum portraits instead represent mostly native Egyptians, reflecting the complex synthesis of the predominant Egyptian culture and that of the elite Greek minority in the city.^[18][19][20]

Modern city

Faiyum has several large bazaars, mosques,^[21] baths and a much-frequented weekly market.^[22] The canal called Bahr Yussef runs through the city, its banks lined with houses. There are two bridges over the river: one of three arches, which carries the main street and bazaar, and one of two arches, over which is built the Qaitbay mosque,^[22] that was a gift from his wife to honor the Mamluk Sultan in Fayoum. Mounds north of the city mark the site of Arsinoe, known to the ancient Greeks as Crocodilopolis, where in ancient times the sacred crocodile kept in Lake Moeris was worshipped.^[22][23]
The center of the city is on the canal, with four waterwheels that were adopted by the governorate of Fayoum as its symbol; their chariots and bazaars are easy to spot.

Main sights

• Hanging Mosque, built when the Ottomans ruled Egypt


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  Hawara, archeological site 27 km (17 mi) from the city


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  Lahun Pyramids, 4 km (2 mi) outside the city


• Qaitbay Mosque, in the city, and was built by the wife of the Mamluk Sultan Qaitbay
  


• Qasr Qarun, 44 km (27 mi) from the city


• 
  Wadi Elrayan or Wadi Rayan, the largest waterfalls in Egypt, around 50 km (31 mi) from the city


• 
  Wadi Al-Hitan or Valley of whales, a paleontological site in the Al Fayyum Governorate, some 150 km (93 mi) southwest of Cairo. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Climate

Köppen-Geiger climate classification system classifies its climate as hot desert (BWh).

The highest record temperatures was 46 °C (115 °F) on June 13, 1965 and the lowest record temperature was 2 °C (36 °F) on January 8, 1966.^[24]

Notable people

• 
  Tefta Tashko-Koço, well known Albanian singer was born in Faiyum, where her family lived at that time.


• 
  Saadia Gaon, the influential Jewish teacher of the early 10th century, was originally from Faiyum, and often called al-Fayyumi.


• 
  Youssef Wahbi, a notable Egyptian actor, well known for his influence on the development of Egyptian cinema and theater.

Gallery

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  Qarun Palace
  

  
  

  
  


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  Temple
  

  
  

  
  


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  A whale skeleton lies in the sand at Wadi Al-Hitan (Arabic: وادي الحيتان, "Whales Valley") near the city of Faiyum
  

  
  

  
  

See also

• List of cities and towns in Egypt


• Book of the Faiyum


• Fayum alphabet


• Faiyum mummy portraits


• Lake Moeris


• 
  Phiomia (an extinct relative of the elephant, named after Faiyum)


• Nash Papyrus


• Roman Egypt


• Wadi Elrayan

References

External links

Wikinews has related news: 30 brightly coloured mummies discovered in Egyptian necropolis

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Faiyum.

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Faiyum.

• 
  "Photo Gallery: Water Issues in Fayoum Villages". Archived from the original on 2009-09-06.
  


• 
  Falling Rain Genomics, Inc. "Geographical information on Al Fayyum, Egypt". Retrieved 2011-03-22.
  


• 
  Fayum towns and their papyri, edited with translations and notes by Bernard P. Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt at the Internet Archive


• 
  Vincent L. Morgan; Spencer G. Lucas (2002). "Notes From Diary––Fayum Trip, 1907" (PDF). Bulletin 22. Albuquerque, New Mexico: New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. ISSN 1524-4156.. 148 pages, public domain.


• Fayoum Photo Gallery