Environmental History of Lake Qarun
UCL Geography explores Lake Qarun’s environmental history, combining archaeological, sedimentary, and climate research to reveal 8,000 years of human-environment interactions.
Project Funding and Duration
Funded by the Leverhulme Trust (Research Project F/07 134X), active Feb 2003 – Jan 2006.
Visit the Leverhulme TrustThe work is coordinated by researchers at the Environmental Change Research Centre and Institute of Archaeology at UCL, with collaborators in the UK and Egypt.
Background
Natural archives of past environments, such as lake sediments, offer a valuable resource for examining interactions between humans and their environment.
The Faiyum Depression, sustained by the Nile, has supported human culture for ~8,000 years and has a rich archaeological heritage.
History of the Faiyum
When Herodotus visited the Faiyum (~450 BC), he encountered a large lake, Lake Moeris, described as 50 fathoms deep and supplied seasonally by the Nile.
"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."
Aims:
- Elucidate Lake Qarun’s environmental history and identify human impacts using time-space analysis.
- Reveal long-term records of environmental change due to civilisations and climate.
- Key periods: Holocene climate control, civilizational impacts (~4 KY BP), 20th-century technological influences.
Methods:
- Multi-proxy sediment core analysis
- Re-survey of Faiyum archaeological records
- Independent palaeoclimate records (East Africa, eastern Mediterranean)
Contribution:
- Part of PAST GLOBAL CHANGES (PAGES) IGBP PEP III Transect
- Supports African palaeoclimate projects ACACIA and IDEAL
- Holocene climate and human influences: former beaches, freshwater diatomites (7000–5000 BP).
- Civilisation based on lake resources; extensive occupation and major achievements.
- 4.2 KY BP low Nile floods → First Intermediate Period → major water project by 12th Dynasty kings (Amenemhat I–III).
- Middle Kingdom pyramids: Hawara and Lahun.
- Ptolemaic period (~2.3 KY BP): lake level lowered for agriculture.
- Archaeologists: Flinders Petrie, Canter-Thompson, and John Ball confirmed modern Lake Qarun = remnant of Lake Moeris.
- Today: Lake Qarun is 8 m deep, saline, receives Faiyum drainage, no surface outflow; the region is intensively agricultural.
Lake Levels
Inferred Holocene lake level changes based on geoarchaeological and geomorphological evidence.
- Hassan FA 1986. J. Arch. Sci., 13: 483–501
- Hassan, F., Tassie, G., Flower, R., Hughes, M. & Hamden, M. (2006) Modelling environmental and settlement change in the Faiyum. Egyptian Archaeology 29: 37–40.
Contacts
- Professor Emeritus Roger Flower, ECRC, UCL
- Professor FA Hassan, Institute of Archaeology, UCL
- Professor Jonathan Holmes, ECRC, UCL
- Professor HJB Birks, University of Bergen & ECRC Visiting Professor
- Dr Simon Patrick, ENSIS Ltd, UCL
- Dr Kevin Keating
- Dr Geoffrey Tassie
- Mike Hughes
- Dr Melanie Leng,
- Dr J. Boyle
- Dr PG Appleby
- Dr Ian Foster
- Dr A. Zalat
- Dr T. Seif
- Dr Ramadan H. Abu-Zied
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