It is 20 km from Fayoum, 80 km from Cairo. The lake is considered one of the most important ancient natural lakes. It is the remaining part of the ancient Moeris Lake. It comprises 1155 km2. It is five meters depth in east, thirteen meters in west. You can practice water sports, fishing and bird watching. The best period for fishing is from July to September.
The lake was declared as one of the protected areas in 1989 with a view to protect the area's biological, archaeological, and geological diversity.
It is rich with various kinds of fish, in addition to many charming species of mammals, reptiles and birds. Besides many archaeological and geological formations obtained from the rare fossils the area contains.
One can immerse in the splendid view of 88 species of birds gracefully flying around their nests nearby the lake.
Among the several monuments the area contains are: El saga palace, Qaroun palace and the remains of the old town of Skitnopius.
The Qaroun Lake today, 45 meters below sea level, has a surface area of 214 square kilometers. It has a maximum depth of just over 8 meters (west of Golden Horn Island) and a volume of 800 million cubic meters.
It is 42 kilometers long and 9 kilometers wide at its broadest point. About 370 million cubic meters of drainage water reach the lake annually, and as the lake level now stays fairly constant and there are no known outlets, this figure is also taken as the annual rate of evaporation.
If follows that, if the water supply to the lake were cut off, it would dry up in two years.
The high rate of evaporation has led to a concentration of salts, the lake is now as saline as the seawater, with a ratio of around 34.5 parts per thousand, said to be growing at the rate of 0.4 parts per year.
For comparison, sea water ranges between 34 and 37 per thousand, while Jordans Dead Sea has between 300 and 330 per thousand. The water is less salty in the East and the South of the lake, where the two main canals bring in fresh water.
Large as the lake now seems, it is but a puddle compared to its former glory. It was certainly much larger in the past than it is now, but just how big and at what stages in its history are points of debate.
The evidence on which the various theories are based is sometimes archaeological, sometimes historical, sometimes hydro logical, and sometimes geological. Many of the locals of the Fayoum believe that the great lake and surrounding swamps were drained by the patriarch Joseph of biblical fame.
The Fayoum became the land of Joseph and the canal connecting it to the Nile was Josephs water or "Bahr Yousef" in Arabic.
A general recession set in around the beginning of Dynastic times, so that during the Old Kingdom, the lake may have been as low as two meters below sea level and no longer in free communication with the Nile.
In the 12th Dynasty, Amendment I, identified with the king known to the Greeks as Lamarres or Moeris, re-flooded the lake, bringing its level very rapidly up to 18 meters above sea level.
He did this by widening and deepening the existing channel connecting the Fayoum to the Nile, which is now known as Bahr Yousef, and by constructing a five kilometer embankment from the northern side of the Lahun Gap at AL-Lahun. Once the channel was dug, the lake probably took four or five years to fill.
The lake, known by the Greeks as Lake Moeris from the Egyptian word men were, meaning "great lake," still stood at around the same level or even higher when Herodotus saw it in the mid-fifth century BC, and remained apparently remained that way until early Ptolemaic times.
The large scale reclamation of the Fayoum accredited to Ptolemy II was actually begun under Ptolemy I.
The southern section of Amenemhat I's barrage from Al Lahun to Gebel Abu Sir was dismantled, and a new barrage was built roughly from west to east, across the mouth of Lahun gap and joining the middle of the old barrage at Al Lahun. With sluices in the new barrage across the Bahr Yousef,
The flow of water into the Fayoum was now strictly controlled and only water sufficient for irrigation was allowed in. It probably took as long as 30 years to lower the level of the lake to two meters below sea level, the same level it had been during the Old Kingdom. It remained at about the same height from around 300 BC until the beginning of the Christian Period.
During late antiquity many canals, including the Bahr Yousef, became badly silted up. Consequently much land was lost to the desert and the reduction of inflow caused a further fall in the level of the lake, bringing it down to 36 meters below sea level by the end of the Roman period.
The salinity of the water also began to increase. By the thirteenth century, cultivation of the Northern shore of the lake had all but ceased when irrigation with lake water was no longer possible. In 1714, Lucas noted that the lake water was bitter in the west, sweet in the east. In January 1801, a Dr Martin recorded that his horses drank from the eastern end of the lake, though a day later his camels were floundering on a salt-crust at the western end.
The lake at this time probably stood at around 40 meters below sea level.
Underground drainage from the lake, which acted to slow down the increase in salinity, probably stopped around 1890 when the water level came into equilibrium with the great water-sheet under the Libyan Desert at 40 meters below sea level. Salinity has increased more rapidly since that time to the extent that nearly all the original species of fresh water fish have now died out.
The level of the Lake for most of the last hundred years has been carefully maintained at 45 meters below sea level.
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