During the Ice Age, the Faiyum basin, sixty miles southwest of Giza, one hundred fifty feet below sea level, was a lake of about a hundred miles around, fed by a distributary of the Nile when it flowed much deeper and wider (because much more rain was falling), that distributary which though was widened and deepened by the biblical Joseph, known as Joseph’s Canal, enlarged apparently because the flow of the Nile river had already begun to decrease by circa 1800 b. c. Pharaoh Amenemhat II was also known as Moeris, namesake of the remnant salty small lake, that pharaoh under whom Joseph served.
