I'The Fayoum as it is known is the only artificial oasis, created not by water springing forth from the ground but by a long canal, naturally formed by the flooding Nile that dates from Biblical times, called Joseph’s canal. This stretches from the Nile to the great lake of Birket Qarun. It is this huge lake, which on a rough day looks very much like the sea that gives the special character to the Fayoum.
Lake Qarun was a freshwater lake until recent times. This has been proven by the fish skeletons and freshwater plankton remains found in mud deposits. In ancient times the flood of the Nile was powerful enough to charge the lake with new water. However since the 1900s, when the British introduced both a dam at Aswan (anticipating the later high dam) and a system of irrigation by more extensive canalization along the Nile, the water entering the lake has been more run off from agriculture than fresher water direct from the Nile. The growth in salinity means the fish now caught in Lake Qarun are predominantly sea fish introduced from the Mediterranean.
On the northern side of Lake Qarun there are three escarpment levels that rise up to the desert road to Baharriya. You can easily drive some way off the desert road at the top to investigate these escarpments which are like shale cliff edges filled with the fossilized remains of past sea life.
In the Fayoum Oasis it self you will find a reasonably modern central town surrounded by masses of palm tree plantations.
Wadi Rayan, a double lake formed from oasis run-off water some 40 years ago. Around the lake is some of the most magnificent desert scenery in Egypt- all within walking reach of the road which you can reach in an ordinary car or taxi. As well as wadis and hills to explore there is also the monastery of Wadi Rayan where modern day monks carry on the traditions of their forebears who originally dug rock caves here at the dawn of Christianity.

At the visitor centre of Wadi Rayan it is possible to view the lake which is often favored by birds migrating south and north from Africa to Egypt who glimpse this vast stretch of water as a natural resting place.

The Whale Valley, or Wadi Hitan, contains some of the best preserved fossil skeletons of extinct whales anywhere in the world. Huge and strange this haunting place is well worth a visit.