Biahmu
Coordinates: 29 ° 22 ′ 10.7 ″ N , 30 ° 51 ′ 13.6 ″ E
Biahmu (also Biyahmu, Arabic بيهمو, DMG Biyahmū ) is a village and an archaeological site in the Egyptian Fayyum Basin , about seven kilometers north of today's city of Madinat al-Fayyum . Outside the village are the remains of two colossal figures of Amenemhet III.
The colossal figures
Outside the village, in the middle of an agricultural area, there are the remains of two colossal seated figures of Amenemhet III. from the 12th dynasty . The actual statues have disappeared today, only their bases have been preserved.
The statues were first mentioned by the Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BC). He describes the monuments as seated figures enthroned on pyramids . In 1245 Abu Osman el-Nabulsi el-Safadi reported that the statues were partially destroyed in search of supposed treasures. Johann Michael Wansleben , who visited Biahmu in 1672, could only see the remains of one of the two statues.
Scientific research took place in 1888 by William Matthew Flinders Petrie and in the early 1940s by Labib Habachi . This made it possible to reconstruct the original appearance of the monuments. The statues with the plinths were originally 18 m high and were each surrounded by a cult courtyard with sloping walls. On the pedestals there were representations of the 42 districts of ancient Egypt and of Nile deities. The statues once stood on a dam that flanked the former bank of Lake Qarun. Between them was the starting point of the shortest connection between the lake and the city of Arsinoe / Krokodilopolis . In Pharaonic times, the statues were probably recipients of a cult in which their builder Amenemhet III. was worshiped as a creator and fertility god.
literature
- Dieter Arnold : The temples of Egypt . Bechtermünz, Augsburg 1996, ISBN 3-86047-215-1 , pp. 187-188.
- Arne Eggebrecht : Biahmu . In: Wolfgang Helck , Eberhard Otto (ed.): Lexikon der Ägyptologie, Vol. 1 . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1975, Col. 782-783.
- Labib Habachi : The monument of Biyahmū . In: Annales du service des antiquités de l'Égypte, vol. 40 . Cairo 1941, pp. 721-732.
- William Matthew Flinders Petrie : Hawara, Biahmu, and Arsinoe . London 1889, pp. 53–56, plates 26–27 ( online version )
