If next year the inundation came down in too great force, Lake Moeris received and stored the surplus till such time as the waters began to subside.

Two pyramids, each surmounted by a sitting colossus, one representing the king and the other his queen, were erected in the midst of the lake.

Such is the tale told by Herodotus, and it is a tale which has considerably embarrassed our modern engineers and topographers.

How, in fact, was it possible to find in the Fayum a site which could have contained a basin measuring at least ninety miles in circumference?
Linant supposed "Lake Moeris" to have extended over the whole of the low-lying land which skirts the Libyan cliffs between Illahun and Medinet el Fayum; but recent explorations have proved that the dikes by which this pretended reservoir was bounded are modern works, erected probably within the last two hundred years.

Major Brown has lately shown that the nucleus of "Lake Moeris" was the Birket el Kurun.[8] This was known to the Egyptians as _Miri, Mi-uri,_ the Great Lake, whence the Greeks derived their _Moiris_ a name extended also to the inundation of the Fayum.
If Herodotus did actually visit this province, it was probably in summer, at the time of the high Nile, when the whole district presents the appearance of an inland sea.