Lake Mariout, is a brackish lake in northern Egypt near the city ofAlexandria. The lake area covered 200 km² and had a navigable canal at the beginning of the 20th century, but at the beginning of the 21st century, it covers only about 50 km².
Etymology
The name derives from Mareotis or Marea, the name of the lake in ancient times.
Overview
In antiquity, the lake was much larger than it is now, extending further to the south and west and occupying around 700km. It had no mouth connecting it to the Mediterranean, being fed with Nile water via a number of canals. By the twelfth century the lake had dwindled to a collection of salt lakes and salt flats and it had dried up by the Late Middle Ages. At least 250 years ago, the lake was fresh water, and much of it would dry up during the period just before the Nile flooded again. A storm in 1770 breached the sea wall at Abu Qir, creating a seawater lake known as Lake Abu Qir. The salt waters were kept separate from Lake Mariout by the canal that allowed fresh water to travel from the Nile to Alexandria. As part of the Siege of Alexandria, on 13 March 1801, the British cut the canal, allowing a great rush of sea water from Lake Abu Qir into Lake Mariout. Lake Abu Qir ceased to exist, and Lake Mariout became brackish instead of fresh. When the British opened the lake to the sea in Napoleon's time it caused a salt-water flood that destroyed 150 villages. The cutting of the dykes by the British in 1801 refilled Lake Mariout so that it suddenly regained its ancient area, became filled with salt water instead of the former fresh, and was too shallow for navigation. Alexandria's access to the Nile was lost, necessitating the opening of the Mahmoudiyah Canal from Alexandria to the Nile in 1820. Lake Mariout is separated from the Mediterranean Sea by the narrow isthmus on which the city of Alexandria was built. The lake shore is home to fisheries and saltworks. As far back as the early 1900s, it was documented that salt was being refined from the western part of the lake. According to some records, a homonymous nome was located on the shores of this lake.
The De Vita Contemplativa, a description of a society of ascetics written in the first century CE, says that the community of cenobitic monastics called the Therapeutae were widely distributed in the ancient world, but that "their country" was "beyond the Maereotic lake". Some interpret the Therapeutae as early Christian monks.
The diocese was nominally restored in 1933 as the titular bishopric of Mareotes. Although technically a Latin titular bishopric, it has had several Eastern Catholic incumbents, notably those of Egypt's native Coptic Catholic Churchsui iuris. It has had the following incumbents, so far of the fitting episcopal rank:
In 2015 a stele, resembling the Rosetta Stone and dating back some 2200 years, was discovered in the Taposiris Magna Temple site at Lake Mariout. Measuring 41 inches by 25.6 inches by 7 inches, its message commemorates two Ptolemaic pharaohs and Queen Consort Cleopatra I Syra. There are ancient tombs located on the shores of the lake.
Fish species
The fish species Nile perch lives in the lake although its principal habitat is fresh water, and the lake contains some salt. In 1939, a small lake, called the Nozha Hydrodrome was "isolated from Lake Mariout" and this allowed for the Nile perch to flourish there.
In literature
W. B. Yeats refers to the lake as the Mareotic Lake in his poem Under Ben Bulben.
Lawrence Durrell writes about the lake using its ancient name Lake Mareotis in his tetralogy of novels The Alexandria Quartet, where it is the setting for a duck shoot.
