AGRICULTURE IN ANCIENT EGYPT

"Greetings, oh Nile, who springs from the earth and gives Egypt nourishment".

Natural river irrigation shaped the early landscape of ancient Egypt. Drainage was not required for the Valley to become liveable. It might constitute a problem in the lower lying parts of the Delta which were often marshy. With the natural flooding and draining of the floodplain, the annual inundation permitted a single crop-season over two-thirds of the alluvial ground.

Organized by the regional authorities, every Egyptian had to move about thirty cubic metres of soil in about ten days every year. With this relatively small investment of labour, they kept the system in working order. Once the main canals, many of them natural, were in place, they just had to be dredged yearly to prevent their clogging up; the levees had to be raised, and smaller ditches had to be re-excavated.

"When the Nile is overflowing, it floods the Delta and the lands called Libyan and Arabian, for a distance of a journey of two days from both banks in places, and sometimes, sometimes less.I could not learn anything about its nature, neither from the priests or from anyone else. I was curious to learn why the Nile is flooding for a hundred days from the summer solstice; and when this time is passed, sinks again, and the river is low during the whole winter until the summer solstice again". 
(Herodotus, Histories 2,19)

The building of dams at right angles to the flow of the Nile, separating the Nile Valley into basins, precedes the Old Kingdom. Dikes were built along the banks of the river and the basins which covered between 400 and 1700 hectares, were carefully levelled. The river water was diverted into canals on either side of the Nile.

At the time of the highest flooding (towards the end of September) most of the Nile Valley was covered with water, only villages and cities, built on higher ground and connected by dams, were above water. When the water level reached the mouths of the canals, the dams separating the canals from the river were opened and the basins and canals flooded. When the highest water level was reached, one to two metres above the ground, the canals were stopped and the water left standing until it evaporated during the next two months. The water logged earth didn't need much further irrigation.

"For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it [i.e. Canaan], is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs". 
(Deuteronomy, 11)

Whatever wateredst it with thy foot may mean, this passage seems to indicate strongly that even cornfields were irrigated while the corn was growing.

The building of dams and canals was done at local or regional levels, and while in the past many held irrigation to be the prime cause for the emergence of a central government, most think nowadays that the involvement of the national government in the irrigation was probably minimal: the opening and closing of the canal sluices to Lake Moeris in the Fayum in order to regulate the flow of the river must have been a task for the central authorities.

The importance of irrigation, of the uninterrupted and fairly shared flow of water, is stressed in the affirmations the ba (the 'soul') makes before the gods of the Realm of the Dead

"33. I have not obstructed water when it should run. 
34. I have not cut a cutting in a canal of rating water". 
(From the negative confessions- Book of the Dead, Chapter 125)

The distribution of water between the periods of flooding was everybody's own business. Until the shadouf came into use in the 16th century BCE heavy earthen buckets were used.

Ploughing and planting

The elder says to the younger man: "We have to ready the team for ploughing. The earth has arisen from the water, it is easy to plough. Go with the seed to the field, so we may start ploughing early tomorrow." 
When the earth became light the next morning, they went to the field with the seed and began to plough.

The Egyptian plough was lightly built and tied to the horns of the cattle. Cows were generally used for ploughing, which caused their milk production to decrease during ploughing time. A helper, often a child, led the animals, sometimes urging them on with a stick. When draft animals were unavailable, humans would pull the plough.

Hoeing was another way of loosening the soil. Because the handles of the hoes were very short (a feature of these tools even today in southern countries), this was back-breaking work.

The sower walked ahead of the team, a two handled woven basket tied around his neck, his hands free for sowing. The plough covered the seeds with earth. Driving hogs or sheep over the field might serve the same purpose.

"It is certain however that now they gather in fruit from the earth with less labour than any other men and also with less than the other Egyptians; for they have no labour in breaking up furrows with a plough nor in hoeing nor in any other of those labours which other men have about a crop; but when the river has come up of itself and watered their fields and after watering has left them again, then each man sows his own field and turns into it swine, and when he has trodden the seed into the ground by means of the swine, after that he waits for the harvest, and when he has threshed the corn by means of the swine, then he gathers it in". 
(Herodotus, Histories II)

Harvest

The total amount of grain harvested depended on the surface covered by the flooding Nile, which was between perhaps 20,000 and 34,000 square kilometres. Taking pre-green-revolution wheat yields of about 750 kg/ha as a base, the annual amount of corn produced was approximately between 1.5 and 2.5 million tons, supposing that most of the surface was used to produce corn. About 4 to 5 million people lived in Egypt during the New Kingdom. In a bad year the annual yield was less than 300 kg per head, possibly considerably less.

Corn dearths were frequent. Some estimate that there would have been sufficient grain only every third year. This may be a bit pessimistic. At any rate, Egypt seems to have had grain surpluses often enough that they could be stored in state granaries and even exported. During Roman times it was one of the bread baskets of Rome.

The harvest generally took place shortly before the beginning of the next flooding, about in May or June, at times in April. The whole population took part and on big estates journeying harvesting teams were employed. These itinerant reapers began the season in the southern part of the country and followed the ripening crops downriver.

The Egyptians seemingly knew ergot (THf.tj) which does not proliferate well under the dry Egyptian weather conditions and was probably never the health danger it was to be in the rye eating countries of Europe during the 15th century.

The administration was involved in everything the farmer did, from the assignment of the land to the collecting of the taxes:

"Made by the overseer of fields, experienced in his office,
The offspring of a scribe of Egypt,
The overseer of grains who controls the measure,
Who sets the harvest-dues for his lord,
Who registers the islands of new land, 
In the great name of his majesty,
Who records the markers on the borders of fields,
Who acts for the king in his listing of taxes,
Who makes the land-register of Egypt,
The scribe who determines the offerings for all the gods,
Who gives land-leases to the people,
The overseer of grains, [provider] of food,
Who supplies the granary with grains.."
(The Instruction of Amenemope-New Kingdom-M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume II, pp. 448)

Before the harvest began, surveyors, scribes, supervisors and inspectors came to measured the size of the fields and estimated the quantity of grain.

These officials fixed the tax the peasant had to give up to the royal treasury or the representative of one of the gods, among whom Amen had the vastest and best properties.

Scribes trying to impress their pupils with the harshness of a peasant's daily struggle for survival, may have slightly exaggerated the methods used by tax-collectors, but Egyptian officials were not noted for the sparing use of the rod (nor have peasants ever shown an alacrity to part with the fruit of their labour):

"Now the scribe lands on the shore. He surveys the harvest. Attendants are behind him with staffs, Nubians with clubs. One says (to the peasant): "Give grain." "There is none." He is beaten savagely. He is bound, thrown in the well, submerged head down".
(The Instruction of Amenemope-New Kingdom- M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume II).

Corn that was not destined for immediate consumption was stored in communal granaries, which served as a kind of bank.

Crops

Important crops were emmer (bd.t, Lat. Triticum dicoccum), barley (jt, Lat. Hordeum hexastichon), used for baking bread and brewing beer, wheat (zw.t, possibly Lat. Triticum aestivum), pekha, an unidentified sort of corn, flax (mHj, Lat. Linum usitatissimum) for the production of cloth and ropes, sesame, beans and chickpeas (Hr.w-bik, Lat. Cicer arietinum), lettuce, onions, leeks, dill (jms.t, Anethum graveolens), grapes, melons and gourds, the naturally occurring papyrus reeds (which became extinct in Egypt and were recently reintroduced), used for paper, boats, ropes, mats and many other things and the castor oil plant (Ricinus communis), from the fruit of which oil for many purposes (among others as a sort of money) was pressed.

"The Egyptians who live near the marshes use an oil made from the castor-berry, which they call kiki. This plant grows wild in Greece, here they sow it on the banks of the river and lakes. It produces abundant badly smelling fruit. After gathering the fruit some bruise and press it, while others boil it after roasting, and collect the juice that comes from it. This is thick and used as lamp oil, and smells strongly". 
(Herodotus, Histories 2,94)

Domesticated in Mesopotamia, opium was seemingly grown on a commercial scale near Thebes during the New Kingdom. Under the late 18th dynasty kings opium thebaicum was traded by Phoenicians to southern Europe, the Levant and North Africa. On the other hand, some scholars think that the opium poppy was introduced into Egypt only in Roman times.

On the whole the ancient Egyptians seem to have been accomplished farmers, and they were certainly lucky with their system of irrigation which prevented the salinization of the soil other cultures suffered from. Diodorus Siculus, a Roman historian writing during the first century BCE, had a high opinion of the agricultural expertise of the Egyptians.

Article saved from http://nefertiti.iwebland.com at 23/06/2004  not available anymore. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.