The ancient Egyptians recognized three different seasons that accorded with the flood cycle of the Nile and the agricultural system. With the heavy rains beginning in highland Ethiopia in June, the season of inundation (Akhet), when the Nile flooding occurred, began in late July/August in southern Egypt. The river crested several weeks later in northern Egypt. Basins were flooded with up to 1.5 meters of water. By October the southern basins were dry enough for sowing. This was an ideal climatic cycle for the cultivation of emmer wheat and barley, which germinated and grew during the cooler months of the year (known as the season of Peret). The cereal grains matured and could be harvested in March-April (early in the season of Shemu) before the hottest and driest months of the year, from May through July, when such crops would perish with no floodwater or rain.
In his book Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt (1976), Karl Butzer has given an excellent summary of the ancient Egyptian agricultural system, which is termed “basin irrigation.” Although there is not much textual information about ancient irrigation, it probably consisted of directing and controlling water in the natural flood basins of the lower Nile Valley. Levees were built up, cross-cutting dykes were created, and natural channels were maintained. Extensive, large-scale irrigation canals for field cultivation, such as those used by farmers of the contemporary city-states of southern Mesopotamia, were not needed. The bucket lift, known in Arabic as the shaduf, which is connected by rope to a long weighted lever, was not used in Egypt before the New Kingdom. The shaduf cannot raise large volumes of water and was used to water small
Garden plots. It may also have been used to water additional areas of fields during the inundation. Irrigation with the much more effective water wheel, which is still used today in Egypt to lift water to higher elevations, was not introduced into Egypt until Greco-Roman times.
Essentially, during pharaonic times the Egyptians relied on the annual Nile flooding to water their fields. When the flooding was too low, less land could be cultivated, which could create food shortages and possibly famine. When the flooding was too high, villages could be destroyed and temples flooded. But with normal floods the potential for cereal cultivation in this environment was enormous, and this provided the economic base of the pharaonic state.
Box 3-B Egyptian agriculture as depicted in tomb scenes
Tomb scenes and related artifacts provide a wealth of information about ancient Egyptian agriculture. Perhaps the earliest scene relating to agriculture is carved on the ceremonial macehead of King Scorpion of Dynasty 0, excavated at Hierakonpolis near the remains of an early temple. The king is depicted about to dig soil with a hoe.
Numerous scenes of agricultural activities are found in private tombs of the later old Kingdom at Saqqara, including the harvest scenes in the 5th-Dynasty tomb of Ti.
The newly cut cereal is tied in bundles and transported to a granary, where it is threshed under the hooves of donkeys and oxen, and winnowed by women. In addition to the hunting and fishing scenes in the 6th-dynasty tomb of the vizier Mereruka, there are many scenes of activities on his estate, including wine-making.
From the 12th-Dynasty tomb of Meketra in western Thebes comes a remarkable cache of wooden models, including a cattle barn and a bakery/brewery. Middle Kingdom tombs recorded by Percy Newberry (1893) at Beni Hasan in Middle Egypt include the tomb of Amenemhat, governor of the 16 th province of upper Egypt (the oryx Nome), with scenes of flax cultivation and linen production, as well as cereal production, from plowing and hoeing to threshing. The Beni Hasan tomb of Khnumhotep, Administrator of the Eastern Desert for King Senusert II, has similar agricultural scenes and an orchard/vineyard scene of farmers collecting grapes and figs.
Agricultural scenes abound in New Kingdom private tombs in western Thebes. In the tombs of Nakht (TT 52), the scribe of the granaries of Thutmose IV, and of Menna (TT 69), the scribe of the fields of Thutmose IV, are painted scenes of plowing, hoeing, sowing, and the various harvesting activities. A part of the ceiling of the tomb of Sennefer (TT 96), who was overseer of the gardens of Amen during the reign of Amenhotep II, is covered with a painted grape arbor.
In the cemetery of the New Kingdom workmen’s village of deir el-Medina in western Thebes is the well-preserved tomb of Sennedjem (TT 1), who was buried with 19 other family members. Like other men who lived in this village, Sennedjem was a workman in the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. On the east wall of the 19th-Dynasty tomb are idealized afterlife scenes of agriculture from the Book of the Dead: Sennedjem and his wife are shown plowing and sowing, and harvesting flax by uprooting it (Plate 3.1). Above this is another scene of Sennedjem cutting off heads of grain with a sickle while his wife collects them in a basket.
To conserve moisture in soil, most cultivation was done by broadcast sowing using a simple type of plow driven by oxen to cover the seeds. Farmers also used hoes, but Butzer believes that soil preparation with plows or hoes would have been restricted to drier fields. Cow manure was used for fuel, while bird droppings collected from dovecotes may have been used as fertilizer in gardens. After harvesting cereals, domestic animals would have fed on the stubble of these crops, and their droppings would help fertilize the soil. Butzer also suggests that farmers may have alternated the planting of cereals with legumes. Fallowing may have been practiced as well, but with only one crop grown annually, fallow fields would not have been necessary in this environment.
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