Egypt’s agricultural economy was built on a technique known as basin cultivation. Natural depressions flooded by the inundation were surrounded with berms and dams to hold in water. Canals let water in or out as needed. In times of prosperity, land was reclaimed from the desert and marsh and was converted to farmland.
The inundation often destroyed or moved boundary markers and damaged or destroyed canals, berms, ponds, and dams. Once the floodwa-ters receded, farmers helped government officials re-survey croplands. Damaged systems had to be rebuilt or repaired swiftly, so planting could begin.
The recently soaked fields needed little or no plowing. The farmer scattered seeds and turned his animals and children loose in the fields to trample it in. A farmer’s tools were simple: primitive picks and hoes, baskets, and heavy pottery water jars carried on yokes across the shoulders. Farmers grew two kinds of wheat, emmer (Triticum dicoccum) and spelt (Triticum spelta). They also grew several varieties of barley (Hordeum vulgare), mostly for beer. Farmers worked together to harvest one field after another as quickly as possible, using wood sickles with flint blades. It was hot, backbreaking work, lightened by competitions, work songs, and many jars of beer. The grain sheaves were gathered into bundles and carried by donkeys to the threshing floor in the village.
Emmer and spelt both require vigorous threshing (beating the grains out of their husks) before they can be ground into coarse flour. Animals and children trampled the grain to separate out the husks. The grain was tossed into the air and the lighter husks blew away. The heavier grains fell into large, flat baskets and were filtered through coarse sieves to remove pebbles and insects. Husks and stems were saved for making mud-brick. The grain was measured, packed into sacks, and stored in silos, awaiting the tax collector.
The third major crop was flax (Linum usitatissimum). Bundles of flax fibers were carried off to be prepared for spinning, weaving into cloth, and braiding into rope-after the tax collector had taken his cut.
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