Читать книгу A History of Ancient Egypt - Marc Van De Mieroop - Страница 35

By 6000 BC the Egyptian climate and the Nile River had settled in patterns similar to the modern, although until 2200 it was more humid than today. It is only in the mid‐6th millennium that agriculture emerged in the country, substantially later than in the neighboring Levant, where people started to live in permanent farming communities by 7000 BC. The relative richness of wild natural resources may explain why the Egyptians adopted the new technology later than people in other areas surrounding the Levant. The Nile provided fish and waterfowl, and in the desert lived game, while wild sorghum and other plants could be harvested. The technology of farming was clearly an import into Egypt as it involved plants and animals not available in the wild there: the primary domesticated animals were sheep and goats, and the first cereals cultivated were emmer wheat and barley, foreign to Egypt and imported from the Near East. The domestication of cattle may have been inspired by practices farther west in Africa. The adoption of agriculture had different consequences in Upper and Lower Egypt.

In the Delta and the Fayyum, people started to live a sedentary lifestyle like their neighbors in the Levant in the 6th millennium. They built villages and obtained most of their food from the cereals they grew. Few settlements are known, and they are small when compared to those in the Levant, but they show that from around 5400 the northern Egyptians practiced farming. In Upper Egypt and Nubia people primarily engaged in pastoralism, the herding of cattle, sheep, and goats. This made them more mobile, and we do not find village settlements near the Nile Valley. The people spent much time in the desert – more fertile than it is now – and most of the permanent remains we have of them are tombs which they dug near the Nile Valley. The graves show that people produced nicely polished pottery and the first representations of humans in figurines, and that they chose to place valuable mineral and metal objects with the dead. Similar burial practices appear from Middle Egypt to Khartoum in Sudan, which suggests that the people over this large area shared common beliefs. We call the material culture Badarian after the archaeological site of el‐Badari in Upper Egypt where it was first excavated. One enigmatic monument of this early period which these pastoralists constructed – now the source of various cosmological theories – is the stone circle at Nabta Playa in Lower Nubia. Today it stands it the middle of a desolate desert some 60 miles (100 kilometers) west of the Nile, but when built in the early 5th millennium the natural environment provided seasonal pasturage to herders. The placement of the stones, up to 2 meters high, required communal organization, and the entire construction shows a common belief system, probably associated with cattle, many of which were buried there.

In the Nile Valley, the extensive use of agriculture with permanent settlements nearby only arose after 4000 BC. It was the result of the Upper Egyptian pastoralists moving close to the river because of the drying of the climate. This development only occurred north of the 1st cataract, distinguishing Egypt from Nubia, where the economy remained focused on pastoralism. In Egypt, urban centers appeared and people went to live near the zones that the Nile flooded annually to work in the fields. Until the building of the Aswan dams, agricultural practices in Egypt were very different from those in the neighboring Near East and Europe. The country received too little rain to rely on its water to feed the crops, and the Nile was the farmer’s lifeline. That river’s cycle provided everything needed, however, and the Egyptians relied on natural irrigation. The water rose in the summer, washing away salts that impede plant growth and leaving a very fertile layer of silt on the fields bordering it. The water receded in time for the crops – all grown in winter – to be sown and it left the fields so moist that they did not require additional water while the plants grew. Farmers harvested crops in the late spring and the fields were ready for a new inundation by July. The cycles of the river and the crops were in perfect harmony. The only concern was the height of the flood, which dictated how much land received water. The ideal flood was somewhat more than 8 meters above the lowest river level. If the river rose too much, villages and farms would be submerged; if it rose too little, not enough land would be irrigated.

People could help the river by leading water in canals and building dykes around fields in order to regulate when the water reached the crops. Some of the earliest representations of kings from around 3000 may show such work (Figure 1.8), but they do not constitute major projects to extend agricultural zones substantially. Artificial irrigation that used canals and basins to store and guide the water into areas that the river could not reach only appeared later in Egyptian history, and scholars debate when exactly it started. Probably the increased aridity in the later 3rd millennium pushed people into controlling the water more. Most important was the management of water in the Fayyum depression; during the Middle Kingdom and especially in Greek and Roman times, the state dug extensive canals to drain excess water and lead it to otherwise infertile sectors. Irrigation practices throughout Egypt basically remained the same for most of ancient history until the Romans introduced the waterwheel.

Figure 1.8 A 25‐cm‐high ceremonial mace head carved in limestone depicts a king, identified as Scorpion by the sign in front of his face, apparently digging an irrigation canal with a hoe, surrounded by attendants. On top of the image are standards that symbolize various regions of Egypt, with its inhabitants symbolized by birds dangling from a noose as a sign of subjection. The object dates to ca. 3000 bc and was excavated in Hierakonpolis. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Drawing by Richard Parkinson.

Source: Almendron