Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/732

Immediately after the water of the inundation had sub sided, the land was ploughed or broken up by the hoe, and sown, the seed being sometimes trodden in by goats driven over the field for the purpose. Wheat being the most important field-produce, we find the various agricultural processes connected with it frequently represented. Be sides the ploughing and sowing, the harvest is depicted, the reapers cutting the wheat just below the ear, the ears being carried in nets or baskets by men or on asses to the thrashing-floor, where they were thrashed by kine. Some times the wheat was bound in sheaves. The same or simi lar processes with reference to other kinds of grain are portrayed in the tombs, in which we also find curious repre sentations of the vineyards and gardens. The vineyard was not the least valuable part of an estate. Egypt was famous for its wines in the days of the Greeks and Romans; and it is evident that wine must have been prized in earlier times from several kinds being enumerated in the inscrip tions, and from its always being seen at the feasts. Besides the vine, other fruit-trees were cultivated, and especially the date-palm. The gardens were often extensive, and were laid out with great formality, partly in consequence of their being watered in the same manner as the fields generally, and contained tanks for fish as well as for purposes of inunda tion. The Egyptians paid great attention to preserving fish, and the produce of the fisheries of one great artificial lake, that of Moeris, formed an important branch of the revenue. There were also tracts left to reeds, which, if not planted, were at least carefully maintained, on account of their value for manufactures, and as covers for wild-fowl. Diodorus Siculus states that anciently the land was the property of the priests, of the king, and of the military class (i. 73), and the monuments leave little room to doubt that such was generally the case; for though there were no castes, the upper classes consisted of priests and military officers, and the son usually followed his father s profession. It is stated in the Bible that Joseph purchased the whole of the laud of the Egyptians for food during the famine, and gave them seed to sow it, claiming a fifth of the produce as the king s right. The land of the priests alone was not purchased. The agriculture of the modern Egyptians differs little from that of the old inhabitants. In one respect it is the converse : the ancients excelled in the management of dikes and dams, and raised water only by the simplest methods; the moderns, while they have paid less attention to the great canals, and the means by which they were regulated, have employed more ingenious methods of artificial irrigation. The deficiency of population has partly caused the decay of many of the canals and dams and dikes, and has at the same time necessitated the economizing of human labour, for which that of cattle has been in a great measure sub stituted. Of the machines the most common is the shadoof, already described, but there are also two kinds of water-wheels. The more usual of these is that called the sakiyeh, which is composed of a horizontal wheel turned by a pair of cows or bulls, or by one, and connected with a vertical wheel which is on the same axis as another around which are earthen pots in which the water is raised and poured into a trough. The tuboat is a similar machine, which differs from the sakiyeh principally in having a hollow wheel instead of the wheel with pots, in the jaunts or fellies of which the water is con veyed. Sometimes a katweh is employed, which is a bucket like that of the shadoof, having four cords by which two men dip it into the river or canal and raise the water. (Mod. Eg., ch. xiv.) Steam-pumps are now largely used. "The rei lands (or those which are naturally inundated) are, with some exceptions, cultivated but once during the year. After the waters hare retired, about the end of October or beginning of [AGRICULTURE. November, they are sown with wheat, barley, lentils, beans, lupins, chick-peas, &c. This is called the shitawee (or winter) season! 1 ut the sharakee lands (or those which are too high to be subject to the natural inundation), and some parts of the rei, by artificial irrigation are made to produce three crops every year; though not all the sharakee lands are thus cultivated. The lands arti ficially irrigated produce, first, their shitawee crops, being sown at the same period as the rei lands, generally with wheat or barley. Secondly, in what is called the seyfee, or in the southern part of Egypt the keydee or geydee (that is, the summer) season, commencing about the vernal equinox, or a little later, they are sown with millet ( durah seyfee ), or with indigo or cotton, &c. Thirdly, in the demeereh season, or period of the rise of the Nile, commencing about or soon after the summer solstice, they are sown with millet again, or with maize ( duiah shamee ), &c., and thus crowned with a third harvest. Sugar is cultivated throughout a large portion of Upper Egypt; and rice in the low lands near the Mediterranean." Mod. Eg., I.e. The culture of cotton was introduced by Mehemet Ali with a view to promote his manufacturing schemes, and the Turkish grandees have found it a source of temporary profit. During the American War the profit was at its height, but subsequently it declined. The necessity of con structing dams to exclude the Nile water from the cotton- growing fields has rendered the inundations destructive, and the speculation seems on the whole to have injured the welfare of Egypt. The agricultural implements of the modern Egyptians are rude in construction, and similar to those anciently employed in the country. One of these, however, was not known to the earlier inhabitants. This is the norag, a machine " in the form of a chair, which moves upon small iron wheels or thin circular plates, generally eleven, fixed to three thick axle-trees, four to the foremost, the same number to the hindmost, and three to the intermediate axle-tree. This machine is drawn in a circle by a pair of cows or bulls over the corn." It is employed to separate the grain of wheat, barley, &c., and to cut the straw, which is used for fodder. (Mod. Eg., I.e.] The ancient Egyptians, as before remarked, generally cut the wheat near the ear. An Egyptian garden is a miniature Egypt. It is inter sected by numerous small channels which are filled by one or more water-wheels. By these channels the water is spread over the garden, divided by them into many square compartments, edged with ridges of earth. This system of course makes it very difficult to keep a garden in good order, and no great variety of flowers is cultivated. Though Mehemet Ali was very desirous to encourage manufactures, he did not endeavour enough to apply modern science to the improvement of agriculture. Ibra him Pasha, who succeeded him, always maintained that the country should be agricultural rather than manufactur ing, and introduced important improvements during his father s government. This system has been steadily pur sued by the present ruler. Before the time of Mehemet Ali a kind of feudal system prevailed, and much of the land was held by small pro prietors under the protection of the great emeers. By the massacre of the Memlooks, the pasha destroyed feudalism, and by arbitrarily seizing almost all the landed property, rendered private tenure of land a most rare condition. He allotted to those whom he thus unjustly dispossessed annual pensions for life, as the only compensation for an act of tyranny to which even the history of Egypt scarcely affords a parallel (Mod. Eg., ch. iv.). Those whose lands were riot confiscated yielded them up through fear, and buried their title-deeds, which are yet so concealed. A system of government in which the supreme authoiity overlooks such acts, and subordinate governors perpetrate them, in defiance of the Muslim code and Arab jurispru dence, demands the most thorough and searching reform.

Lakes, Egypt has always been famous for its lakea,