Social life in ancient Egypt / by W.M. Flinders Petrie.

  • Flinders Petrie
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Social life in ancient Egypt / by W.M. Flinders Petrie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    205/236 page 183
    head of the scorpion king ; he is holding the hoe for digging, while men are working, partly in the water, making a dam (Q.H., xxvi c). In the primitive condition the agricultural land had been irregularly acquired, intersected with swampy regions and thickets of papyrus ; especially was there need of control along the desert edge, which received less of the Nile mud, and so was at a lower level than the rest of the plain. Drainage was essential to remove stag¬ nant water, and because salts were continually working up from the strata below and needed to be washed away. Any land that is not drained becomes useless by the crust of salt formed on it, as at present at the south-west of the Wady Tumilat. The system which has grown up by modern control is a completely duplicated set of canals, the higher level to supply fresh water, the lower level to drain away salt water. The first step taken by the “ rulers of the in¬ undation ” was to divide the country into large basins, by dykes a few miles apart, and a great dyke along the Nile side. Thus the flow of in¬ undation over the land could be regulated accord¬ ing to the amount required, and the need of any particular crop : the water, when admitted, stood for a time so as to deposit the finest mud, which was the most easily decomposed for plant supplies, and it could be run off when there was
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