The ancestral principles of use of the Nile

An irrigation technique that is natural for the regimes of the Nile develops in the

IIIrd millennium BC. The flood regime of the Nile is quite regular in time, from June to October, but is obviously of quite irregular magnitude. The earliest agriculture consist­ed quite simply in planting seeds in the moist soil fertilized by silty flood deposits. But a flood of small magnitude inevitably precedes a year of famine:

“I was in mourning on my throne, Those of the palace were in grief… .because Hapy had failed to come in time. In a period of seven years, Grain was scant, Kernels were dried up…Every man robbed his twin…Children cried…The hearts of the old were needy…Temples were shut, Shrines covered with dust, Everyone was in distress..”

“My heart was greatly troubled for the Nile did not come soon enough during seven years. Grain was scarce, the grain was dried out, everything to eat was in very meager quantity, all were frustrated by the revenue.”

Although the Egyptians were never able to eliminate the effect of variable flooding on agriculture, they were nevertheless able to increase the amount of productive land through irrigation. Initially, the technique was to exploit natural basins on either side of the river. Water is stored in them long enough for the deposition of sediment (one or two months), and then drained to the Nile or to another lower basin, leaving the soil ready for cultivation. This practice was then extended to the development of artificial reten­tion basins, and this required the construction of dikes and canals of increasing capaci­ty. The shaduf (balance beam) appears during the IInd millennium BC; in a tomb of the Ramses period there is a depiction of an entire battery of shadufs.

The austere Greco-Roman Strabo, who visited Egypt about 25 BC at the beginning of the Roman domination, was not easily impressed, yet he wrote of the Egyptians: “Their practices concerning the river (The Nile) are so excellent that because of their diligence nature was conquered. For by natural order, one land will provide more yield than another, and more so if it has been flooded; and the greater the flood, the greater the extent of flood­ed lands. But often when nature falters, diligent activity can, even when the floods are weak,

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cause as much land to be flooded as during large floods, this by means of canals and dikes”.

Figure 3.1 provides an overview of the major sites of hydraulic engineering works in ancient Egypt and Nubia.