Agriculture in Ancient Egypt

Oleiferous plants. The Egyptians took much care in pressing oils from different plants, as required by their cuisine, the blending of their ointments, perfumes and drugs, and their need for artifical light. In Arabic, the word for "oil" (zayt) is primarily applied to the oil of the olive (zaytūn), whose Coptic name is dʒi:t. Oils were also pressed from seeds of flax and safflower, juniper berries, and the nuts of the thorn tree, cedar, castor plant and Egyptian willow.

Medicinal plants. The advancement of ancient Egyptian botanical learning is best appreciated in their use of plants for fighting disease, most importantly: anise (Arabic yansūn, Egyptian ytkwn), cumin, dill, thistle, peppermint, boxthorn, poppy, juniper, henbane, pomegranate, fig, onion, garlic, coriander, the milk of the sycamore, and various oils. Space does not permit the mention of all the medical uses listed in the various papyri.

Fibrous plants. Flax was known in Egypt since the earliest times, and fragments of linen cloth have been discovered in the [Neolithic-era] graves of Merimde and Maadi. The stages in the production of linen are represented on the walls of the Beni Hasan tombs, from maceration, pounding and combing to its spinning, weaving and dyeing. The flax seeds preserved in the Fouad I Agricultural Museum and the Egyptian Museum of Berlin attest to the nobility of the ancient species.
        The special importance of papyrus was not limited to writing surfaces, as it was also used to line the bottoms of boats.

Garlands and bouquets. Flowers were of the highest importance in Egypt for their use in religious and funerary ceremonies. The flowers of the papyrus, lotus, acacia, and willow were bundled into garlands and bouquets, along with shoots of sycamore, celery and artemisia and sprays of camomile and saffron.

Timber. The most widespread of the big trees in Egypt were the sycamore, which was held sacred, and the acacia. The wood of the acacia was used in boat-building, its fruit (known in Arabic as qarad) was used in medicine and tanning hides, and its flower (called fotna) was woven into garlands for the dead. Most agricultural tools were made from acacia wood and from the tamarisk (known in Arabic as athl, which is its Egyptian name). The leaves of the weeping willow were used in funeral garlands, and knife handles made from its wood have been found to pre-date the Dynastic period. And pieces made from henna wood were among the finds of Schweinfurth.
        When the timber reserves of Egypt were no longer sufficient, trade with Lebanon was established in order to import lumber in pieces large enough for building their sarcophagi, ships and funerary and domestic furniture. Egypt's ebony came from Sudan, and myrrh was imported from the Somali land of Punt.

Peasant Life in Ancient Egypt. We end our account with a tale out of old Egypt. It comes from a story about the life of two brothers named Anubis and Bata, who were tillers of the earth. According to this story... [Here begins an abridged passage from The Literature of Ancient Egypt (Cairo, 1945), ed. & tr. by Selim Hassan:]
        Bata was a skilled farmer who made clothes for his brother and pastured his brother's herds. He broke the soil for his brother and harvested his brother's crops, and was filled to overflowing with God's breath, which increased his stature. Every day he went out with the herds to pasture, and every evening he returned to his brother's house with a load of milk and greens and dry kindling, and rendered them unto his older brother, bringing him pleasure as he sat with his wife. After eating and drinking his rations, Bata made his bed in the corral to watch over the cattle. At night's end, the new day's dawn found him preparing his older brother's meal. Then he would set it before him, and set off for pasture with his own, driving the cattle to lead him to the fertile fields. And the cattle grew fat, and their offspring were stout and numerous.
        When the time for plowing had come, the older brother said to Bata: "Yoke a pair of oxen to the plow, for the earth is no longer saturated, but ready for the plow. Prepare also the grain for sowing, and we will break ground in early morning." And the younger brother was delighted at all he commanded. At the new day's dawn, they went into the field, and took their place behind the bulls with firm resolve, and gladness filled their hearts, for they had begun the task of the new year. But their seed ran out before all the ground was sown, and the older brother sent the younger to the farm for another load.
        The young man entered the house "at a time of distraction of its folk", and found his brother's wife combing her hair. When he came out of the granary bearing his load, "she in whose house he was sought to seduce him," saying: " 'Come here, you,' " and promising him finer clothes and a better station. When he scorned her, she contrived to accuse him to his brother, and played the liar after the fashion of the well-known story of our master Joseph, peace be upon him.

Mahmud Darwish (Supervisor of General Education for Egypt's Ministry of Information), "al-Zira‘a al-Misriyya al-qadima," al-Filāha: Majalla Zira‘iyya Iqtisadiyya (a publication of the Association of Agricultural College Graduates / The Agricultural Club), 28:1 (Jan-Feb 1948). 28-30.
(See also: Veterinary Medicine in Ancient Egypt)

Veterinary Medicine in Ancient Egypt

Enclosed within the temple complexes of ancient Egypt (among them the temple of Memphis which predates 3000 BCE) were structures called "Houses of Life," where teachers and students were trained in the life sciences. Dissection and anatomy, chemistry, diagnosis of diseases and their remedies, the principles of mummification—the Houses of Life were the ideal place for study in all these fields, due to the embalming process which required the cutting open of human cadavers and animal carcasses, and the removal of their innards in preparation for mummification. This was the job of the medical diviners, who also tended to sacred animals and to the animals fattened for slaughter, whether as offerings to their gods or for human consumption.

Animal care flourished in ancient Egypt, and wealth in livestock increased among peasants and the landowners who kept large herds of cattle, sheep, goats and other ungulates. For horses and asses great care was also taken. They set up canopies in the fields, so that the animals might find rest and tranquility in their shade. Meanwhile, the herdsmen sat in the shade of trees, from where they would watch over them and apportion their feed—a scene that appears in the [tomb paintings representing the] fields of Ti, ca. 2550 BCE. In these settings, herdsmen gained experience in care and husbandry, tending to pregnant animals and supervising their delivery, seeing to their milking and the nursing of their calves, and isolation of the sick and their cure.

Mastaba of Ti, Saqqara. Detail from a photo by Richard T. Mortel

As the care of sick animals was left up to shepherds with experience and knowledge of cures, it was from their ranks that the veterinary doctor emerged, as affirmed by the English scholar Wilkinson in his book of 1878.

The life of the traveler Khuf Har is dated to the Sixth Dynasty, so it was 2350 years before Christ that he made his famous journey to the upper regions of Nubia in search of incense and ivory. For transport and communication outside the country he used 300 asses, and that same season he brought them all back, loaded with impressive treasures. This reflects the level of the ancient Egyptians' ability and their skill in tending animals.

In 1889, the English archaeologist Flinders Petrie discovered a Twelfth-Dynasty papyrus on veterinary medicine, whose date goes back to 2000 BCE, in the Ilahun subdistrict of the province of Fayyum. This text indicates remedies for bulls suffering from tear duct infections, as well as depression and sadness, and for dogs afflicted with internal parasites.

From Veterinary Medicine Between Past, Present and Future,
a 1990 publication of the Egyptian Veterinary Syndicate.
(See also: Agriculture in Ancient Egypt)

Al-Kindi on the rain, and why it seldom falls in Egypt

You ask (may God illuminate your pathway to the truth) what causes some places to get hardly any rain. If the cause for abundance of rain in some places were to be made plain to you (may God guide you aright), you might also appreciate (may God reveal to you all that is hidden) the cause for a prevailing lack of rain in other places, since it is in combination that contrarieties become known.

[...] All bodies undergo contraction when chilled, after which they need a smaller place than the one they occupied before their chilling. When heated, they undergo expansion, and need a larger place than the one they occupied before their heating. Therefore does air flow from a hot, expanded location toward one that is cold and contracted, and this flow is what we call the wind (for our usage gives the name of "wind" to the flow of air and "wave" to the flow of water). This explains why the wind is greatest when the sun's heat is shed along its southern inclination: expanded by that heat, air from the south flows north to where the air has been chilled by its remoteness from the sun.

When the sun is in its northern inclination it heats the areas to the north, and those in the south become chilled. The northern air then expands and flows in the direction of the south, due to the cold-induced contraction of the air there. For this reason, most summer winds are northerly winds, and most winter winds come from the south – except for winds which arise (in some cases all at once, in others little by little) from such sublunar factors as the course of rivers, the occurrence of floods, [and the influence of] stagnant waters, open meadows, the sun’s reflection on the tops of stony mountains, irrigation, agriculture, woods and wetlands. These factors (and others like them) contribute to the flow of vapor in different directions, which the various winds distribute according to the disposition of the earth’s territories (high places and low, caverns and open places), the influence of any fires burning therein, and so on.

The vapor made to flow across the face of the earth by the sun’s alternation between north and south was likened by ancient Greek sages to a freshwater sea of alternating tides, and they called it Okeanos, the earth-encircling sea.

When vapor ends up in a place whose distance from the sun’s path chills the air to the point that the vapor’s volume is reduced, the vapor becomes thick and dense and is converted into water by the air around it, which releases it in the form of rain upon the earth (along with any particles of earth taken up as earth-vapor). Meanwhile, these vapors crowd the air with their weight and set it moving, turning it into wind (which is the flow of air).

Vapor attains its maximum degree of density when it flows into caves or between mountains where its flow is hampered by the cold, or checked by an opposing flow of air, in the way that vapors have of being redirected by sublunar factors (as we have already described). But if vapor winds up in a location devoid of what reduces its volume and chills it, it spreads beyond that location until it encounters what we have defined as cold, condensing factors -- whether or not the land itself accumulates much standing water. For vapor is raised from the earth every day the sun casts it heat, and after it sets even more moisture may be released in the form of dew, having been attracted in the form of vapor that flows in from elsewhere, as happens daily in all forests.

As for those locations (be they in the south or elsewhere) whose moisture falls short, devoid as they are of any means of containing the vapor flowing into them from the south (due to the lack of high encircling mountains to the north) and furnished as they are with continual air currents (either by the influence of great quantities of moving water or the nearness of a body of water at its northern end), – locations in which the flow of vapor is diverted elsewhere due to some stronger flow prevailing against its wonted northward course – the presence of rain in those locations is very small. So it is in the country of Egypt, whose air on the north side lacks high mountains, and where most of the vapor flowing south to north (from the Sea of Abyssinia) is deflected by the mountains of the Beja (such as al-Muqattam and the mountains near it), so that the Sea of Abyssinia’s vapors flow towards Iraq.

From the treatise On why some places almost never get any rain

News of the pillar-priesthood of old Syria

The temple occupies a hill at the very center of Bambyce. Two walls run round it, one of them ancient and the other one dating to a little before our time. The temple's gateway is placed so as to admit the northern breeze and measures 100 fathoms [~182 meters]. Within these gates stand the pillars [Gk. phalloi] erected by Dionysus, rising to 300 fathoms [a fabulous height which some editors emend to 30 fathoms without troubling over the no-less-fabulous 100-fathom gate]. Twice a year, a man ascends to the top of one of these pillars and dwells there for seven days. The cause for his so doing is variously explained. Majority opinion has it that he converses with the gods on high, asking for blessings on behalf of all of Syria, and that the gods attend his prayers from up close. Others take it for a commemoration of the disaster that struck in Deucalion's day, when the flood sent people fleeing to the mountains and the tree-tops. I find this explanation unbelievable. I think these rites are performed in adoration of Dionysus, and I explain them thus: When they parade the phalloi in honor of Dionysus, they seat wooden figurines on them. The reason for this custom I will not mention - but I will give my opinion that the man who mounts the pillar does so in emulation of those little wooden men.

His method of ascent is this. Looping a cord around himself and the pillar snugly, he goes up it, following a path of wooden toe-holds. As he climbs, he cinches the cord higher, flipping it upward like a pair of reins. (Those who have seen palm trunks scaled in Arabia, Egypt or anywhere else will be able to picture what I'm talking about.) On completing his ascent, he lets down a second, longer cord that he has with him, in order to haul up whatever he pleases in the way of lumber, blankets and other gear, out of which he fashions a nest-like hut in which to sit out the above-mentioned duration. When devotees visit, they cast coins of gold, silver, and sometimes coppers into a container, saying their names as they do so. A man stationed at the pillar's bottom announces them to the man at its top, who says a prayer on behalf of each person named, amplifying his prayer with a brass noise-maker that he rattles loudly.

The man atop the pillar is barred from sleep. If sleep overtakes him, a scorpion climbs up and rouses him with a nasty sting - or so it is said in pious legends of the cult, for whose strict truth I shall not vouch. To me, the fear of falling would seem to suffice as a sleep deterrent. And with that I conclude my account of the pillar-climbers.

Lucian, On the Syrian goddess 28-29.