A study of ancient Egyptian history underscores the origins of its agriculture and horticulture development. The modern world is in debt to this great Nile Valley civilization for its contribution towards many of our basic agricultural innovations: cultivation techniques and irrigation technology and the horticultural arts. Natural river irrigation and its fertile soil shaped the early landscape of ancient Egypt agriculture.
The ancient Egyptians were cultivating grains of wheat, lentils, barley, beans, peas, chickpeas and the arena is to summarize the vegetables, balls, onions, garlic, and Agathe castor, flax was the division of fields into ponds and Breha Bahadov. This included the work on the cultivation of many kinds of fruit trees and wood and under. The fruits of all kinds of famous Sycamore, figs, olives, grapes, pomegranate were cultivated and the transfer to Egypt of different types of trees from Asia and Africa was done.
Horticulture in Ancient Egypt
Gardening in ancient Egypt was much more labor intensive than agriculture. Gardens, orchards, and vineyards were often situated on high grounds. They were quite a distance from the Nile river. They had to be irrigated by hand with the water drawn from wells or the river. Due to these high grounds, drainage was not required to become livable.
In ancient Egypt, most villagers were farmers. But there were farmers who lived in towns too, along with craft workers, artisans, traders and other workers and their families. The pharaoh got the rich peasants to work as farmers on the rich lands.
Agricultural tools and techniques
The main farming seasons in ancient Egypt were the growing and harvesting season. As the Nile river soil was very fertile, it was ideal to grow many healthy crops. In most of the countries, heavy plows have to be used to turn over the soil, to get enough nutrients for the growing plants. But in Egypt, the Nile flood deposited the nutrients on the top, and the plowing that served was just to break up the top soil before sowing or covering the seed afterward. In the special days of harvest, not only men worked in the field but women also participated side by side their husbands and members of the family. Boys and Girls also took part in the harvesting.
The fertile soil was easy to dig with your tools. Farmers in ancient Egypt used the same soil for every field. They also reused the soil. Every year floods made the water that went over the fields saturate the soil. And after the floods went down, the fresh bunch of mud left was the excellent soil to plant seeds in after it had been plowed by the farmers.
The simple farming tools such as winnowing scoops, Mattocks, flint-bladed sickles, and plows were used in ancient Egypt agriculture practices. The Egyptian plow had a small blade on it and as the soil was fertile, that didn’t cut very deep which was fine.
Agriculture and its development also had a role in the formation of ethics for the ancient Egyptians. The breach of these ethics is one of the major sins in ancient Egypt. Agriculture thus played a key role in the establishment of this great Egyptian civilization and the stability of its people.
