The Farmers and their Farms

The Egyptians divided the year into three farming seasons: flood time, seed time, and harvest time. The commonest crops were wheat, barley, vegetables, figs, melons, pomegranates and vines. The flood water was stored in a network of canals. The government was in charge of keeping the canals in good repair. Farmers planted their crops when the flood went down.

Bullocks pulled the wooden ploughs, men scattered seed and herded animals behind to trample it in. Reapers cut the ripe corn with wooden sickles edged with sharp flints. Women and children came behind to collect any fallen ears of corn. Cattle trampled over the cut corn to remove the grain from the ears. Then the grain was tossed into the air so the breeze blew the light useless chaff away. Farmers had to pay part of their crop to the Pharaoh and tax officials inspected the fields and decided the amount to be paid. Scribes noted every payment. Grain paid as tax was stored in the Pharaoh's huge granaries. In times of famine it was used to feed the people, but normally it went to pay the Pharaoh's officials. As the grain was carried into the granaries scribes kept detailed records of the amount each farmer had paid.

Writing

The Egyptian writing called hieroglyphics used pictures to stand for objects. This writing was uncovered by the Rosseta Stone. This stone had writing in Greek, hieroglyphics, and a cursive form of Egyptian writing. It was founded in the year 1799, French soldiers found this black slab of stone. For twenty years scholars tried to decode the slab. The first words they decoded were "Ptolemy" and "Cleopatra" then they found the matching symbols to it.

It was the letters P, O and L . It was in 1822 when this was found. Now the man named as Champollion was able to decode the messages and later he went on to publish a dictionary on this strange writing. This system had 700 signs that one would have to remember and therefore they thought that not many not many people could learn to write. Soon they found something that showed hard work to become what they called a scribe for a writer.

Many scribes worked for the Pharaoh and other high officials but they too were respected. A father had once said to his son that learning to become a scribe would bring high office and many advantages.. Only few people learned how to write and some gave up during there studies. Many punishments were taken if you disobeyed your teacher or did not take an interest in learning the language because it took many hours for a teacher to teach one pupil.

Here is a link to several articles about Egyptian Science, Writing and Champollion's Notes .

Some of the most beautiful works of art we have today have come from the paintings inside the Egyptian walls. Everything is full of paintings and carvings. The tombs and structures themselves are great pieces of work.

Here is a link to an article about Medicine in Ancient Egypt.

Modern Egypt

The flag of Egypt is based on the Pan-Arab colors, and is similar to the flags of many Arab countries today. The emblem in the center is the hawk of Saladin which also appears in Egyptian arms. It was added to the flag in 1984.

Bibliography

A Message of Ancient Days , Houghton Mifflin, 1991