The early Egyptians had largely ignored this area as a major farming region.įurthermore, the early Egyptians did not have the technology to lift or pump water from one level to another except by physically carrying buckets. The first extensive Egyptian irrigation projects did not occur until after 300 B.C. Local authorities merely directed farmers to dig channels and construct small earthen dams and riverbank levees to divert floodwaters into or away from certain areas. The annual Nile flood made it unnecessary to construct complex irrigation projects, as was the case in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq). The cycle started all over again with the next Nile summer flood. Nature did the rest until it was time to harvest the crops in the spring. Farmers did not have to add fertilizer to the soil.Īfter the water soaked into the earth in the late fall, farmers cast seeds onto the moist rich soil and turned it over with wooden plows pulled by oxen. ![]() Each year, the floodwaters deposited new fertile silt into natural basins. The water went onto a flood plain that extended the length of the river and averaged a dozen miles wide. The Nile overflowed its banks each year around September. The river’s floodwaters surged northward through Upper and Lower Egypt to the Mediterranean. ![]() Rivers from these areas drained into the Nile. The annual Nile flood happened because of heavy summer rains far away to the south in the highlands of what are now Ethiopia and East Africa. But the Egyptians soon developed a unique method of growing their crops by taking advantage of the Nile River flood that occurred each summer. This forced the early Egyptians to domesticate animals like cattle and to plant grain crops such as barley, which depended on winter rainfall. The branch flows roughly parallel to the main channel for a couple hundred miles, turns sharply west into the Sahara Desert, and fills a lake and marshlands called the Faiyum Oasis.Īround 5000 B.C., Egypt’s growing population required a larger food supply. The marshes and islands of the delta form Lower Egypt.Ī branch of the Nile breaks away in the middle of Egypt. The river then heads downstream about 600 miles through the Nile Valley to where it forms a wide delta before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. Upper Egypt begins in the southern end of the country at the first Nile cataract (waterfalls), near present-day Aswan. Nile is a Greek name for what the ancient Egyptians simply called “the river,” which flows northward through Upper and Lower Egypt. The lush environment of the Nile River provided an abundant food supply of wild edible plants and seeds, fish, birds, and big game to the people who lived there. The Agricultural Revolution appeared relatively late in ancient Egypt. If the annual Nile River floods were too low, however, disaster could strike the kingdom. The farmers of Egypt’s Old Kingdom did not have to worry much about local rainfall, irrigated fields, or poor soil. ![]() What Caused Egypt’s Old Kingdom to Collapse? Are We Headed for a “Sixth Mass Extinction”? | The Columbian Exchange | What Caused Egypt’s Old Kingdom to Collapse?
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