![]() Flax was easy to grow, one of the first crops ever cultivated by man. Only the wealthy owned a farm and raised the cattle but the poor had a few pigs.Ī farmer and his wife might work together as a team to produce linen made out of flax. The baskets were inspected, counted, and placed in a storeroom. Time to Reapĭuring harvest time, the farmers filled several baskets and set out for the local temple to make their payment. Shadoofs are still in use today.Īnother thing was that before they were permitted to harvest the crops, government officials would come around to calculate how much they had to pay in taxes to the IRS or the pharaoh and other gods. It was used to transfer water from the river into the canals in ancient Egypt.Įgyptians transferred water from the river into the canals by means of a cantilevered pole known as a shadoof with a bucket on one end and a weight on the other, which was the worst part as they had to spend a lot of time bending, lifting, and sloshing in muddy water in the hot weather. Tale of ‘Shadoof’Ī shadoof was a cantilevered pole. ![]() This is a transcript from the video series The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World. They would dig a network of canals crisscrossing their fields to begin plowing. It was impossible to establish fixed boundaries on land that was constantly flooded. If the flooding was heavy, it would become difficult to work out exactly where their land ended, resulting in getting into a dispute with their neighbor. The gods had it in their power to suspend the inundation if they got angry, but the priests knew how to keep them happy.Īs soon as the water receded, they marked out their land. They waited for the annual inundation of the Nile every year without fail. Most Egyptians were farmers, a lot easier being one in Egypt than anywhere else in the ancient world due to non-dependence on rainfall. When there was a shortfall in rations, workers would down tools and hold a torchlight procession in protest, chanting like modern workers on strike. Officials took a roster of workers who were on sick leave, in order to deduct days off from their earnings. It helped to bribe an official to get a plum post. For example, what they had to do to get a job, their terms of service, what happened when they became sick, and on what grounds they could go on strike. The working conditions of the government-employed workforce is known from the documents found, which cover every aspect of employment. A large percentage of the workforce was employed in the public sector, more than at any other time in human history. Many Egyptians, were employed by the government, in effect being employed by the pharaoh. ![]() Boys did the same job or entered the same profession as their fathers. Most Egyptian men and women, worked for a living. One village that survived was Deir el-Medina, inhabited by the craftsmen who toiled in the desert in the Valley of Kings and the Queens. Only a few houses have survived because most were built of mudbrick, and as most villages were built close to the banks of the Nile, over time the mudbrick decomposed. Very few Egyptians led lives of luxury, and digging deep into the other side of history, about the ordinary Egyptians, gives an insight into their lives. (Image: matrioshka/Shutterstock) Lives of Ordinary Egyptians Both men and women worked hard to earn their living. Ordinary Egyptians worked as farmers, herdsmen, and miners.
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