Ancient Ways Persist

The Sun rose through thick clouds this morning. A beautiful and unusual event. I feared it boded a day of high humidity as well as high temperatures. At 7A.M. it was 29C and 55% humidity. Now, at 3P.M. it is 43C and 27%. Not bad. I count my blessings because my brother reminded me yesterday of the word 'muggy' to describe the climate in the homeland. I had forgotten that word. It disappeared from my vocabulary when I moved to Egypt. I may be dripping in sweat, but it's not 'muggy'.


In the fields below the sunrise, farmers were already at work. Behind the plough, a man walked with a bucket of seed to sow the furrows. The big fellow bringing up the rear was the boss (el mudir). This is the same field that was measured six weeks ago and later had a laser-equipped tractor leveling it with precision, as I had seen working in another field and wondered at its alien qualities. Points out that technologies from different centuries can co-exist.


The teams had the field almost done by 10A.M. Note that el mudir is now sitting down on the far right. I guess everything was under control. ;-)


After the ploughing and sowing, boards were dragged over the furrows to cover the seeds.


Meanwhile, the other team started work in another field. It amazes me how verdant the land is even in the heat of summer.


The view this morning doesn't look too different from a painting dating to about 1270 B.C. This is Sennedjem, a painter of the tombs of the pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings. He is buried at Deir el-Medina in the Theban escarpment -- an easy bicycle ride away from us.

In the scene, his wife walks behind him sowing the seed. I don't agree with OsirisNet's statement that, "This scene is rather misleading. In fact, there were two ways to sow the seed. The first consisted, on a land made soft by flooding, of throwing the grain on the soil and then releasing a herd of animals whose trampling buried it. The second consisted, on the harder land, of firstly scattering, then passing the plough over it to bury the grain. In both cases, the sower would not have anything to do behind the ploughman." I would say that if Sennedjem portrayed a sower walking behind the plough, then this is how the Egyptians of his day seeded their fields. I just have to look out over my balcony for confirmation.