EXPLOITING THE NILE IN ANCIENT TIMES:

LOW-WATER AND HIGH-WATER CANALIZATION

You are an Ancient Egyptian land-owner or a fellah (peasant farmer) working either your own or
someone else’s land. The plot of land that you must irrigate is at point “B” in the Nile Valley in the
cross-section of the valley indicated below.

Problem: How do you get water from the main channel of the river, point “A” in the cross-section to
point “B”? Keep in mind that the difference between the surface level of the river at point “A” and
the surface of the land that you want to cultivate at point “B” probably ranges between three to six
meters during those months of the year (mid-November through early June) when the river in not “in
flood.”

Solution 1: You dig (or someone acting on your behalf digs) a canal that in one way or another
extends from the main channel of the river to your plot of land. There you lift the water from the
level of the canal to the level of your land and then channel the water into your fields. This is called
LOW-WATER CANALIZATION. The great advantage of low-water canalization is that it allows
you to irrigate your fields year-round (that is, “perennial irrigation”) without regard to whether or not
the river floods. But low-water canalization was rare in the Egypt of the pharaohs because of the
following problems.

Problem 1: It is extraordinarily difficult (given the low level of technology available to you) and
incredibly expensive (in terms of time and manpower) to dig and extend canals over the distances
required to irrigate all of the soil the Nile Valley in Egypt via low-water canalization.

Problem 2: It is equally difficult and expensive to raise the amounts of water required up the height
required to irrigate all of the soil the Nile Valley in Egypt via low-water canalization. The principal
means of lifting water a height of three to six meters in Ancient Egypt was a simple combination of
human muscle-power and clay jars or water-skins: you and your neighbors engage in an endless
process of descending to the level of the water source, filling jars or skins with water, hauling them
back up to the level of the fields, and dumping the water into channels that will carry it into the
fields. Sometime after 2000 BCE (and certainly by the onset of the New Kingdom period) a slightly
more efficient version of filling up jars with water comes into use: the shaduuf. The shaduuf is a
moveable, counterweighted pole attached to a fix position, such that one end of the pole, to which a
jar or waterskin is attached, can be lowered to a water source and then pulled up to the point of
irrigation. Shaduuf’s were very useful to the farmer when he or she had to lift water over a short
distance, but the volume of water that a shaduuf can lift is very limited, and the shaduuf is very
inefficient at lifting water up substantial heights — such as those typical of the difference to the
water source and the point of irrigation in the Nile Valley.

In the Greco-Roman period two new water-lifting devices were introduced into Egypt. One, the
tambuur (the “Archimedes Screw”, is a hollow tube that is grooved inside. When one end of the tube
is lowered into a water source and the tube is then turned, water will rise within the tube and come
out the higher end. The tambuur was again useful to farmer’s dealing with small volumes of water
and very low heights but was of little use in any other circumstance.

Shaduuf (Nubian Museum) Saqiya (Nubian Museum., Aswan)

The other and more important device introduced into Egypt during the Greco-Roman period (or just
before) is the saqiya or water-wheel. In its simplest form the saqiya consists of two wheels geared
together so that when one moves it causes the other to turn. One of the wheels is laid out horizontal
at or just above the level of the fields that are to be irrigated. An animal — a donkey, camel or
commonly in recent centuries a water-buffalo — is tied to it and caused to walk in a circle. This, in
turn, causes the horizontal wheel to turn. The second wheel is set vertically into the ground such that
it lowest point dips into a water source. Around its exterior are buckets, and when the wheel turns,
the buckets fill with water as they reach their lowest point and then carry to water up to the level of
the fields, their highest point, and here they drop the water in channels that carry it into the fields.
The vertical wheel turns because it is geared to the horizontal wheel, which turns because of animal-
power. The saqiya can be a very efficient device for lifting water, and its use in Egypt after 500 BCE
may have literally powered a spurt in agricultural development that led to a substantial increase in
Egypt’s population. At the very least it made possible the extension of low-water canalization
throughout the Fayyum during the Greco-Roman era.

But the saqiya was not available to Ancient Egyptian farmers. So how did they solve the problem of
getting water from point”A” to point “B?”
Solution 2: Through HIGH-WATER CANALIZATION. Ancient Egyptian farmers waited for the
annual Nile flood to lift the level of the river above the level of their fields. The Nile did the basic
work, and once the water was at this highwater level, it could be channeled through simple, low
mud-brick canals into the farmers fields.

Ancient Egyptian farmers were entirely dependent upon high-water canalization to irrigate their
fields. The great advantage of highwater canalization is that it greatly reduces the level of technology
and resources required to practice irrigation. Its two great disadvantages are that (1) it only works
where you have a flood system like that of the Nile (this, of course, was not a problem for the
Ancient Egyptians, but it was a serious problem for many other ancient peoples); and (2) it is wholly
dependent upon a natural flood process, so you cannot use it year-round. Perennial irrigation was
rarely practiced in Ancient Egypt.

Note 1: The oldest image of a saqiya in Egypt dates to the Roman Period. It is a painted relief from a
tomb of the first or second century CE discovered among the western cemeteries of ancient
Alexandria and is now in the Greco-Roman Museum of Alexandria.

Note 2: The oldest archaeological evidence of the presence of the saqiya in Egypt dates are the
remains of a saqiya of the Roman period (second century through fourth century?) discovered (and
reconstructed) at Tounah al-Gabal, the main cemetery of the ancient Middle Egyptian city of
Hermopolis.