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To: Freelance Warrior

An interesting comment.

So let me add to that (I have some background in high production agriculture)

As far as I know the Egyptians owned their own land. The King and the temples also owned a good deal of land which they used to support themselves, but I think that most of the land was owned outright by the peasants.

The irrigation channels and the very crude techniques used to get water out of the Nile and into the ditches didn’t look like government sponsored operations. Basically buckets on a wheel.
They also had surveyors, apparently a job description nearly as old as prostition.

Egypt did not have as many people as it does today. Chronic illness as well as extremely low ag yield by today’s standards (1/16th of today’s yield? Maybe lower..) kept the population tamped down. Since Egypt was in the water borne disease zone I suspect that dysentery and malaria were common and took a lot of Egyptians early in life.

(The death rate in Massachusetts from water borne diseases was 1/20th of the rate of the Cheasapeake Bay area in Colonial America. Massachusetts was above the latitude in which water borne disease was common. That was one of the reasons the Pilgrims landed that far North. The latitude at which water borne disease was an issue was well known to our ancestors. I had always thought that it was a bit odd that the pilgrims went to a cold snowy area on the continent, but now it makes a lot sense to me.)

I am also not sure that the irrigation operations were quite as extenisve as the yearly flooding provide a huge amount of ground water in soil that was capable of holding on to it. I used to walk our fields that were located on the Mississippi and the black dirt was amazing. A bit like walking on a mattress as the dirt compresses one half to a full inch as you walk on it.
The flooding would also decrease the the amount of free nitrogen in the soil by large amounts and would really knock back the possible yield.

I am going to look at this as it simply is question I am sure has been asked but I have never asked it myself. Thanks for the comment.


42 posted on 02/01/2013 6:39:41 AM PST by buffaloguy
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To: buffaloguy
Here are two links for Land property in Egypt

Agriculture in Ancient Egypt

Sesostris also, they declared, made a division of the soil of Egypt among the inhabitants, assigning square plots of ground of equal size to all, and obtaining his chief revenue from the rent which the holders were required to pay him year by year. If the river carried away any portion of a man's lot, he appeared before the king, and related what had happened; upon which the king sent persons to examine, and determine by measurement the exact extent of the loss; and thenceforth only such a rent was demanded of him as was proportionate to the reduced size of his land.

Organized by regional authorities, every Egyptian had to move about thirty cubic metres of soil in about ten days every year

The building of dams and canals was done at local or regional levels, and while in the past many held irrigation to be the prime cause for the emergence of a central government, most think nowadays that the involvement of the national government in the irrigation was probably minimal: the opening and closing of the canal sluices to Lake Moeris in the Fayum in order to regulate the flow of the river must have been a task for the central authorities.

The rights to water were as important as the land it was intended to irrigate. During the Late Period at least these rights could be sold like any commodity.

So their economic life required much government adminstration. As for the performance: "From the New Kingdom there are records of yields of between 5 and 10 sacks (200 kg to 400 kg) of corn per aroura (ca. 2800 m²) - about ¾ to 1½ tons per hectare - according to the quality and location of the field."

43 posted on 02/01/2013 9:28:22 AM PST by Freelance Warrior (A Russian.)
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