The new soil-preparation technology (Hrusˇka 1984 ), employing traction implements
such as ards, harrows and sleighs, brought a four- to five-fold rise in productivity as
against hoe agriculture. Ploughing and subsequent harrowing resulted in a much
more thorough removal of clods and homogenization of arable soil than could be
achieved by manual implements such as hoes, shovels or wooden mallets. On the
other hand, it did not lower labour intensity. The direction of an animal team before
the plough, as well as production and maintenance of such implements, required
cooperation of a number of workers and a different organization of labour. Plough
work was irregularly timed in the course of the agricultural year and was apparently
divided into two periods. In the case of primary soil preparation on hitherto untilled
areas or after long-term fallow, the ploughing with a ploughshare took place in the
late spring when the water tanks were emptied, before the annual floods and arable
soil could have been leached. In the case of soil preparation after long-term fallow,
the ploughing preceded seeding and one single ploughing season finished in November-
December when traction animals were unharnessed (Hrusˇka 1990 : 105 ).
This was the reason why soil preparation techniques made but slow progress, and
were perhaps used systematically only on palace and temple estates. In a somewhat
ironic literary ‘Dispute between Hoe and Plough’ (Vanstiphout 1984 : 239 – 251 ), the
god Enlil finally decides that ‘the hoe surpasses the plough’, since the hoe helps to
dig and clean water conduits, enabling work even in wet fields.^15 The plough needs
too many working hands and animals: ‘(Plough), yours are six oxen, yours are four
people – yourself is the eleventh of the unit’. Finally, the plough is vulnerable since
frames and poles break in operation, wedges and bindings fall out and tear apart.
The ploughman, unable to repair the implements himself, has to call upon specialists.^16
The personified hoe asserts that, though the plough leaves ‘splendid traces’ in the
field (furrows), it otherwise accomplishes ‘little work’. A farmer wields his hoe for
the entire year, a ploughman can use his machine for only four months (verses
107 – 108 ). The plough lies idle for eight months and thus it is out of work for twice
as long as it works (verses 109 – 110 ).
The pictograph for plough (apin, epinnu) or simply ‘wood’ (gisˇ) turns up frequently
in all groups of archaic texts and in many sealings. It represents a stylized depiction
of a simple wooden ard with a double handle and curved shaft (see Figure 4.1). The
APIN sign emphasizes by dashed lines the link beween the shaft and pole, sometimes
also the pole carries a transversal neck yoke. The analysis of other expressions in
economic, literary and in lexical texts gives us a fairly detailed idea of the construction
components of the ards (‘tongue’, replaceable ploughshare; ‘tooth’, replaceable plough-
share tip; frame behind ploughshare; shaft, pole; handle, the steering apparatus).^17
Thus the Sumerians and Babylonians employed, as early as the third millenium
BC, much more sophisticated ploughing implements than simple hook ards (Hrusˇka
1985 ). An oblique ploughshare without the supporting frame could cut the soil to
maximum depths of 15 cm while, in some 40 – 50 per cent of arable land, clods larger
than 5 cm remained in the furrow. Clods had to be broken by repeated transversal
and sometimes even diagonal ploughing or by harrowing.^18 The final adjustment of
the arable land before the manual preparation of cereal ridges took the form of driving
sledges, consisting of transversal beams with spikes, over the field. The sledge spikes
could have been substituted by branches of thorny shrubs. The author of the ‘Farmer’s
Instructions’ recommends a triple harrowing with manual levelling of the irregularities
— Blahoslav Hrusˇka —