HARVESTING
Th e dry season began in March and continued to July. Th is pe-
riod was called shemu (a lso shomu), meaning “the drought.”
Harvesting usually occurred in May or June and sometimes
in April, before the next fl ood began. Grains were harvested
using sickles made of wood that was cut and glazed to form
a sharp edge; by Roman times sickles made of iron were be-
coming more common.
Large estates made use of traveling harvest teams, who
began their work early in the season and followed the matur-
ing of crops downriver as the season progressed. (Th e Nile
fl ows north into the Mediterranean Sea, so downriver means
in a northerly direction and upriver refers to a southerly direc-
tion.) Because harvesting involved a great deal of work in a
relatively short period of time, nearly everyone participated.
Livestock was then allowed to graze in the fi elds to eat the
stalks left behind. Also, poor people oft en followed harvesters,
hoping they could scavenge some bits of grain for themselves.
Aft er the grain was cut with sickles, it had to be bun-
dled. Sometimes the bundles were loaded onto the backs
of donkeys, but oft en they were carried in sacks suspended
from poles, each pole carried by two men. Th e grain was then
taken to a dry place to undergo a process called parching, or
drying out the grain so that it did not later get moldy or rot.
Th ere, the threshing process would begin. Workers spread
the grain, still on its grassy stems, in a fenced or otherwise
contained place where the ground was packed hard and fi rst
carefully cleaned. Donkeys then trampled it. In some places
cows performed this job. Th is trampling helped separate the
grain from the chaff , or the seed coverings and other debris
that is not eaten.
During the next step in the harvesting process, called
winnowing, workers used large forks, like pitchforks, to
scoop up the straw, leaving behind mostly grain. Th e straw
was kept for use in the production of mud bricks, which
were strengthened by the inclusion of the straw. Using sieves
made of palm leaves and reeds, workers—usually women at
this stage—sift ed the materials to further separate the grains
from the remaining smaller bits of chaff. Finally, the grain
was ready to be stored in granaries for later consumption.
Th e fi elds of ancient Egypt were highly productive, par-
ticularly considering that crops were grown without benefi t
of modern tools or fertilizers. Records show that at that time
an acre of land could yield nearly 4,200 pounds. Total produc-
tion could range as high as 2.8 million tons, though 2.5 million
tons was the production for a typical good year. Th is amount
of grain fed a population during the New Kingdom (1550–1070
b.c.e.) that has been variously estimated from as few as 2
million to as many as 5 million people. During bad harvest
years, production fell to as low as about 1.5 million tons.
One period of dryness demonstrates the vital impor-
tance of the Nile and its annual fl ooding in the life of the
ancient Egyptians. Late in the third millennium b.c.e.,
Egypt suff ered a period of great political instability. Th e
About two miles southeast of the town of Dendera,
Egypt, is the Dendera Temple complex, which features
one of the best-preserved temples in all of Egypt. Cov-
ering about 430,000 square feet, or nearly 10 acres, it
has become a major tourist attraction. The main tem-
ple in the complex is the Hathor Temple, dedicated to
the goddess Hathor, whom the Egyptians regarded as
the mother-goddess of the world and the patron of,
among other things, the sky, the sun, music, dance,
and the arts. The dates of construction provided in
the texts inscribed on the temple range from 54 B.C.E.
to 64 C.E.; it was built on the site of an earlier temple
from the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2140–1640 B.C.E.).
Hathor’s name means “house of Horus,” refer-
ring to the night sky and therefore the god of the sky,
Horus, who was the son of Osiris. As a mother-god-
dess, Hathor had been considered in earlier centu-
ries as symbolic of the Milky Way, which the ancient
Egyptians believed was the milk that fl owed from a
celestial cow. Thus, as far back as 2700 B.C.E., Egyp-
tians worshipped her as a cow deity. She was also
known by the name Mehturt (also spelled Mehurt,
Mehet-uret, and Mehet-Weret), a name that means
“great fl ood,” again in reference to the Milky Way.
However, because the Egyptians saw the Milky Way
as a waterway on which the gods could travel, they
came to associate it with the Nile River. Hathor, then,
was believed to be responsible for the yearly fl ooding
of the Nile. In this way, she also became associated
with motherhood, for the breaking of the amniotic
sac as a signal that a woman is about to give birth
was thought of as analogous to the fl ooding of the
Nile, with the “birth” of the crops that would grow
after it receded.
Archaeologists discovered a hymn to Hathor
when they refurbished the Dendera Temple complex.
This hymn, inscribed on the Hathor Temple, makes
clear her connection with Egyptian agriculture. Ha-
thor is said to “cause the fl ood fl owing downriver in
its season.” To farmers, Hathor caused “the watered
earth to close over the seed when its right time has
come,” making men to “work it in joy.”HYMN TO HATHOR:
THE EGYPTIAN AGRICULTURAL CYCLE22 agriculture: Egyptroyal families were feuding, and questions arose about the
proper succession of kings. Th en, around 2134 b.c.e., the
Eighth Dynasty fell. In the resulting power vacuum, local
nobles seized control of the land in their areas and gained
command of portions of the king’s army. Although in theory