Agriculture In Ancient Egypt

An ancient Egyptian temple at Abu Simbel had a granary that could store enough grain to feed 20,000 people for a year (Fernandez-Armesto 56-65). The ancient Egyptians, like all of the other river valley civilizations were completely dependent on agriculture for food and wealth, as Fernandez-Armesto says, “without agriculture, people could have no security of life.” Without agriculture people would not know where their next meal would come from, but with agriculture they would always know where their next meal was coming from. For the Egyptians, wheat and barley were the most commonly grown crops, these crops were used to make bread and beer of the civilization. The ancient Egyptian were known as “bread eaters” by people living around Egypt, …show more content…
Egypt was blessed by being part of the Fertile Crescent around the Nile river, which allowed the Egyptians to grow a wide variety of crops, such as corn, wheat, and barley (Hanna). However, the Egyptian farmers had to work with the annual rise and fall of the Nile. The Egyptians had an ideal regular schedule; in September they would work on and protect dykes. In October the Egyptian farmers would start preparing the fields for planting. By November the Egyptian farmers would begin planting the fields. In April and May the farmers would harvest the crops. From June to September the Nile was in its Flooding season, so they would have parties and hold religious ceremonies until the next farming season (Hanna). In November, the farmers had three different ways of sowing the fields, the first ways was by scattering the seed all around the field and then coming back dragging a branch over the ground, however this method was only used when the ground was wet and muddy. The second way was ploughing the fields with a large hoe, made out of large bull horn, pulled by cattle, or the farmers would have large groups of people plough the land by hand with small primitive hoes. The third and final way the Egyptian farmers prepared the fields was by scattering the seeds and having a group of sheep, pigs or other small herdable animals walk over the fields (Hanna). The Ancient Egyptians …show more content…
The ancient Egyptian empire unlike the rest of the river valley civilizations managed to grow and prosper for many decades. The Egyptian empire was able to support its large population of 4 to 5 million people, though bread and beer (Dollinger). Wheat and barley was a very small aspect of the Egyptian empire however without it the great egyptian civilization we know today might not have