File:Ancient Egypt ((198-)) (17572211954).jpg

Title: Ancient Egypt
Identifier: ancientegypt00fiel (find matches)
Year: [198- [198-]] ([190 [190s)
Authors: Field Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Egyptology
Publisher: Chicago : Field Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
ir- -">¥^" -ip }JL ' m. m m t. u ^ ^ ' 1 'i- .^' '^ (C^ T|^ % CS. .© ^J v^v ©' ^vV> ^(' _07
Text Appearing After Image:
The Agricultural Scenes: These vignettes, showii here, placed in the tomb to secure for the deceased a stead\' source of food in the next world, illustrate the most basic acti\'ities of a farmer's life in ancient Eg\'{)t. The sequence begins on the bottom register, where we see men clearing new fields tapper right) and breaking up the hardened earth with mallets once the annual Nile flood has receded (left). Other laborers are hacking at the prepared fields with hoesTfop left) or ploughing them with the help of oxen (middle), while still others scatter seeds into the furrows. Reserve bags of seed are placed at the sides of the fields (left and right) along with the worker's lunch— baskets of food and tall jars of water: the latter, like water jars still used in Eg)!^! todav, are mounted on stands and, being made of a por- ous clav, allow some evaporation of the con- tents through the sides of the jar, lea\'ing the remainder cool. Much the same effect is pro- duced b\' the skin water bag hanging from a tree, from which we see a man drinking at the far left. Tlie sequence next mo\'es up through the three subregisters on the upper right side. In the lowest of these, two voung women move through fields of green flax (left), pulling up t lie stalks for bundling. The hea\ier work of har\'esting grain is done hv men with sickles (right), followed bv a woman who bends down to glean the broken stalks they have throv\Ti aside. In the middle of this row the grain is packed into a large basket: the man on the right holds the end of a staff which his partner on the right uses to cram domi the sheaves, jumping up and bearing down on it with his full weight while at the same time pulling on a drauTope. The artist's gift for fine detail is seen in his treatment of the standing fields of grain; and his distaste lor this boring work is e\'ident from the unfinished state of the grain and flax on the right and left ends of this row. The next stage, separating the ears from the stalks, is not shown here, but we do see the winnowing that followed in the upper row. Here, voung women toss the ears into the air with wooden scoops, allowing the breeze to carr\' awav the chaff and leaving the grain itself behind. One girl, on the left, is bending dowai to refill her scoops, while a companion keejxs the pile together with two small hand- brooms. The hot, dust\- work is xvonderfully e\oked bv the clouds of grain and the attitudes of the \-oung women, each of whom has bound her hair wnth a kerchief against the chaff in he air The muddv browai background is the tlireshing floor on which this acti\it\' takes place; and the two objects seen at the upper middle—a bowl, and what may be a straw doll, daubed with mud—are interpreted as offerings to Ernutet, the serpent goddess who protected the harvest bv eating rodents and other potential hazards to the grain crop. The final episode is in the middle row: two men measure out the grain with wooden buckets, super\'ised h\ a scribe whose com- ments were never painted into the columns prepared for them. The fruits of the harvest 17

Note About Images