What Is The Irrigation System History Essay

Irrigation system consists on taking water from the main water source and diverting it with artificial channels where it used for agriculture needs. This system is dictated by the geographical and geology position. As we know Nile valley civilizations have depended by getting the best use of this river. As Herodotus said “Egypt is… the gift of the river.”The efficiency of these irrigation systems made possible the fertility of the land , so irrigation schemes were not only built, but even maintained.

The Nile being one of the most predictable rivers in the world, and has a “flood” period nearly to one hundred days. There for the agriculture was based in winter crops after the annual floods had subsided. Being only one water source which was hard to control, the irrigation works were based to deal only with peak of the flood along the river bank. In order to descend the water into several basins in succession , they made large flat-bottomed basins. Water, after being drained off to the crops and back into the river at the right time of the growing cycle after it stayed for several days in the fields.

Herodotus wrote that the Egyptians “get their harvests with less labor than anyone else in the world.” The irrigation system got even better after they knew in advance the height of the annual flood. The fluctuations of the Nile floods made the irrigation system quite primitive and food was not stored efficiently. Their irrigation system was primitive and they depended on one winter crop per year. They were not capable to dam the river as a consequence there was no attempt at water storage. The big centers of ancient Egypt civilization, which lay along the river had the possibility for a second crop.

The Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and the New Kingdom were periods in Egyptian history when strong central government flourished in times of prosperity. It’s not clear whether strong central government resulted in effective irrigation and good crop production, or whether strong central government broke down after climatic changes resulted in unstable agricultural production.

Dams

It was more a giant weir, to hold back some of the annual flood waters coming down the valley, and to divert some of that water, under control, out of sluices and into a canal system. Perhaps the earliest successful technique was to build a diversion dam. The structure is built right across the bed of the stream, and is not merely a cut in the river-bank that takes off some of the water into a canal. Stream valleys with only seasonal flow are the best places to learn dam-building. The dam can be built during the dry season, allowing engineers to learn how to build a successful dam, without having to master also the technique of diverting the stream. The dam can also be maintained or repaired during dry seasons. If the dam fails in flood, it does no more than restore the old flow, and is not catastrophic. It’s probably not a coincidence that all the most ancient dams are built across intermittent streams, or wades.

So, the daily life could continue its routine. Making good use of all these works they use these as highways to transport all kind of things through water. Not only this, but they could “dominate“ the floods and use it at their favor and take the maximum of their land. The Nile gift enmark beside this was used for food storage in good times. They perfectioned their tools to made all these architechtual wonders for the time. As early as 5000 B.C., nomadic hunter-gatherers of northeastern Africa began to settle by the Nile. They took up a farming life regulated by the river’s seasonal rise and fall, growing cereal crops such as wheat and barley. The Nile also provided these Neolithic farmers with ducks and geese in its marshlands and fish in its waters. The early Egyptians harvested papyrus growing wild along the banks of the Nile, using the long, thin reeds to make rope, matting, sandals, baskets, and later on sheets of paper like writing material.

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Ancient Egyptians had to contend with enormous temperature swings. They looked for a place not only to protect them from heat and cold, but even to storage the food. Because rainfall was in frequent, the main construction material was plentiful sun-baked mud . The basic Egyptian house consisted of a high rectangular enclosure wall and an entry door faced north at the narrow end, a central pool of water just past the entry door, a roofed area raised on columns open at the front. In general these three elements were the main points of all Egyptian houses. In order to feel breezes not possible at ground level, they added stairs leading to the roof. Windows were placed higher in rooms in order to drop the heat down. They were small in size as the Sun shinned brightly all day. Bedrooms incorporated raised alcoves for sleeping and adobe benches along one or more walls for sitting and supporting objects; niches in the walls held small oil lamps. In size, Egyptian homes were comparable to those of our time.

The workers were needed to built the monumental works. During the spring the Nile flooded, so for three months the workers were taken in their villages by a represented of the pharaoh. While he shouted : “In the name of the pharaoh“ , the soldiers gathered the people and putted in a navy to be transported in the work place and they had to be in the navy for several weeks. After these, they were settled in their provisory homes, where they would stay there for the rest of the time needed to finish the work. The recruits were compesed with food and cloth. They were divided into 500 divisions with 20 men per division. Women made supplementary works for the workers.

In their monuments and other architectonic works they represented even the matriarchal and patriarchal system. They showed in statues woman hanging the shoulder to their man. In the Old Kingdom we can see that some columns have the face of a woman.

Egyptian temples were placed where spiritual work was done. An arch with a wing disk was always found to the entrance of the temple. They were created with the form of a snake, snake is the maschilism form and Feminism. The feminism and maschilim have to be in balance, so that the ego of every day world has to be left aside in order to enter the cosmic world.

The efficient functioning of the temple was made possible by a large staff of priests and other support staff. They served in one lunar month in rotation and during three months of free time after service, they worked in other temples. Every temple was the residence of gods, but there were even libraries, so the priests had to do great work. After entering the temple they were excluded from their social life goods .

Body paragraph 3- Many great mysteries surround their vast architectonic works. Their time of building, the way of building is still a main topic of discussion among Egyptologists. They think how it was possible to transport massive blocks through ramps or in which way. A new theory is that of internal ramps. Further more they say the grand gallery served as a high complex to transport the marble stones. Till today the most known theory is that which states the building the pyramid according to the Sirius constellation. Even this theory has some contradictions if we compare the geologic structure, the river base as it was in different years.

Putting together lines and marks, which usually helped the workmen keep balance and edge during the groundwork, full size sketches were from time to time used to lay out relatively scale”, small-scale architectural details. Egyptians not solely used the 3-4-5 triangle to shred right angles, but that they were also sensitive that identically triangles could be acquired by varying the dimensions, but keeping fixed the proportions between the sides. This is an notable point, which might have had a notable function in the project and construction of pyramids. We have information that the period between The Middle Kingdom square grids were used for two dimensional scenes. Modern studies have proved that the dimensions of mud-brick in ancient Egypt varied from a smaller size used in the early Dynastic Period to larger versions adopted from the Old Kingdom onwards, but their proportions remained more or less the same, with a ratio of about 2:1 between length and width. The surviving drawings barely provide enough information about the two-dimensional layout of the plans, and do not seem to have been the principal instrument to take decisions about the three-dimensional aspects. This gap between the schematic drawings and the actual buildings may have been filled by architectural models, which might have been used to visualize in advance the real appearance of the construction. without the distortions and illusions produced by the adoption of the graphic conventions necessary to reproduce a three-dimensional reality on a two-dimensional surface. Among the mass of votive objects, there are a few architectural models that can be related to the planning and building process. A temple is much simpler by the geometrical aspect compared with a temple. Even their geometry is simple, mathematical knowledge is used during the calculation process.

Body paragraph 4- During the Archaic Period it was the peek of good relations between Greece and Egypt. It was the perfect time to transfer artistic and architectural notions between the Egyptians and Greeks This period in Egypt was a time of great artistic and architectural revival. The Rhoikos temple labyrinths clearly associates it with the Egyptian marvel. Significant innovations in Ionian temple architecture of this period greatly resemble long established and commonly implemented elements of the Egyptian colossal architectural tradition. In Naukratis below the astragal on the uppermost part of the column shaft is the Egyptian lotus flower and bud. Similarities are found with the Egyptian colonnade and the Ionic peristyle. the difference being that the central columns of the Egyptian hypostyle hall are far more massive than Ionic.

Egyptian architecture has stimulated the imagination of architects in modern times. An interesting similarity is Burnham & Root`s Monadnock Building for having heavy sloping lines of an Egyptian pyramid. Not even that, but many modern buildings in Las Vegas and not only are trying to rebuild pyramid like structures. These attract people`s curiosity. Still today the Egyptian architecture opens debate and is still functional.

Conclusion The good architecture of dams and the irrigation system made possible that the daily life flows normally. Not only this, but they could “dominate“ the floods and use it at their favor and take the maximum of their land. They used their architectonic knowledge in their favor to build good houses. But the most impressed impact of building the magnificent architectonic marvel from sketch to reality was the slaves daily life in the work place. The life changed even for the temple personnel, which it has not been mentioned in many history books. The most impressed thing was their knowledge used in architectonic buildings. Still today the mystery, debate cover the ancient architectonic works. Even that many centuries have passed, even now days we are fascinated by their architectonic.