Egypt Through The Stereoscope

A Journey Through The Land Of The Pharaohs

by James Henry Breasted | 1908 | 103,705 words

Examines how stereographs were used as a means of virtual travel. Focuses on James Henry Breasted's "Egypt through the Stereoscope" (1905, 1908). Provides context for resources in the Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA). Part 3 of a 4 part course called "History through the Stereoscope."...

Position 37 - “thou Shalt Not Muzzle The Ex When He Treadeth Out The Corn” — Threshing In Modern Egypt

The rich soil of Egypt, fertilized every year by the black loam brought down by the inundation from the highlands of Abyssinia, yields two and sometimes three crops a year under the system of irrigation of which we have seen some examples. The chief cereals are wheat and Indian corn (maize), but large quantities of rice are also cultivated, and to some extent also a kind of sorghum, called Kaffir-corn. The soil yields also an enormous return in leguminous plants and vegetables, which are largely cultivated.

But the methods employed are the most primitive in the world; they use the same wooden plow, which we find depicted upon monuments five thousand years old, and everything else is equally antiquated. Thus we see them here driving the threshing sledge, a rude wooden affair, shod with iron teeth or cutting rollers, by which the grain is gradually crushed and loosened from the husks. The straw accumulates in a circle around the path of the sledge as the work goes on. The driver lolls lazily upon a rude seat, protected from the blazing sun by a bower of straw and leaves over his head, while his incongruous yoke, a camel and an ox, move slowly around the circle, the dull swish of their feet in the straw and chaff furnishing a monotonous accompaniment to his strange minor song.

Behind them in bright green tones, shines the rustling corn field, and beyond rise the distant palm groves to mark the pale horizon line. It is such a picture as may be seen every day in this ancient land, and only adds to one's wonder that this people which became the mother of the mechanical arts and bequeathed them to the world, should have wrought such wonders in stone and metal and yet has been unable to pass beyond the primitive stage in the cultivation of the soil.

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