Position 38 - The Winnowing Of The Grain After Threshing

Here is the next step in the process of harvesting in Egypt. The mixture of broken straw, chaff and grain is tossed into the air by the laborer, and as the heavier grain falls again to the threshing floor, the chaff and straw are carried away by the wind. How it brings up the symbols in the Old Testament! “The wicked are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.” But it is a slow process, as you see here, requiring the tossing of the mixture over and over again; but, as you observe, there gradually gathers on the windward side of the heap (the right side here) a mass of fairly clean grain.

Notice how the shadow of the palm falls across the brown grain-heap, and as the dust swirls off to leeward, and the white garment of the winnower flutters in the breeze, the precious pile that means bread for the peasant and his little ones slowly grows, until his comrade, who sits waiting on the ground with empty basket by his side, may fill it with the winnowed grain and carry it to the neighboring granary, built up of Nile mud in the peasant's courtyard.

Beyond, under the clustered palms lie the camels so largely employed by these peasants in the labor of the field; and here and there are the black buffaloes, which in this climate are a great boon to the fellah, as they endure the high temperature prevalent here, much better than any of the European or Asiatic breeds of cattle. They give very rich milk in considerable quantities, and the cream from it is as thick, and of the same consistency as butter. It is so rich indeed that most visitors to the country are unable to eat it. Two other threshing floors lie out yonder behind the first group of palms, and beyond these, after an open interval, is the palm-shaded village where these peasants live.

Here they go through their monotonous round of homely duties, generation after generation, and although they have changed their religion twice, from that of ancient Egypt, through Christianity, to that of Mohammed; and their language once, from the ancient tongue now preserved only on the monuments, to that of the Arabs, yet they are in all essential particulars, just what they were when they toiled in the quarries of the pyramid builders.

The tombs scattered up and down the valley contain scenes, which show them using the same implements, weaving the same baskets, twisting ropes from the same material, playing the same instruments, and in a thousand ways doing the same things which are common among them now. As we saw in the museum at Cairo, they are also physically just what they have been for ages. Fit Only for the life of the herdsman and the tiller of the soil, they continue these immemorial callings, but the vitality which once produced the mightiest works in the ancient world has vanished from their nature, and this is the great and melancholy change, with which we have been so often impressed.

Our next position is given on Map 6 by the red lines numbered 39