Schaduff
The Schaduff ( Arabic شادوف, DMG šādūf ) also shaduf , is an irrigation device that was used very early in the gardens of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia .
Description and functionality
A Schaduff consists of a rod that rests on a support and carries the water tank to be filled on a rope at its longer end. The worker lifts the short end to which a counterweight is attached and lowers the bucket into the water. Then he presses on the weight and the filled bucket goes up again to pour into the water basin from which the ditches and canals receive the water for the fields and gardens. Often a slightly modified device was also put into operation by a draft animal, a donkey or an ox. The bucket sinks under its own weight, then the animal pulls it up again on a rope that runs horizontally over a roller. The bucket empties into the ditch basin and then falls again by itself into the supplying river when the animal returns to its starting point.
use
Both in ancient Egypt and in Mesopotamia , irrigation was an essential prerequisite for the development of garden art . The work of drawing water was the most labor-intensive. This is made clear by a text passage from the so-called life theory of Cheti , a writer from the 12th dynasty around 1800 BC. Chr .:
The gardener bears the yoke;
his shoulders are bowed as if with age.
He has so many ulcers on his neck
that it looks like a purulent wound.
In the morning he waters the vegetables
and in the evening the schat plants,
spending the whole day in the orchard.
Then he falls dead tired,
and that applies to him more than in any other job
This hardship eased somewhat with the development of the Schaduff . Particularly in the early advanced cultures of the Fertile Crescent , intensive use of irrigation techniques increased agricultural production so significantly that a noticeable increase in population was also possible. Some of the wells in the Hungarian puszta still function according to the same principle .
Other traditional devices for irrigation of the banks of the Nile in Egypt and Nubia were, besides the shadoof: tambour, an Archimedean snail ; Tabut, a water wheel moved by the current of water and the Sakiya Göpel bucket driven by animals in a circle .
See also
Irrigation methods on the Nile
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ https://elibrary.asabe.org/abstract.asp?aid=5769&t=2
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated December 10, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Wolfgang Habermann: On the water supply of a metropolis in Imperial Egypt: New edition by P. Lond. III 1177: Text, translation, commentary (= Vestigia (Munich) . Volume 53 ). CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-44557-8 , pp. 149 (347 p., Limited preview in the Google book search - thesis / dissertation).
- ↑ http://www.kanopen.de/garten/
