Sebach
Sebach ( Arabic سباخ Sibāḫ 'fertilizer') is an Arabic expression and denotes a nitrogenous fertilizermade from crumbled clay bricks.
Emergence
The mud washed up in Egypt by the annual Nile flood , which supplied the fields with new nutrients, has always been used as building material. For this purpose, the mud was mixed with straw, shaped into adobe bricks and dried in the sun, and then used to erect buildings and walls. The bricks have crumbled and weathered over the millennia and can now be used as fertilizer.
Use as fertilizer
With the construction of the Aswan Dam (completed in 1902), the annual flooding in Egypt did not occur. Therefore it became inevitable for the fellahs , the Egyptian farmers, to fertilize their fields, even though they did this before the dam was built. From now on the old mud bricks were dug to an even greater extent in the ancient mounds of rubble, the so-called tells , and if necessary they were crushed and applied to the fields as fertilizer. Many archaeological sites have already been destroyed as a result. However, this also brought finds to light, such as the so-called Amarna letters , which were found by a Fellachin in Tell el-Amarna while digging for the coveted Sebach.
literature
- Philipp Vandenberg : Nefertiti. An archaeological biography. Hans Kaiser, Klagenfurt, ISBN 3-7042-4024-9