For 3-4 months every year, the farm land of Egypt was flooded by the Nile. As soon as the waters receded, leaving behind a layer of fertile river silt, work began. Land needed ploughing twice with oxen to break up the deposits before seed could be sowed and then trampled in by animals.

Crops included wheat, barley, flax, fruit and vegetables such as onions, garlic, salad vegetables, peas, lentils and beans. They were watered by irrigation from catch basins (small dykes fed from the Nile by canals) and ‘shaduf’, counterweighted buckets that could scoop water from the river into a gulley at the edge of a field.