The Ancient Egyptian Nile: A Source of Life and Worries
- The ancient Egyptians invented measuring devices called nilometers to track the height of the Nile river.
- Farmers used shadufs, devices similar to catapults, to lift water from the Nile and irrigate their gardens.
- During the dry season, known as shemu, Egyptians anxiously awaited the rise of the Nile's floodwaters.
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お願いします。 At first the Egyptians simply marked the riverbank to measure the height of the Nile. But it wasn't long before the Egyptians invented measuring devices. We call them nilometers. Some looked like a giant yardstick made from marble. Other nilometers were even more elaborate. Workers dug staircases into wells and erected engraved pillars marked to gauge how high the water rose. After the flood months, when the water finally receded and left behind rich, black earth, farmers scattered their seeds, the first of several plantings. The second season―peret―had begun. Farmers lifted water from the steady flowing river with shadufs, devices that looked like catapults. With a bucket for dipping on one end of a pole, and a counterweight to make lifting easy on the other, the shadufs creaked and groaned while farmers raised and pivoted the buckets to fill channels that snaked through their gardens. Farmers tended their fields with care into the third season―shemu. During shemu the level of the Nile dropped, and many side channels dried up. The land parched and the desert seemed to close in. The red sands inched toward the villages. Near the end of shemu, Egyptians began to fret and worry. Would the Nile ever rise again? Had the gods forgotten to release the waters? They sang, "they dread him who creates the heat," and they sacrificed birds and gazelles for the return of the Nile's floodwaters. And then the cycle repeated. "Hail to thee, O Nile! Who...comes to give life to Egypt!"
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At first the Egyptians simply marked the riverbank to measure the height of the Nile. 最初エジプト人たちは、（氾濫後に）ナイルの堤に、水の高さを示すために、記しをつけておくだけでした。 But it wasn't long before the Egyptians invented measuring devices. しかしやがて彼らは測定装置を考案しました。 We call them nilometers. わたしたちはそれをナイロメーター（ナイル河水位計）と呼んでいます。 Some looked like a giant yardstick made from marble. あるナイロメーターは、大理石から作られた巨大なものさしに見えました。 Other nilometers were even more elaborate. もっと手の込んだナイロメーターもありました。 Workers dug staircases into wells and erected engraved pillars marked to gauge how high the water rose. 作業員たちは井戸の中に階段を掘っていき、目盛りの刻んである柱をそこに建てました。それによって水位を測ろうというわけです。 After the flood months, when the water finally receded and left behind rich, black earth, farmers scattered their seeds, the first of several plantings. 洪水の数カ月が過ぎ、水がようやく退いて、後に豊かな黒い土が残されると、農夫たちは、種まきを始めます。それが１年に何回か行なう種まきの最初のものになります。 The second season―peret―had begun. 第２の季節ペレトが始まったのです。 Farmers lifted water from the steady flowing river with shadufs, devices that looked like catapults. 農夫たちは、流れの落ち着いたナイルから、シャドゥフと呼ばれる、石弓に似た装置を使って水を汲み上げます。 With a bucket for dipping on one end of a pole, and a counterweight to make lifting easy on the other, the shadufs creaked and groaned while farmers raised and pivoted the buckets to fill channels that snaked through their gardens. シャドゥフは棒の一端に採水用のバケツをくくりつけ、他方の端に持ち上げるのを楽にするための重しをくくりつけたもので、農夫たちが、自分の耕作地にうねうねと巡らされている用水路に給水するために、バケツを持ち上げ回転させると、キーキー、ギーギーと音を立てます。 Farmers tended their fields with care into the third season―shemu. 農夫たちは畑の手入れを注意深く行い、そうして第３の季節シェムを迎えることになります。 During shemu the level of the Nile dropped, and many side channels dried up. シェムの季節、ナイルの水位は下がり、多くの用水路は干上がります。 The land parched and the desert seemed to close in. 土地はカラカラとなり、砂漠が押し寄せてきそうな気配となります。 The red sands inched toward the villages. 赤い砂地が、じりじりと村に忍び寄ってきます。 Near the end of shemu, Egyptians began to fret and worry. シェムの季節の終わり頃になると、エジプト人たちは不安になり、ひどく気を揉むようになります。 Would the Nile ever rise again? ナイルはまた水かさを増すことがあるのだろうか？ Had the gods forgotten to release the waters? 神々は楽園の水を放出することを忘れてしまったのだろうか？ They sang, "they dread him who creates the heat," and they sacrificed birds and gazelles for the return of the Nile's floodwaters. そして彼らは「暑熱を創られたかたを畏れ」と歌い、鳥やガゼルを生贄に捧げて、ナイルの氾濫の水の再来を請います。 And then the cycle repeated. "Hail to thee, O Nile! Who...comes to give life to Egypt!" そして、再び（氾濫が訪れ）１年のサイクルが繰り返されるのです。「ナイルよ、汝われらに生を恵むものよ」（と歌声が再び響くのです。）
関連するQ&A
- 日本語訳を! 1-(3)
お願いします。 Life in Egypt revolved around the Great River. Our seasons come and go, marked by weather changes, but not so in Egypt, where the sun always shines. In Egypt the seasoms were marked by changes in the Nile. The first of the three seasons began in July. Egyptians called it akhet. During akhet, heavy rain in Ethiopia poured down from the highlands, swelling streams that fed the Nile. The banks of the Nile overflowed. Flooding may not sound like a good thing, but to the Egyptians it was a very good thing. Those floods left behind that black earth for planting. During the floods, farmlands were covered with water. Everyone uneasily watched the water rise. Would there be enough water? Would the Nile bring enough of that rich, black earth for farmers to plant their seeds? Or would there be too much water? Would whole villages be washed away? It was a delicate balance. If you were the supreme ruler, it would be your job to work it out with the gods so that things went well. You worked with Hapi, the god of the Great River, and more importantly, with the god in charge of the floods, the one with the ram's head―Khnemu. It was your job to be sure there was ma'at, or balance―not too much, not too little. The Egyptians watched the flood levels obsessively. They measured the water and recorded it. They compared their measurements to the good years. They compared their measurements to the bad years. Everywhere you went, people would have had an opinion on this year's flood level. People talked in the market place. People talked along the roads, over dinner, while washing clothes at the riverbank. Would this be a good year? Would the granaries be full? Or would this be a bad year? Would they suffer the anguish they sang about in The Hymn to the Nile?
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お願いします。 Without the Nile you wouldn't have much of a kingdom to rule. Strutting might seem a bit silly. Egypt would be home to nothing more than a few wandering bands of nomads passing through the red land, dusty and dragging from the relentless heat, in search of the rare oasis. The Nile, however, the glorious Nile, brought a narrow band of life to Egypt. It carried rich, black dirt and spread it over the floodplains, creating fields for the Egyptians to plant their seeds. The Egyptians called it khemet―the black land. The change from red land to black land was so abrupt you could straddle the border, standing with one foot in red earth and the other in black. The ancient Egyptians knew tha without the Great River they would have no villages, no fields of wheat, and no cattle. To them the water was sacred. They believed it flowed from paradise and could heal the sick. They wrote songs to the Nike―praising its life-giving force. The Hymn to the Nile began "Hail to thee O, Nile!" and praised the Great River for coming "to give life to Egypt." It may seem as if the ancients got carried away with their praise when they sang, "If you cease your toil and your work, then all that exists is in anguish." But if the Nile did "cease its toil," the people would starve. Maybe they weren't so carried away after all.
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- 日本語訳を! 3-(3)
お願いします。 There are challenges to living in a country that is mostly desert. By the time the Old Kingdom rolled around, about 2700 BCE, Egyptians were up to meeting those challenges―the most obvious would concern water. Although the derert continually tried to push in on the farmland along the edge of the Nile, the Egyptians had learned how to push back. They coaxed the waters of the Nile inland, filling the buckets of their shadufs and emptying them into channels they had dug through their gardens. Not only were they irrigating their farmlands, they were expanding them. Farmers grew more food than the people could possibly eat. The king's granaries filled. The government organized and financed massive irrigation projects. When you grow more food than you can possibly eat you are left with something to trade with other nations―grain. What Egyptians didn't have they could now get through trade. A challenge less obvious to those nnt used to surviving in a desert environment is the lack of wood. There are no tall trees in a desert. Actually, there are no trees at all, with the exception of what grew right along the edge of the Nile and in the occasional oasis. Egyptians needed wood―a lot of wood―especially for boats and coffins. They had their eye on the cedar that grew to the northeast, in the land that we now call Lebanon. It was ideal for both boats and coffins because cedar resists rot, and a rotting boat or a rotting coffin can be a problem. And so it began―we've got grain, we need wood, you've got wood, you need grain, let's trade. It was not much different, in principle, from trading baseball cards.
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お願いします。 (13) 1.First stop for the dead is tge Place of Washing, which the Egyptians called Ibu. After a good washing, the embalmers performed a ceremony with Nile water and a kind of salt found in the waters of the Nile called natron. The ceremony symbolizes rebirth. For more reasons than one―secrecy and stench, to name two―Ibu is not close to town. (14) 2.Next stop is Per-nefer, the House of Mummification. Herodotus reports what went on there: "They take first a crooked piece of iron, and with it draw out the brain through the nostrils." Then the embalmers flush out the skull with water and lay it on its side to drain while they "cut along the flank... and take out the whole contents of the abdomen." The heart is left inside the body because the Egyptians believe this to be the most important organ. A few things are tossed because they are considered so unimportant―the brain, for one. The rest of the internal organs are cleaned and storedin jars so that the spirits have a complete home when the time comes to reoccupy the body. Fingernails and toenails are wrapped with twine to keep them from falling off when the skin shrinks. The body is stuffed, covered with natron, which is even better than sand for drying, and left to dry for 40 days.
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お願いします (6) The Hyksos army was made up of professional soldiers. They drove chariots, wore body armor and leather helmets, and wielded bows designed to shoot arrows farther than ordinary wooden bows. It's no surprise that the Hyksos beat the Egyptians in those first battles. But the Egyptians learned from the encounters. They stole the ddsign of the chariot from the Hyksos and then improved upon it. The Egyptians made the chariot lighter. The redesign positioned the driver over the axle and they covered the wooden axle with metal so that it turned more smoothly. These changes made it easier for the horse to pull the chariot. The driver stood, holding onto straps for balance, with a soldier at his side. The soldier held a shield and was armed with a bow and arrows, a sword, and a javelin. The back of the chariot was open so that the charioteers could jump out with ease and engage in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. (7) The Egyptians trained. They held battle competitions in front of the king. Archers shot at targets. Wrestlers grappled with one another. Swordsmen clashed blades. What had once been a rag-tag scrabble of men became an organized military. But they still had work to do on their style of waging war. Before a battle, the Egyptians notified the enemy which day they planned to attack and where. If the enemy wasn't ready, the Egyptians rescheduled. And if the enemy retreated into their fortress, rather than rudely barging in, the Egyptians would patiently wait outside hoping to starve them out. Unfortunately, Egypt's enemies weren't always as courteous.
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お願いします。 (1) In monster movies the Mummy lurches forward, dragging his leg. Ancient Egyptians wouldn't have been scared by this stumbling bag of rags. In fact, they would probably have pointed and laughed, because every Egyptian knew mummies don't lurch. They don't drag their legs. They walk with the grace of an athlete, because in the Field of Reeds, which is where the dead lived, that limp would magically disappear. Deaf in one ear? No problem. Festering wound? No problem. Perfect health is yours in the Field of Reeds. (2) The Egyptians imagined that the Field of Reeds looked like home―only better. A gentle river meandered through fertile fields while munching cows looked on. The cows were fat and happy. They didn't even need to swish their tails, because there were no annoying flies in the Field of Reeds. The fields were always bursting with ripe foods ready to pick. No one was ever sick or hungry, and best of all, no one had to work. (3) The trick was getting in. The Egyptians believed that everyone had three spirits―the Ba, the Ka, and the Akh. Each spirit played a different role when the body died. In its natural state, the Ba―the person's personality―looked like a bird with a miniature version of the dead person's head. After death the Ba lived in the tomb, but was free to come and go as it pleased. The Ba often went to the land of the living where it changed into anything it fancied.
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お願いします。 (4) Different towns in Egypt worshipped differnt gods. The leaders of the town would try to convince everyone that their god was the most powerful. If their god was powerful, it meant they were powerful, too. Before Upper and Lower Egypt were unified, each had its own capital with its own goddess. Upper Egypt's goddess looked like a vulture. Lower Egypt's goddess looked like a cobra. After Upper and Lower Egypt unified, the kings wore a crown with both a vulture and a cobra to symbolize the joining of the regions. (5) One of the pharaoh's most important jobs was to take care of the gods. If the gods were happy, the Egyptians figured they would be happy, too. The crops would grow, the Nile would flood to the right level, and Egypt would be at peace with its neighbors. Life would be in balance, or ma'at. The pharaohs built great temples to show respect to the gods. Inside each temple, in the innermost room, they placed a shrine. And inside the shrine, they kept a statue of the god for whom the temple had been built. Every day the priests served the statue as if it were alive. (6) One pharaoh, King Neferhotep (who ruled about 1741 to 1730 BCE), paid special attention to the temple at Abydos. King Neferhotep wanted to be sure the priests were taking care of the statue exactly as they were supposed to take care of it. After all, those priests were the king's representatives. So if they displeased the gods, then the gods were displeased with the king as well. Ma'at would be thrown all out of whack.
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お願いします (9) The Egyptian seamen used their oars to maneuver the warships even closer. They tossed grappling hooks into the Sea Peoples' vessels. When the hooks took hold the Egyptians heaved on the lines and capsized the Sea Peoples' boats. As they tumbled into the water they were "butchered and their corpses hacked up." Others were grabbed, chained, and taken prisoner before they could swim to shore. (10) In the victory scene at the mortuary temple, we see a pile of severed hands presented to Ramesses III. Prisoners taken alive were branded and assigned to labor forces. The vizier counted everything―hands, spoils, prisoners―for an official report. Ma'at had conquered chaos. The battle against the Sea Peoples had been won. "Their hearts and their souls are finished for all eternity. Their weapons are scattered in the sea."
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お願いします (8) The village of Deir el-Medina has been called a company town. The only people who lived there were the 40 to 60 tomb builders and their families. For generations the skilled craftsmen worked on the king's tombs, cutting into the cliffs of the west bank of the Nile across the river from the ancient city of Thebes. These artisans needed to be within easy commute of the necropolis, or city of the dead, where they worked. The workmen walked to the Valley of the Kings by way of a mountain path. During the week, rather than walking all the way back to their village, the workmen stayed at a camp of stone huts they had built on a level spot along the pathway. The tiny one- or two-room huts were clustered, sharing common walls. The group of huts looked like a honeycomb. An Egyptian workweek ran ten days, so it was not unusual for the workers to stay on the job for eight days and then travel to their families in the village for the "weekend." (9) Building a village within walking distance of the Valley of Kings had its problems. The biggest surely had to be water. Water had to be carried from the floodplain up to the valley to the village. With about 68 homes at Deir el-Medina, that's a lot of water. The state supplied half a dozen water carriers. And, of course, they recorded the deliveries. For the average six-person household, each person would get about four gallons a day for drinking and bathing (not including laundry, which was done by laundrymen, whose service was also provided by the state). Toting the water must have been an annoyance, especially if the deliveries were delayed for any reason. But Deir el-Medina's misfortune turns out to be our good fortune.
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お願いします (4) Ramesses III's inscription tells us that he raced with his army toward southern Palestine to stop the Sea Peoples before they stepped on Egyptian soil. Every ship was sent to the mouth of the Nile, until Ramesses III had filled "the harbor-mouths, like a strong wall, with warships, galleys and barges." Ramesses III knew that he must draw a defensive line. The Egyptians believed this enemy had toppled empires. Egypt would not be one of them. He spared nothing outfitting his fleet. "They were manned completely from bow to stern with valiant warriors bearing their arms, soldiers of the choicest of Egypt..." Along the shore, Ramesses III positioned charioteers. "Their horses were quivering in their every limb, ready to crush the countries under their feet." (5) The Sea Peoples approached from the northeast. They came in waves. A vast horde advanced by land, a massive fleet bore down by sea―all headed straight for Egypt. Thousands marched―young, old, families with wagons piled high with their belongings pulled by humpbacked oxen, soldiers in chariots, soldiers on foot―driven by the common goal of claiming Egypt's prosperous land for their own. (6) The first wave of Sea People attacked by land. From the scenes drawn at Ramesses III's mortuary temple, we see the chaotic mass of enemy soldiers as they launched themselves at the Egyptians. Some wore horned helmets. Others wore feathered helmets. Charioteers, three to a chariot, forced their horses into the fray. Swordsmen charged, slashing long, tapered swords. The infantry thrust their javelins and spears. Against them Ramesses III stood firm. King, chariot, and horses are shown in perfect alignment whereas the Sea Peoples are a chaotic jumble, facing slaughter, surrender, or flight. Ramesses III's troops fought with chins raised and lips pressed together in grim determination. The Sea Peoples scattered. Their soldiers turned and fled.
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