ORIGIN OF TRACTION PLOW— BISHOP 



537 



onward. ^^ It displays in general a more archaic aspect than the 

 Mesopotamian plow; but like the latter it usually has two handles, at 

 first very short. In the earliest reliefs the Egyptian plow is often 

 attached to the draft animals simply by a rope tied to their horns; 

 and even in later times, at any rate in ritual traction, a yoke is fre- 

 quently absent (fig. 4). When it does occur under the Old and 

 Middle Kingdoms, it is of the most primitive description — merely a 

 bar of wood lashed crosswise to the animals' horns. Although horn- 

 less cattle were known to the ancient Egyptians they seem never to 

 have been used in plowing.^^ Where in place of a rope a plow-beam 

 is shown, it is usually short and always straight and displays none 

 of the elaboration of Babylonian examples. 



The use of a cross-tie of twisted and doubled thongs or cords, 

 binding the beam to the lower part of the plow, near the point, arose 



Figure 4.— Late Dynastic Egyptian ritual traction illustrating method of attachment without either yoke 

 or pole. (After Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, vol. 3, pi. op. p. 449, 1878.) 



quite early, but only became general toward the beginning of the 

 Twelfth Dynasty ; later still it was replaced by a cross-brace, apparently 

 of wood. The Egyptians seem to have armed their plows with flint 

 during most of the Dynastic Period ; ^* although there is some evidence 

 that they were beginning to employ metal shares before its close.^ 



Save in minor details, the Egyptian plow underwent little evolu- 

 tion during Old and Middle Kingdom times. It was only after the 

 Hyksos conquest — when, incidentally, wheeled vehicles first appeared 

 in Egypt — that changes in the plow became more marked. It then 

 grew progressively heavier and its stilts longer, while true neck-yokes, 

 perhaps introduced from Asia, began to replace the archaic bars of 

 wood tied athwart the animals' horns,^^ In some of the later Dynastic 



'" On Third Dynasty plows, see Petrie, W. M. Flinders, The tomb of Nefermat, Medum, 1892. 



" Schaefer, Heinrich, Priestergraber • • • vom Totentempel des Ne-user-r6, p. 17, 1908. 



M Of. Hartmann, Feruande, L' Agriculture dans rancienne Egypte, p. 79, fig. 10, 1923; also De Morgan, 

 Jacques, Prehistoric man, p. 172, 1924. 



» See Schaefer, op cit., p. 168. 



2« Of. Antiquity, vol. 9, p. 456, 1934, referring to the Papyrus of Kumara. The oxcarts of the Asiatic foes 

 of Rameses III have neck-yokes. 



31508—38 38 



