380 THE HOME, FARM AXD BUSINESS CYCLOPEDIA. 



famine ensued. On the other hand, great calamities befell the country 

 when the river rose much above the average level. Cattle were drowned, 

 villages destroyed, and the crops necessarily much diminished ; as in such 

 cases, many of the fields were still under water at the proper seed-time. 



An Egyptian villa comprised all the conveniences of a European one of 

 the present day. Besides a mansion with numerous apartments, there 

 were gardens, orchards, fish-ponds, and preserves for game. Attached to 

 it was a farm-yard, with sheds for cattle and stables for carriage horses. 

 A steward directed the tillage operations, superintended the labourers, and 

 kept account of the produce and expenditure. The grain was stored in 

 vaulted chambers furnished with an opening at the top, reached by steps, 

 into which it was emptied from sacks, and with an aperture below for re- 

 moving it when required. Hand-querns, similar to our own, were used for 

 grinding grain ; but they had also a larger kind worked by oxen. In one 

 painting in which the sowing of the grain is represented, a plough drawn 

 by a pair of oxen goes first ; next comes the sower scattering the seed from 

 a basket ; he is followed by another plough ; whilst a roller, drawn by two- 

 horses yoked abreast, completes the operation. The steward stands by 

 superintending the whole. 



The Nomades of the patriarchal ages, like the Tartar, and perhaps some- 

 of the Moorish tribes of our own, whilst mainly dependent upon their 

 flocks and herds, practised also agriculture proper. The vast tracts over 

 which they roamed were in ordinary circumstances common to all shep- 

 herds alike. During summer they frequented the mountainous districts, 

 and retired to the valleys to winter. Vast flocks of sheep and of goats 

 constituted the chief wealth of the Nomades, although they also possessed 

 animals of the ox kind. When these last were possessed in abundance, it 

 seems to be an indication that tillage was practised. We learn that Job, 

 whose time is by the best authorities fixed as about contemporaneous with 

 that of Abraham, besides immense possessions in flocks and herds, had 500 

 yoke of oxen, which he employed in ploughing, and a " very great hus- 

 bandry." Isaac, too, conjoined tillage with pastoral husbandry, and that 

 with success, for we read that he sowed in the land Gerar, and reaped an 

 hundred fold a return which, it would appear, in some favoured regions, 

 occasionally rewarded the labour of the husbandman. In the Parable of 

 the Sower, our Lord (grafting his instructions upon the habits, scenery, 

 and productions of Palestine) mentions an increase of thirty, sixty, and an 

 hundred fold. Such increase, although far above the average rate, was 

 sometimes even greatly exceeded, if we take the authority of Herodotus, 

 Strabo and Pliny. 



