Irrigation

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IRRIGATION.—Owing to the lack of a sufficient rainfall, Babylonia and Egypt have to be supplied with water from their respective rivers. This is conveyed over the country by canals. The water is conducted along these canals by various mechanical devices, and at a cost of great labour. In Palestine the need for artificial irrigation is not so great, as is indicated by the contrast with Egypt in Deu_11:10. As a rule the winter rainfall is sufficient for the ordinary cereal crops, and no special irrigation is necessary. The case is different, however, in vegetable and fruit-gardens, which would be destroyed by the long summer droughts. They are always established near natural supplies of water, which is made to flow from the source (either directly, or raised, when necessary, by a sakiyeh or endless chain of buckets worked by a horse, ox, or donkey) into little channels ramifying through the garden. When the channels are, as often, simply dug in the earth, they can be stopped or diverted with the foot, as in the passage quoted. Artificial water-pools for gardens are referred to in Ecc_2:6. A storage-pool is an almost universal feature in such gardens.
R. A. S. Macalister.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909


ir-i-gā?shun: No equivalent for this word is found in Biblical writings, although the use of irrigation for maintaining vegetable life is frequently implied (Ecc_2:5, Ecc_2:6; Isa_58:11). To one familiar with the methods of irrigation practiced in Palestine, Syria and Egypt, the passage, ?where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs? (Deu_11:10), is easily explained. The water is brought in channels to the gardens, where it is distributed in turn to the different square plots bounded by banks of earth, or along the rows of growing vegetables planted on the sides of the trenches. In stony soil the breach in the canal leading to a particular plot is opened and closed with a hoe. Any obstruction in the trench is similarly removed, while in the soft, loamy soil of the coastal plain or in the Nile valley these operations can be done with the foot; a practice still commonly seen.
The remains of the great irrigation works of the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians leave no doubt as to the extent to which they used water to redeem the deserts. In Palestine and Syria there was less need (Deu_10:7; Deu_11:11) for irrigation. Here there is an annual fall of from 30 to 40 inches, coming principally during the winter. This is sufficient for the main crops. The summer supply of vegetables, as well as the fruit and mulberry trees, requires irrigation. Hardly a drop of many mountain streams is allowed to reach the sea, but is used to water the gardens of the mountain terraces and plains. This supply is now being supplemented by the introduction of thousands of pumps and oil engines for raising the water of the wells sufficiently to run it through the irrigation canals. Where a spring is small, its supply is gathered into a birket, or cistern, and then drawn off through a large outlet into the trenches, sometimes several days being required to fill the cistern. In Ecc_2:6, Solomon is made to say, ?I made me pools of water, to water therefrom the forest.? This passage helps to explain the uses of the so-called Pools of Solomon, South of Jerusalem. In this same district are traces of the ancient terraces which were probably watered from these pools. See AGRICULTURE; GARDEN.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.


Irrigation
Gardens in the East anciently were, and still are, when possible, planted near streams, which afford the means of easy irrigation. (See the curious account of ancient garden irrigation in Pliny, Hist. Nat. 19, 4.) This explains such passages as Gen_2:9 sq., and Isa_1:30. But streams were few in Palestine, at least such as afforded water in summer, when alone water was wanted for irrigation: hence rain-water, or water from the streams which dried up in summer, was in winter stored up in reservoirs, spacious enough to contain all the water likely to be needed during the dry season. SEE POOL; SEE WELL.
In fact, many of our own large nurseries are watered in the same manner from reservoirs of rain- water. The water was distributed through the garden in numerous small rills, which traversed it in all directions, and which were supplied either by: a continued stream from the reservoir, or had water poured into them by the gardeners, in the manner shown in the Egyptian monuments (see Wilkinson, Anc. Eg. abridgm. 1, 33 sq.). SEE GARDEN.
These rills, being turned and directed by the foot, gave rise to the phrase “watering by the foot,” as indicative of garden irrigation (Deu_11:10). Thus Dr. Thomson says (Land and Book, 2, 279), “I have often watched the gardener at this fatiguing and unhealthy work. When one place is sufficiently saturated, he pushes, aside the sandy soil between it and the next furrow with his foot, and thus continues to do until all are watered.” The reference, however, may be to certain kinds of hydraulic machines turned by the feet, such as the small water-wheels used on the plain of Acre and elsewhere. At Hamath, Damascus, and other places in Syria, there are large waterwheels, turned by the stream, used to raise water into aqueducts. But the most common method of raising water along the Nile is the Shadeif, or well-sweep and bucket, represented on the monuments, though not much used in Palestine. (On the whole subject, see Kitto, Nat. Hist. of Pal. p. 293 sq.). See WATER.

CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.





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