Shadoof

The Schaduff (Arabic شادوف, DMG šādūf ) also shadoof, is an irrigation device that was used very early in the gardens of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Description and Operation

A Shadoof consists of a rod which rests on a support and carries at its end to a long cable to fill the water tank. The worker lifts the short end where a counterweight is attached, and let the bucket down into the water. Then he pushes on the weight, and the filled bucket goes up again to pour into the pool of water, get the water for the fields and gardens from which the ditches and canals. Often a slightly modified apparatus was set by a draft animal, a donkey or ox in operation. The bucket is lowered by its own weight, then it pulls the animal by a rope that runs horizontally over a pulley up again. The bucket is emptied into the grave pool and then falls again by itself in supplying Flow down when the animal returns to its starting point.

Use

Both in ancient Egypt and in Mesopotamia for the development of garden design irrigation was an essential prerequisite. The work of scooping water was the most labor-intensive and mühseligste. This is illustrated by a passage from the so-called doctrine of life Khety, a writer from the 12th Dynasty around 1800 BC:

The gardener carries the yoke; his shoulders are as bent with age. He has so many sores on his neck, that this is like a festering wound. In the morning he pours the vegetables and in the evening the shade plants, where he spends all day in the orchard Then he falls dead tired to, and this applies to him more than in any other profession

This hardship eased somewhat with the development of the Schaduffs. Especially in the early civilizations of the Fertile Crescent were increased as evidenced by the intensive use of irrigation, agricultural production that even a significant increase in the population was possible. Following the same principle work until today some draw-well in the Hungarian Puszta.

Other traditional devices for irrigation banks of the Nile in Egypt and Nubia were next to the Schaduff: Tambur, an Archimedes screw; Tabut, a moving by the water flow and the water wheel driven by animals in a circle Göpel Schöpfwerk Sakiya.