Garden of Egypt: Irrigation, Society, and the State in the Premodern Fayyum

The Garden of Egypt: Irrigation, Society, and the State in the Premodern Fayyūm is the first environmental history of Egypt's Fayyūm depression, exploring human relationships with flowing water from the third century BCE to the thirteenth century CE. It highlights the introduction of perennial irrigation in the nineteenth century and its impact on rural communities and state power. By linking large numbers of communities together, canalization reshaped the irrigated landscape over thirteen centuries, eroding disciplinary boundaries and bringing multiple periods of Egyptian history into contact.

Format: Hardback
Length: 290 pages
Publication date: 30 June 2024
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press

Garden of Egypt: Irrigation, Society, and the State in the Premodern Fayyūm is the first environmental history of Egypt's Fayyūm depression. The volume studies human relationships with flowing water from the third century BCE to the thirteenth century CE. Until the arrival of modern perennial irrigation in the nineteenth century, the Fayyūm was the only region of premodern Egypt to be irrigated by a network of artificial canals. By linking large numbers of rural communities together in shared dependence on this public irrigation infrastructure, canalization introduced to Egypt a radically new way of relating both with the water of the Nile and with fellow farmers. Drawing upon ancient Greek papyri, medieval Arabic literature, and modern comparative evidence, this book explores the ways in which the Nile's water, local farmers, and state power together continually reshaped this irrigated landscape over more than thirteen centuries. Following human/water relationships through both space and time further helps to erode disciplinary boundaries and bring multiple periods of Egyptian history into contact with one another.

Weight: 708g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780472133529