In Egypt, where mythology, manners and customs, writing, and all the arts appear never to have had a period of infancy, or of adolescence, but to have come into being all in a perfected state and all together, it is hard to say what is older than other things. It is so with everything Egyptian; and so, of course, with the shadoof, the machine used in raising water, by human labour, for irrigating the land. It is the oldest machine with which we are historically acquainted: though, of course, it implies the use of the plough, which, as well as the hoe, must have been brought into the valley of the Nile by the immigrant ancestors of the Egyptians.

Mechanically, the shadoof is an application of the lever. In no machine which the wit of man, aided by the accumulations of science, has since invented, is the result produced so great in proportion to the degree of power employed. The lever of the shadoof is a long stout pole poised on a prop. The pole is at right angles to the river. A large lump of clay from the spot is appended to the inland end. To the river end is suspended a goat-skin bucket. This is the whole apparatus. The man who is working it stands on the edge of the river. Before him is a hole full of water, fed from the passing stream. When working the machine, he takes hold of the cord by which the empty bucket is suspended, and, bending down, by the mere weight of his shoulders dips it in the water. He then rises, with his hand still on the cord. His effort to rise gives the bucket full of water an upward cant, which, with the aid of the equipoising lump of clay at the other end of the pole, lifts it to a trough into which, as it tilts on one side, it empties its contents. The man continues bending down and rising up again in this manner for hours together, apparently without more effort than that involved in these movements of his body. What he has done has raised the water six or seven feet above the level of the river. But if the river has subsided twelve or fourteen feet, it will require another shadoof to be worked in the trough into which the water of the first has been brought. If the river has sunk still more, a third will be required before it can be lifted to the top of the bank, so as to enable it to flow off to the fields that require irrigation. I sometimes saw as many as twenty series of shadoofs at work, two or three in each series, within a range of half a mile. The poor fellows who work them are, except for the barest decency, completely divested of every article of clothing: an almost invisible loin cloth, and a tight-fitting cotton skull-cap, are the whole of their apparel. They work all day in the wet, and in the sun. As the materials for the shadoof—the pole, the prop, the skin, and the clay—are all to be had on the spot, the poor fellah is able, in a few minutes, to set up a machine that is of great service to him, at little or no cost.

The other machine used in Egypt for raising water is called the sakia. This is the Persian water-wheel. It is a large wheel with a continuous row of jars arranged on its tire, something like the buckets of a dredging-machine. These jars dip up the water as the wheel revolves, and empty it, as the further revolution of the wheel brings their mouths downwards, into a trough. It is worked by bullocks, or buffaloes. A few years back there were many more of these at work than there are at present. A murrain, or rinderpest, having destroyed the cattle, the fellahs were obliged to take their place, and revert to the old shadoof of the early Pharaohnic times.