"The first successful efforts to control the flow of water were made in Mesopotamia and Egypt, where the remains of the prehistoric irrigation works still exist. In ancient Egypt, the construction of canals was a major endeavor of the pharaohs and their servants, beginning in Scorpio’s time. One of the first duties of provincial governors was the digging and repair of canals, which were used to flood large tracts of land while the Nile was flowing high. The land was checkerboarded with small basins, defined by a system of dikes. Problems regarding the uncertainty of the flow of the Nile were recognized. During very high flows, the dikes were washed away and villages flooded, drowning thousands. During low flows, the land did not receive water, and no crops could grow. In many places where fields were too high to receive water from the canals, water was drawn from the canals or the Nile directly by a swape or a shaduf. These consisted of a bucket on the end of a cord that hung from the long end of a pivoted boom, counterweighted at the short end. The building of canals continued in Egypt throughout the centuries...."

Source: Larry W. Mays, “Irrigation Systems, Ancient,” Water Encyclopedia online (adapted)

These friezes, or architectural adornments, on an ancient temple portray Egyptians using shadufs, devices that enabled them to transfer water from the Nile to their fields.

After the death of Alexander the Great, a series of three pharaohs named Ptolemy ruled Egypt. The culture of Egypt during that period was primarily Greek.

"... In the Ptolemaic period, Greek temple records presented each region as an economic unit, and referred to the name of the canal which irrigates the region, the cultivated region which is located on the river’s banks and is directly irrigated with its water, and the lands located on the region’s border that could be reclaimed. The beds irrigation system allowed cultivating one winter crop; while in summer, the only lands that could be cultivated were the high lands away from the flood. Thus, when the Egyptians invented tools to lift water, such as the shaduf, they were able to cultivate two crops per year, which was considered a great advance in the field of irrigation. The shaduf was invented in the Amarna period and is a simple tool which needs two to four men to operate. The shaduf consists of a long, suspended pole weighted at one end and a bucket tied at the other end. It can lift about 100 cubic meters (100,000 liters) in 12 hours, which is enough for irrigating a little over a third of an acre...."

Source: Agriculture – Part I, Ancient Egypt History, EgyptHistory.com

"... The water laws of ancient Egypt were primarily concerned with ensuring that each farmer along the river had fair access to the waters during the floods and that no farmers were denied their fair share of irrigated water. If a farmer, for example, farmed many miles from the river, those owning land close to the river had to allow him to have access to a water canal running through their land.
Water laws also prohibited the taking of water from canals by farmers not contributing to the labor of filling the canal with water. How much water one was entitled to take from a canal depended on how much time one spent filling that canal. If, for example, ten farmers contributed ten hours of labor filling irrigation canals with water, any one of them who took more than one hour’s worth of water could be put to death...."

Source: James Barter, The Nile, Lucent Books