How it began
In ancient Mesopotamia, in present-day Iraq, sowing was done with a plow fitted with a funnel to drop the seed into the furrows. Seed plows of this kind are depicted on seals from at least 2300 BCE onward. A 15th-century BCE clay tablet from Nippur, carrying a contract in cuneiform, bears partial impressions of a seal that shows people working with a seeder plow. No inventor is recorded.
How it works
The plow was driven by oxen. As the share opened a furrow, seed fell through the funnel and landed in it. According to the Penn Museum's account, the seed was then covered by a second plowing across the furrows or by working with a tilted share. Barley was sown from mid-October to mid-December, and wheat one or two weeks later. After the barley sprouted the fields were irrigated at least three or four times.
What changed first
Sowing by seeder plow became part of a carefully managed farming year. A Sumerian teaching text known as the Instructions to a Farmer explains every step of a model cereal operation, from preparing the field for the yearly flood before sowing to the end of winnowing. Sowing was opened with a feast in which the king himself took the handle of the seeder plow.
What lasted
The Instructions to a Farmer has been described as a forerunner of the farming poems of Hesiod and Vergil. It was still being copied in the 16th to 15th century BCE, when a tablet gave it an interlinear Akkadian translation. Seal images and these texts make the seeder plow one of the best documented farm implements of the ancient world.
