Shadoof

A hand-operated water-lifting device built around a pivoted lever, counterweight, and bucket. It raises water from rivers or wells for irrigation.

Lever: A rigid bar that pivots around a fulcrum to transmit or multiply force. The shadoof’s beam acts as a lever, with the fulcrum between its bucket and counterweight.
Ancient Egypt: A civilization centered along the Nile River from antiquity through the Roman conquest. Shadoofs became a familiar means of lifting Nile water onto cultivated land.
Basin irrigation: An irrigation method that confines water within level, bounded plots of land. Shadoof water could be lifted into basins for crops above a riverbank.
Archimedes' screw: A rotating helical device that raises water through a tube or trough. It lifts water by rotation rather than by a counterweighted lever and bucket.
Fulcrum: The fixed point about which a lever rotates. The shadoof’s beam pivots on this support as the bucket descends and rises.
Mesopotamia: An ancient region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in parts of modern Iraq and neighboring countries. Water-lifting devices developed in this region’s irrigated landscapes alongside those of Egypt.
Floodplain: Flat land beside a river that is periodically covered by floodwater. Shadoofs let farmers move river water onto higher parts of cultivated floodplains.
Chain pump: A pump that lifts water using a moving chain fitted with discs or containers. It can raise water continuously, unlike the shadoof’s separate bucket lifts.
Counterweight: A mass used to balance or offset the force of another load. It helps raise the filled bucket after the operator pulls it down into the water.
Nile: A major African river flowing north through northeastern Africa to the Mediterranean Sea. Its banks and floodplain supplied water that shadoofs could raise for cultivation.

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