The persons employed were either regular engineers, or else navvies turned on to the work for the time being. But the work of irrigation was not finished with the cutting of the canals; some means had to be devised for conveying the water from the canals to the soil. No doubt in earlier times this was done by means of a hand machine, perhaps consisting in a bucket attached to a pole, to the other end of which a counterpoising weight was suspended. In Assyrian times,[176] these machines were set by the side of a “pit” or cistern, which was often a depression in the bed of the stream, into which the buckets were lowered and from which they were raised when full, or else a pit dug actually on the field into which the water of the canal flowed by means of a runnel. The machine itself in its simplest form resembles the modern “shadûf,” such as was used in ancient Egypt[177] and is in common use among the fellahin of Upper Egypt to-day. But on big estates some more efficient apparatus would be obviously required, and was undoubtedly used, at all events by the Assyrians. What the larger machines were, we do not know, but as Johns suggests, they may have very possibly consisted in a set of buckets fastened to a wheel, which was revolved by oxen, the buckets taking up the water as the wheel brought them to the bottom, and emptying their contents on their way round: but whatever the machine was it must have been fairly elaborate, for it sometimes required as many as eight oxen to work it. The important part which agriculture played in the life of the community is shown by the name of one of the months which was called “the month during which the oxen labour.” The rainy season of November and December over, the labourers proceeded to sow the seed, the harvest of which was to be reaped in the summer during the “month of harvesting.” The corn was cut with a kind of sickle, after which the grain was beaten or else trodden by oxen on the field itself. Next it was passed through a sieve, and was then ready to be distributed or stored in the granaries.