Long before the rule of pharaohs, Egyptians grew wheat and barley and raised pigs, goats, sheep and cattle. Spotty evidence had suggested that agriculture was practiced there more than 7,000 years ago, two millenniums earlier than the first royal dynasties. American and Dutch archaeologists reported last week the discovery at a desert oasis of what they say is the earliest known farming settlement in ancient Egypt. They said the animal bones, carbonized grains, hearths and pottery were roughly dated at 5200 B.C. Now, for the first time, the archaeologists said, early agriculture in Egypt can be studied in a village context, promising insights about the farmers and some answers to the questions of how, why and when Egyptians adopted farming. In an announcement on Wednesday, Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the new research showed that "the settlement was much larger than expected' and included clay floors of simple dwellings. The discovery was made by a team led by Willeke Wendrich of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Rene Cappers of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. They said the research, supported in part by the National Geographic Society, expanded on findings in 1925 by British archaeologists, who uncovered a wood sickle with a serrated flint blade and grain storage pits. The remains of the Neolithic, or Late Stone Age, settlement were buried under a thick layer of sand at an oasis about 50 miles southwest of Cairo, in a desert region called the Faiyum. The excavations last fall uncovered multiple layers of farm remains and hearths, indicating occupation over at least 1,000 years. "Rather than seeing the Neolithic as one period, we can begin to understand its time depth and discern different periods and developments,' Dr. Wendrich said. The rise of agriculture occurred at various times around the world, beginning 10,000 to 11,000 years ago in Mesopotamia and adjacent lands in the Middle East. Some artifacts suggested that the people at the settlement had trade links with the Red Sea, a possible clue that this was the route by which agriculture was introduced to Egypt, possibly from the region of present-day Iraq. Dr. Wendrich said in a telephone interview that no one knew how early or from whom Egyptians learned plant and animal domestication. The settlement, she said, does not appear to have the mud-brick permanence of other ancient Middle East sites. Bruce D. Smith, an anthropologist of early agriculture at the Smithsonian Institution, said the discovery filled in "a very important and poorly known phase of the development of agricultural systems which led to the pyramids and later civilizations.'