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Exploring the Variety of Random
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and is sadly puzzled. Just as he begins to think himself a bigamist, the misty
Helen evaporates!
[747] The illustration is reproduced by the kind permission of Prof. Flinders Petrie.
The data for this essay had been collected and half of it written, when I heard
of an article on Ancient Egyptian Fishing by Mr. Oric Bates, in Harvard African
Studies, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1917. While somewhat disappointed of not
being the first to write in English on the subject, I was quickly reconciled by the
fact that the task had fallen to an experienced Egyptologist, whose monograph,
while making necessary the recasting of this chapter, bequeathed to me some
new, if not always convincing theories, and much technical and other data, the
frequent use of which I gladly acknowledge.
[748] Od., IV. 477, and XVII. 448. In Th. 338 of Hesiod, who, though not a
contemporary, flourished shortly after Homer, ὁ Νεῖλος first appears. The
Egyptians called it Hapi, but in the vernacular language Yetor, or Ye-or = the
River, or Yaro = the great River.
[749] Papyrus Sallier, II. On the other hand, another hymn speaks of the
unkindness of the Nile in bringing about the destruction of fish, but it is the river
at its lowest (first half of June) that is meant. See Records of the Past, being
English translations of ancient monuments of Egypt and Western Asia (ed. S.
Birch, vols. I.-XII. 1873-81), IV. 3, and ibid., new series (A. H. Sayce), III. 51.
[750] The yearly sacrifice of a virgin at Memphis may be doubted—at least for the
Christian age of Egypt, to which Arab writers wish to attribute it.
[751] The Νειλῶα are described by Heliodorus, IX. 9.
[752] J. H Breasted, A History of the Ancient Egyptians, 1908, p. 47, declares that
the Egyptians discovered true alphabetical letters 2500 years before any other
people, and the calendar as early as 4241 b.c.
[753] P. E. Newberry, Beni Hasan (London, 1893), Plate XXIX. Cf. Lepsius, Denk.
Abt., 2, Bl. 127; J. G. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians
(London, 1878), p. 116, pl. 371.
[754] Ibid., loc. cit., pl. 370.
[755] The Nile is the second longest river in the world (Perthes, Taschen Atlas).
The Egyptians believed that it sprang from four sources at the twelfth gate of the
nether world, at a place described in ch. 146 of the Book of the Dead, and that it
came to light at the two whirlpools of the first cataract.
[756] Brugsch., Dict. Supplem., 1915. Cf. Stèle de l’an VIII. de Rameses II., by
Ahmed Bey Kamal (Rec. trav., etc., vol. 30, pp. 216-217). The King, as an instance
of how well his workmen are provided for, cites the fact that special fishermen are
allotted to them.
[757] I. 36.
[758] N. H., X. 43, ἄμητος ἰχθύων.
[759] Op. cit., 204 ff.
[760] N. H., XXX. 8.
[761] The Scribe on the Praise of Learning. Cf. Maspero, Le Genre épistolaire chez
les Égyptiens (1872), p. 48.
[762] Bates, p. 199.
[763] See Chinese Chapter.
[764] The Archæological Survey of Nubia for 1907-8 (Cairo, 1910), Plate LXV., b.
5.
[765] Naqada and Ballas (London, 1896), Plate LXV. 7; and Ancient Egypt (1915),
Part I. p. 13, f. 3.
[766] Tools and Weapons (London, 1917), p. 37.
[767] Bates holds (244) that the bident was only used by the nobles, and never
by the professional fisherman, who employed nets, lines, traps, etc., but never the
bident. He sees an analogy in the throwing sticks used by the nobles in the Old
Kingdom fowling scenes, “whereas the peasants appear to have taken birds only
by traps or clapnets.”
[768] Bates, p. 239.
[769] F. Ll. Griffith, Beni Hasan, Pt. IV. p. 3, Pl. XIII. fig. 3, 4. See also Newberry,
op. cit., Pl. XXXIV.
[770] A. M. Blackman, The Rock Tombs of Meir (London, 1914),vol. i. 28. Cf. also
Steindorff’s Das Grab des Ti (Leipzig, 1913), Pl. 113.
[771] Cf. Introduction.
[772] Steindorff, Ibid.
[773] F. Ll. Griffith, Beni Hasan, Pt. 4 (London, 1900), Pl. XIII. 4. For kind
permission to reproduce this and the next illustration I have to thank the Egypt
Exploration Society.
[774] Cf. the Ø hieroglyphs in Griffith’s Hieroglyphs (London, 1898), Pl. 9, fig. 180,
and text, p. 44. The more elaborate form is shown by Paget-Pirie, The Tomb of
Ptahhetep, bound in Quibell’s Ramesseum, London, 1898.
[775] Bates, p. 242.
[776] N. H., XXVIII. 831. Perhaps he derived his information from the not-
trustworthy Theriaca of Nicander, 566 ff.
[777] I. 35. He visited Egypt c. 20 b.c.
[778] P. 243. From Newberry’s Beni Hasan, there come, curiously enough, only
two representations of Hippos and not one of a Hippo hunt. From Herodotus, II.
71, we gather that, if the beast was elsewhere hunted, at Papremis it was
traditionally sacred.
[779] Mac Iver and Mace (London, 1902), Pl. VII. 1.
[780] T. E. Peet, The Cemeteries of Abydos (London, 1914), Pt. 2, Pl. XXXIX. 3.
[781] For twenty-five figures of hooks, see Bates, Pl. XI. For others curiously
shaped, probably Vth Dynasty, see Lepsius, Denkmäler, etc. (Berlin, 1849), II. p.
96.
[782] Petrie, Kahun, Gurob, and Hawara, p. 34.
[783] Bates, p. 249.
[784] F. von Bissing, Die Mastaba des Gem-Ni-Kai (Berlin, 1905), vol. I., Pl. IV. fig.
2.
[785] Op. cit., vol. III., Pl. VI.
[786] P. E. Newberry, Beni Hasan (London, 1893), Part 1, Pl. 29. Cf. Wilkinson, op.
cit., vol. I., Pl. 371.
[787] Ibid., Pl. 370. This faces my introduction.
[788] Steindorff, op. cit., Pl. 110. Bates, p. 240, holds that “floats attached to
Harpoon lines were probably in common use”: the infrequency—to say the least of
it—of their representation lends but a slender support to his suggestion.
[789] Klunziger, Upper Egypt (1878), p. 305, states that the townsfolk hand-lined
with these baits, but that the fish-eating Bedouins still employed the Spear.
[790] Budge, Trans. Book of the Dead, vol. II. p. 362.
[791] Yet compare the Scriptural prohibition, “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his
mother’s milk,” which appears to have been one of the commandments included in
the earliest Decalogue. Sir J. G. Frazer discusses this curious injunction in Folklore
in the Old Testament, vol. III. p. 111 ff.
[792] Vol. I. pl. 10, f. 11.
[793] Petrie, Medum (1892), Pl. XI. A good example (Vth Dynasty) of a Net
heaped up in a boat is found in N. de G. Davies, Ptahhetep (London, 1901), Pl.
VI., in the right-hand column of the hieroglyphs.
[794] See my Assyrian Chapter, p. 368. The Gilgamesh representation dates c.
2800 b.c.
[795] N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrawi (1902), Pt. II. Pl. V.
[796] P. 259. The reason assigned is not convincing: “No lead weights are
depicted on the monuments, for by the time they were introduced the artist was
devoting himself to mythological and religious scenes.” Petrie, Kahun, Gurob, and
Hawara, p. 34, however, assigns some weights of lead from Kahun to XVIIIth Dyn.
[797] Cf. Petrie, Abydos (London, 1902), pl. 41.
[798] J. J. Tylor, The Tomb of Paheri (London, 1895), Pl. VI., probably XVIIIth
Dyn.
[799] Petrie, Kahun, p. 28.
[800] Ibid., p. 34.
[801] Illustrations of both kinds can be found in Steindorf’s Das Grab des Ti, Pls.
CX. and CXI.
[802] Diodorus Siculus, I. 36.
[803] Cf. G. A. Boulenger, Fishes of the Nile (London, 1907), and Pierre Montet,
Les Poissons employés dans l’Ecriture Hieroglyphique. Bulletin de l’Institut Français
d’Archéologie Orientale. Tome XI., 1913.
[804] Egypt, Pt. II. p. 226. Bædeker, Leipsic, 1892.
[805] Antea, p. 201.
[806] De Iside et Osiride, c. 8.
[807] II. 37.
[808] From the Trans. of S. Squire.
[809] Mnaseas, as quoted by Athenæus, VIII. 37.
[810] W. Robertson-Smith, The Religion of the Semites (Edinburgh, 1889), p. 276.
[811] J. H. Breasted, Records of Ancient Egypt (Chicago, 1906-7), vol. IV., par.
882.
[812] See Hastings’ Ency. of Religion and Ethics, vol. X. pp. 796 and 482, and
Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache, vol. 49, p. 51 (Leipzig, 1911).
[813] Their brawling in boats and carousing in drink are depicted. Cf. N. de G.
Davies, Tombs of El Gebrawi, Pt. II. (London, 1902), Pl. V., and Newberry, Beni
Hasan, Pt. II., Pl. IV., and Davies, Ptahhetep, Pt. II., Pl. XIV., and Pt. I., Pl. XXI. In
the XXth Dynasty the chastity of their wives was not a striking characteristic.
[814] Op. cit., XXXII.
[815] Fish hieroglyphs are regarded by some as general determinatives for words
meaning “shame,” “evil,” etc. (cf. Plutarch, op. cit., 32), and by others as merely
phonetic determinatives (cf. Montet, op. cit., p. 48). That fish were regarded as
either enemies or emblems of enemies of the gods and of the kings would seem
to be borne out by the ceremony annually performed at Edfu, where the festival
calendar contains the following: “Fish are thrown on the ground, and all the
priests hack and hew them with knives, saying ‘Cut ye wounds on your bodies, kill
ye one another: Ra triumphs over his enemies, Horus of Edfu over all evil ones.’”
The text assures us that “the meaning of the ceremony is to achieve the
destruction of the enemies of the gods and king.” Cf. Erman, Handbook of
Egyptian Religion, trs. by Griffith (London, 1907), p. 216.
[816] Erman, Egyptian Life, Eng. Trs. (London, 1894), p. 239, basing himself on
Mariette’s statement in Monuments divers recueillis en Égypte, pp. 151, 152.
[817] Op. cit., p. 284.
[818] El Bersheh, Pt. I. (London, n. d.), Pl. XXIII.
[819] Tombeau de Nakhti (Mém. de la Mission française au Caire, vol. V. fasc. 3.,
Paris, 1893), Fig. 4, p. 480.
[820] Les Monuments des Hycsos, Bruxelles, 1914. Connected with these and
somewhat confirming Capart appear to be two life-size figures of Amenemhat III.,
in one of which the king is seated between two goddesses holding fish.
[821] These offerings (15,500 dressed, 2,200 white fish, etc.) are named under
the heading, “Oblations of the festivals which the King founded for his Father
Amon-Re.” But in the summary of the good deeds wrought for the gods by
Rameses III.—“I founded for them divine offerings of barley, wheat, wine,
incense, fruit, cattle and fowl”—observe the complete silence as to fish, because
these offerings were to the gods, not to the temples. Cf. Breasted, Ancient
Records, IV., paragraphs 237, 243, and 363.
[822] Antea, p. 123.
[823] Mutilation was not invariable, even in the XIIth Dynasty, as Beni Hasan
discloses.
[824] In the Book of the Dead, Chapter 154.
[825] P. Lacau, Suppressions et modifications des signes dans les textes
funebraires, Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache, vol. 51 (1913), 42 ff.
[826] Petrie, Six Temples at Thebes (London, 1897), Pl. XVI., f. 15, fish from
foundation deposit of Taussert, and Pl. XVIII., from Siptah.
[827] XVII. 1, 47. Latopolis is now Esneh.
[828] Wilkinson, op. cit., III. 343, f. 586.
[829] See Proc. Soc. Biblical Archæology, XXI. p. 82, for a picture of a bronze
mummy-case containing remains of a small Lates.
[830] L. Loat, Saqqara Mastabas, I. Gurob. Plates 7, 8, 9, and Petrie and Currelly,
Ehnasya, 1905, p. 35.
[831] Op. cit., p. 346.
[832] See Bates, p. 234, ff.
[833] Ahmed Bey Kamal, Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte, 1908, IX.
23 f., Pl. 1.

[834] Actes du IVe Congrès International d’Histoire des Religions, 1913, p. 97 f.

[835] II. 72.
[836] For a description, not a definition of Totemism, see Robertson Smith, loc.
cit., or J. G. Frazer’s four volumes on Totemism and Exogamy. The Oxford
Dictionary for once is not very helpful in, “Totemism, the use of Totems, with a
clan division, and the social, marriage, and religious customs connected with it.”
[837] Op. cit., p. 37.
[838] The Mormyri, which number some 100 species, are peculiar to Africa.
[839] De Iside et Osiride, 18.
[840] Plut., 8.
[841] N. H., X. 46.
[842] The Mormyri, to which the Oxyrhynchus belongs, figure on the walls, and in
bronzes, O. kannum and O. caschive being most frequent; but the Bana
(Petrociphalus bane) and Grathonemus aprinoides also occur. The best
delineations are found in the tombs of Ti and of Gizeh.—G. A. Boulenger, Fishes of
the Nile, London, 1907.
[843] Plut., Ibid., ch. 72.
[844] The banishment is disputed by Franke and others. Cf., however, Sat., XV. 45.
“Aegyptus, sed luxuria, quantum ipse notavi.”
[845] From Gifford’s Translation.
[846] Cf. Athenæus, VII. 55, for the jests of Antiphanes, etc.
[847] N. H., X. 19.
[848] Op. cit., 7.
[849] Plato bears witness to the skill of the Egyptians in taming fish, and animals,
even the shy wild gazelle. Polit. 532.
[850] Herodotus, II. 69, 70. Rawlinson’s Trans.
[851] The story of the trochilus, with which alone out of all birds and beasts our
author states the crocodile lives in amity, because the little bird enters its mouth
(when on land) and frees it from myriads of devouring leeches, is too well known
for reference, were it not for the dispute (a) as to whether the bird—Pluvianus
egyptius—performs any service except uttering a shrill cry on the approach of man
and thus warning the crocodile, and (b) whether for leeches, we should not
substitute gnats. Cf. W. Houghton, N. H. of the Ancients (London), pp. 238-244.
The account of the connection between the bird and the beast given by Plutarch is
far prettier and more spirited than that of Herodotus.
[852] Plutarch, ibid., 75. The beasts enjoyed both a hereditary transmission of
holiness and a subtle discrimination as to the build of a boat, for fishermen who
embark in one made of papyrus enjoy security from their attentions, “they having
either a fear or else a veneration for this sort of boat,” because Isis in her search
for the remains of Osiris used such a means of conveyance. Plutarch, ibid., 18.
[853] Op. cit., II. p. 14, Pl. 2, Register 3.
[854] Crocodiles and Papyri seem a curious juxtaposition! Some time ago Dr.
Grenfell was excavating ground likely to yield important finds. Bad luck dogged his
digging: only preserved crocodiles came to light. One day a labourer, incensed at
work wasted on the beasts, jabbed his pick into the latest specimen, whose head
disgorged a roll of papyrus. Similar head-smashings were fruitful of results, most
of which belong to the Hearst Collection.
[855] Maspero, Du genre épistolaire chez les Égyptiens, p. 65 f.
[856] II. 164. Cf., however, II. 47. It is not quite clear whether the order of the list
is intentional. If so, it is certainly justifiable from the point of view of primitive or
early society.
[857] See p. 65, antea.
[858] Herod., II. 149.
[859] Diodorus Siculus, I. 52. Twenty-two different kinds of fish existed in the
royal fish ponds of Mœris. Keller, op. cit., 330.
[860] II. 98.
[861] See Grenfell and Hunt, Tebtunis Papyri, II. 180-1, and I. 49-50. Also
Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka, I. 137 ff. The craft employed were usually primitive
rafts or canoes made of papyrus canes bound together with cords of the same
plant. Theophrastus, Hist. Plantarum, IV. 8, 2, alludes to them. Pliny, N. H., VII.
57, speaks of Nile boats made of papyrus, rushes and reeds, while Lucan, IV. 136,
refers to them in

“Conseritur bibula Memphitis cymba papyro.”

[862] II. 95.

[863] See Alan H. Gardiner, The Tomb of Amenemhat (London, 1915), Pl. II, and
Petrie, Medum, Pl. XII.
[864] Onomasticon, VI. 48. A primitive method of curing prevailed in the last
century among the Yapoos—“the fisher then bites out a large piece of the fish’s
belly, takes out the inside, and hangs the fish on a stick by the fire in his canoe.”
See Darwin, Voyages of Adventure, etc. (London, 1839), p. 428.
[865] Mish., Makhshirin, VI. 3. The Greeks and Copts of the present day, whose
enjoined fasts are frequent, rarely split their fish before packing them in large
earthen pots.
[866] Rechnungen aus den Zeit Setis, I. 87 ff.
[867] Quibell, The Ramesseum (London, 1898), Pl. XXXIII.
[868] J. de Morgan, Ethnographie Préhistorique (Paris, 1897), 193.
[869] Cuvier and Valenciennes, Op. cit., XI. p. 62.
[870] In Ridgeway, The Origin of Metallic Currency, etc. (Cambridge, 1892), p.
240, is illustrated a fine Kite weight from which one Kite would equal about 140
grains, corresponding to 9·08 grammes.
[871] The information as to the average prices and weights of the Mugil capito, on
which the above calculations were grounded, was obtained from the Department
of Supplies in Egypt. “In the markets of Alexandria the weight of the grey mullet
varies from 8 to 3 to the oke (2·75 lbs.), say 5½ to 14½ oz. each. The pre-war
retail price was for large fish, 3 or 4 to the oke, 8 Piastres; for small, 8 to the oke,
5 Piastres.” The prices in August, 1920, had increased to 20 and 16 Piastres
respectively, or nearly two-thirds more.
[872] Cf. Pap. Oxyrh. 1430, Introd.
[873] Pap. Oxyr., III. 520, 21, a.d. 143.
[874] Berliner Griechische Urkunden, I. 14, col. IV. 18.
[875] Egyptian Exploration Fund Annual Report, 1906-7, p. 9.
[876] Bk. II. 93.
[877] N. H., V. 5.
[878] Aristotle (H. A., III. 11), states that the hair does grow in dead bodies.
Since his time many descriptions of remarkable growth after death have been
published, and many people believe that such growth does take place. Erasmus
Wilson pronounces that “the lengthening of the hairs observed in a dead person is
merely the result of the contraction of the skin towards their bulb.”
[879] Blakey, op. cit., 207, states an engraving was found at Herculaneum
“representing a little Cupid fishing with the ringlets of her (sic) hair for lovers.” So
far I have failed to track this hermaphroditic representation, nor is Sir C. Waldstein
aware of its existence.
[880] Translated by Dasent. Frodi’s flour = gold.
[881] Professor Grenfell tells me that ὃτε here has no connection, unless the main
verb came in line 16, where there is a lacuna, but the traces do not suggest any
verb. He also approves my rendering of ψωμίσας having the sense of “baiting the
swim” with bits of flesh from the corpses.
[882] Aristophanes, Thesm., 928. Cf. also Wasps, 174-6.
[883] Wiener Studien, XXVII. (1905), pp. 299, ff.
[884] Or early Gnostics, also called Ophites, who honoured serpents.
[885] But as one of the earliest instances of imitative magic the story is notable.
In the tale of Overthrowing Apep, based on the XXXIXth Chapter of The Book of
the Dead, the priestly directions for destroying this enemy of Ra, or the Sun, run
as follows: “Thou shalt say a prayer over a figure of Apep, which hath been drawn
upon a sheet of papyrus, and over a wax figure of Apep upon which his name has
been cut: and thou shalt lay them on the fire, so that it may consume the enemy
of Ra.” Six figures in all, presumably “to mak siccar,” are to be placed on the fire at
stated hours of the day and night. Cf. Theocritus, Id., II. 27 ff., where the slighted
damsel prays, “Even as I melt this wax, with the god to aid, so speedily may he
(her lover) by love be molten.”
[886] III. 40 ff.
[887] Some recent scholars have suggested that in the stories of Polycrates
throwing his ring into the sea, and of Theseus proving his parentage by a like
sacrifice, we should detect traces of an early custom, by which the maritime king
married the sea-goddess—a custom perpetuated in the symbolical union between
the Doges of Venice and the Adriatic. This ingenious hypothesis was first worked
out by S. Reinach, “Le Mariage avec la mer,” in Revue archéologique (1905), ii. 1
ff. (= id. Cultes, Mythes, et Religions, Paris, (1906), ii. 266 ff.).
[888] The term Assyrian in this chapter usually includes the Sumerians and
Babylonians.
[889] Lest Forlong’s sentence (Rivers of Life (London, 1883), II. 89), “A beautiful
Assyrian cylinder exhibits the worship of the Fish God; there we see the mitred
Man-God with Rod and basket,” etc., be quoted in opposition, I would point out
that this so-called Rod is merely a cut sapling, like the one in the hands of
Heracles, but without a sign of any line, which in the Greek vase in the British
Museum is obviously attached. Cf. Élite des monuments Céramographiques, vol.
III., Plate I.
[890] From the find (made during the war by a Sikh regiment on the Tigris above
Samara) of an alabaster vase (now in the Ashmolean Museum), which from
archæological reasons must be placed among the very earliest remnants of
Sumerian civilisation, it is evident that—given the discovery was in situ—the
frontiers of the Sumerian Empire must have extended much farther north than has
been hitherto generally supposed. Owing to the deposits of the two rivers, the sea
has receded some hundred and twenty miles.
[891] The Sumerians made extensive use of music, especially in their religious
ceremonies; they were the founders, according to Langdon, of liturgical music,
which unfortunately it is impossible to reconstruct, as the notes themselves have
not survived.
[892] The Sumerian language was not well adapted to express peculiarly Semitic
sounds.
[893] Petrie (Egypt and Israel (London, 1911), p. 15): “The Turanian race akin to
the modern Mongols, known as Sumerians, had civilised the Euphrates valley for
some thousands of years and produced a strong commercial and mathematical
culture. The wandering Semite had at last been drawn into this settled system of
life.”
[894] S. Langdon, Babylonian Magic, Bologna, 1914.
[895] The carved ivory handle of a flint knife in the Louvre proves (according to
Petrie) that the art of slate-palettes in Egypt originated from Elamite civilisation,
which flourished before its rise. It must be of prehistoric age, yet shows a well-
developed art with Mesopotamian or Elamite affinities earlier than the sculptured
slate-palettes and maceheads. M. G. Bénédite (Monuments Pict.) holds that in this
knife-handle we have the most tangible evidence yet found of a connection in very
early times between the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations. King (Jour.
Egypt. Archæology, vol. IV., p. 64) suggests that there was a connection with
Babylonian-Elamite seals from Susa.
[896] Thus the general conception of pictographic writing might perhaps be
borrowed from the Euphrates valley, but not a single sign taken from the
Babylonian script can be found (W. Max Müller, Encly. Bibl., p. 1233). Dr. Alan
Gardiner, on the origin of the Semitic and Greek alphabets, concludes that the
evidence does point to the alphabet being Semitic in origin and based upon
acrophonic picture signs (Journal of Egyptian Archæology, vol. III., p. 1).
[897] History of Sumer and Akkad (London, 1910), p. 322.
[898] Egyptian Archæology (1902), p. 366.
[899] Historical Studies (London, 1910), II. p. 22. Others would make the invasion
about 2466.
[900] The Babylonian legend of Adapa is thus known to have circulated in
Palestine and Egypt before the Hebrew Exodus. The story of Adapa is thought by
some to have influenced the Hebrew version of the story of Adam and Eve and
the loss of Paradise. See the excellent discussion in T. Skinner, Genesis (in the
International Critical Commentary (1912), p. 91 ff), and Langdon, The Sumerian
Epic of Paradise (University of Pennsylvania, Publications of the Babylonia Section,
1915), vol. X., pp. 38-49.
[901] Rameses II. was held in high esteem as a rain-maker—perhaps rain-god—as
is evidenced by the sacrifices offered by the Hittites that their princess should on
her journey to Egypt to marry Rameses enjoy fair weather, despite that it was the
season of the winter storms. In consequence of this power over the elements, the
Hittite chiefs strongly advocated friendship with Egypt, as otherwise Rameses II.
would probably stop rain and cause a famine in their country (Breasted, Ancient
Records, III. 423, 426).
[902] Layard, Nineveh (London, 1849), vol. II. p. 438.
[903] “Fishing, fishing everywhere” is the key-note of the picture; the crab in the
top left-hand corner is also well into his fish. The picture facing p. 349 comes from
the Assyrian sculptures in British Museum: in Mansell’s collection, No. 430.
[904] We sometimes find with an army crossing a river, as delineated in the
sculptures, each soldier with the skin beneath his belly and paddling with his legs
and arms, but retaining in his mouth one of the legs of the skin, into which he
blows as into a bagpipe. The act of paddling across a big river, like the Euphrates,
would of itself need all his breath; but King points out that the sculptor, in the
spirit of primitive art, which, diffident of its own powers of portrayal or distrusting
the imagination of the beholder, seeks to make its object clear by conventional
devices, wishes to indicate that the skins are not solid bodies, and can find no
better way of showing it than by making his swimmers continue blowing out the
skins.
[905] Five Great Monarchies (London, 1862-67), vol. I. p. 99.
[906] In each case Esarhaddon “cut off his head.” Both heads were sent to
Nineveh for exhibition. Asur-bani-pal was a greater specialist in heads than his
father: the head of any foe whom he particularly hated or feared, such as
Teumann of Elam, was preserved by some method, and hung conspicuously in the
famed gardens of the palace. A sculptured representation hands down the scene
to us. The king reclines on an elevated couch under an arbour of vines: his
favourite queen is seated on a throne at the foot of the couch: both are raising
wine cups to their lips: many attendants ply the inevitable fly-flappers, while at a
distance musicians are ranged. Birds play and flutter among the palm and cypress
trees; from one dangles Teumann’s head on which the eyes of the king are
gloating. Such is the picture drawn by de Razogin, Ancient Assyria (London,
1888).
[907] See The Fishing Gazette, January 6, 1917.
[908] See The Field, March 15, 1919. The fish is said to attain a weight of over
300 lbs.
[909] See Planche I. of Restitution de la Stèle des Vautours, by Leon Heuzey.
[910] Civilisation of Babylonia and Assyria (Philadelphia, 1915), p. 387.
[911] A History of Sumer and Akkad, op. cit. (1910), p. 131. The scene is shown
in the Plate which fronts this section.
[912] A. Ungnad, Hundert Ausgewählte Rechtsurkunden, No. 56.
[913] Two contracts (in 5th year of Darius II.) contain provisions that in case “of
any fish being lifted,” i.e. stolen, the keeper has to pay a fine of 10 shekels, and in
second case to compensate owner. Revue d’Assyriologie, vol. IV., pp. 182-183, by
V. Scheil.
[914] Orientalistiche Literaturzeitung (Berlin, 1914), p. 482. This was published by
Clay in Publications of the Babylonian Section of the University of Pennsylvania,
vol. II., Part I., No. 208. We find a receipt in the XXth century b.c. for salt used for
fish supplied by a grocer, sealed by the official controller. Cf. M. Shorr, Urkunden
des Altbabylonischen Civil und Processrechts, No. 256.
[915] In the Neo-Babylonian period the word, which makes its first appearance in
this contract, employed for net appears to have been salītu or lītu. The word is
written sa-li-tum, and the first syllable (sa) may be either part of the word, or else
the determinative riksu, which is written before things made of cordage. If the
word be read salītu, it may perhaps be derived from the root, salû, to immerse.
The rendering of the word as net is not quite certain, but, as will be seen from the
translation of the text, the context points to this meaning. It is clearly some sort
of tackle used by fishermen, and the most obvious meaning would be net.
[916] See antea, 333 f., and Tebtunis Papyri, vol. II. pp. 180-181. B. P. Grenfell
and A. S. Hunt, 1907.
[917] See antea, p. 99, n. 1.
[918] See W. Hayes Ward, Seal Cylinders of Western Asia (Washington, 1910), p.
217, figs. 658, 659, 660, 661.
[919] Ward, op. cit., p. 214, in fig. 249, gives apparent confirmation.
[920] In noting the attributes ascribed to various gods, we are confronted by the
problem as to what suggested to the Babylonian his precise differentiation in their
characters. These betray their origin: they are the personification of natural
forces: in other words, the gods and many of the stories told of them are the only
explanation the Babylonian could give, after centuries of observation, of the forces
and changes in the natural world. In company with other primitive peoples he
explained them as the work of beings very similar but superior to himself. See
King, Babylonian Religion (London, 1889). This inevitable tendency of
anthropomorphism was tersely expressed by Xenophanes of Colophon (frag. 15):
—
 “If oxen, horses, lions had but hands
To paint withal or carve, as men can do,
Then horses like to horses, kine to kine,
Had painted shapes of gods and made their bodies
Such as the frame that they themselves possessed.”

[921] For the Nimroud sculpture, see Monuments of Nineveh, op. cit., 2nd Series,
Plate 6, while for the agate cylinder, see Nineveh and Babylon (London, 1853), p.
343, where in a note Layard writes, “It is remarkable that on this cylinder the all-
seeing eye takes the place of the winged human figure and the globe in the
emblem above the sacred tree.”
[922] For the data and authorities available in 1855 and examination into Oannes
and Dagon, see J. B. Pitra, Spicilegium Solesmense, III., pp. 500, 501, 503.
[923] Nineveh and Babylon, op. cit., pp. 343, 350. See also Le Mythe de Dagon,
by Ménant; Revue de l’Hist. des Religions (Paris, 1885), vol. II. p. 295 ff., where a
great variety of Assyrian fish-men may be found. Forlong (op. cit., I. 231)
instances a cornelian cylinder in the Ouseley collection depicting Oannes or the
Babylonian god or demi-god, attended by two gods of fecundity, on whom the
Sun-god with a fish tail looks down benignantly. Forlong’s obsession detects in
every representation, Indian or Irish, Assyrian or Australasian, some emblem of
fecundity, while his ever-present “King Charles’s head” is some phallic symbol. We
are almost reminded of the witty quatrain current some years back:

“Diodorus Siculus
Made himself ridiculous
By insisting that thimbles
Were all phallic symbols!”

[924] The goat-fish god dates as far back as Gudea, c. 2700 b.c. He was like the
man-fish or fish-god, a symbol of Ea, the god of water, and probably derives from
Capricorn. See Ward, p. 214, fig. 649; and p. 249, figs. 745, 747.
[925] Cf. Ezekiel, VIII. 10, “Every form of creeping things and abominable beasts
pourtrayed upon the wall round about.”
[926] Paradise Lost, I., 462.
[927] There was a Babylonian god Dagan whose name appears in conjunction
with Anu and often with Ninurta (Ninib). Whether the Philistine Dagon is the same
as the Babylonian Dagan cannot with our present knowledge be determined. The
long and profound influence of Babylonia in Palestine in early times makes it quite
possible that Dagon, like Anath, came thence. Ency. Bibl., p. 984. No evidence
suggests Dagan as a Babylonian fish-god.
Some authorities now hold that Dagan came to Babylonia with the Amoritic
invasion towards the latter half of the third millennium.
[928] For Derceto, see antea, p. 124, and for Atargatis, antea, pp. 127-8.
[929] Oannes of Berosus is identified with Enki (otherwise Ea) by Langdon, Poème
Sumérien, etc. (Paris, 1919), p. 17. Tradition generally makes the earliest founders
or teachers of civilisation come from the sea. Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, the
children of the sun god, rose, however, not from the sea, but from Lake Titicaca,
when they brought to the ancient Peruvians government, law, a moral code, art,
and science. Their descendants styled themselves Incas.
[930] See G. F. Hill, Some Palestinian Cults in the Greek and Roman Age, in
Proceedings of the British Academy (London, 1911-12), vol. V. p. 9.
[931] Cf. Heuzey, Sceau de Goudéa (Paris, 1909), p. 6; also W. Hayes Ward, Seal
Cylinders of Western Asia (Washington, 1910), figs. 288-289; see also figs. 199,
661. The large number of seals, almost entirely cylinder, which have been found in
the excavations is probably owing to every Assyrian of any means always carrying
one hung on him. The use to which they were put was precisely similar to that of
our signet ring. An Assyrian, instead of signing a document, ran his cylinder over
the damp clay tablet on which the deed he was attesting had been inscribed. No
two cylinder seals were absolutely alike, and thus this method of signature worked
very well. The work on the cylinders is always intaglio; the subjects represented
are very various, including emblems of the gods, animals, fish, etc.
[932] Récherches Archéologiques, vol. XIII. of Délégation en Perse, by Pottier,
Paris, 1912, figs. 117, 204, etc.
[933] L. Heuzey, Revue d’Assyriologie, VI. 57, and Hayes Ward, op. cit., p. 74, fig.
199.
[934] Cf. Langdon, op. cit., 72. Ea or “Enki est généralement représenté sous la
forme d’un animal ayant la tête, le cou, et les épaules d’un bélier, et qui rampe sur
les pattes de devant: le reste du corps est celui d’un poisson.”
[935] See the Nippur Poem, op. cit., p. 84, note 3.
[936] From Karl Frank, Babylonische Beschwörtunge Reliefs, p. 80. The South
Wind was specially dreaded, because it caused destructive floods in the low-lying
regions of the Euphrates valley. In Langdon’s Sumerian Epic of Paradise (op. cit.,
1915), p. 41, we find that “Adapa sailed to catch fish, the trade of Eridu,” a pretty
and simple touch identifying the god with his worshippers, and his pursuit with
their trade; and one which supports the theory that to the Babylonian his god, in
early times, was a being very similar to himself, if more powerful.
[937] See the Nippur Poem.
[938] Ea’s command sprang from the fear of losing the worship, etc. of his
devotee, when once he had acquired immortality by eating and drinking of the
Bread and Water of Life.
[939] Adapa stands out as a pathetic and cruelly-punished figure. In this, one of
the prettiest of the clumsy legends by which mankind tried to explain the loss of
eternal life, Ea forbids for selfish reasons his eating or drinking of the Bread or
Water of Life, while Anu’s offer of immortality springs from his desire to deprive
Ea, whom he suspects of having betrayed to Adapa the celestial secrets of magical
science, of his devotee and fish-gatherer.
[940] Keller, op. cit., p. 347, is astray in stating that Ea was regarded “als
Fischgott.” As god of the waters, he was the protector of the fish therein, but
apart from this, there is no evidence that he was termed, even with a wide use of
the word, a Fish God.
[941] For the omission of fish from the cargo of Noah’s ark, Whiston in his
philosophic A New Theory of the Deluge (London, 1737), accounts by the fact,
that fish, living in a cooler, more equable element, were correcter in their lives
than beasts and birds, who from the heat or cold on land engendered by the sun
or its absence were prone to excesses of passion or exercises of sin, and so were
saved!
[942] The length of the flood varies greatly from the above seven days, to eight
months and nine days of the Nippur Poem, to the nine months and nine days of
Le Poème Sumérien, during which Tagtug is afloat, and to the one year and ten
days which is the total duration in the Bible.
[943] See Poebel, Historical Texts (Publications of the Babylonian Section of the
University of Pennsylvania), vol. IV., Part I., pp. 9 ff. In Langdon’s Le Poème
Sumérien (Paris, 1919) is to be found much, which is not written in the later
account of Adapa and of the Flood, and of Paradise, and many details which are
different. In it there is no woman, no temptress, no serpent. But it does record
that the survivor of the Flood was placed in a garden and apparently forbidden to
eat of the fruit of a tree, growing in the centre of the garden. He does eat,
however, and thereby loses immortality.
[944] The myth of the Deluge is practically world-wide, except in Africa (including
Egypt), “where native legends of a great flood are conspicuously absent—indeed,
no clear case of one has yet been reported.” J. G. Frazer, Folklore in the Old
Testament (London, 1918), vol. I. p. 40. Maspero seems quite wide of the mark in
treating the semi-ritual myth of the Destruction of Man as “a dry deluge myth,”
Dawn of Civilization (London, 1894), pp. 164 ff. For various accounts of the
Deluge, see Hastings, Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, article Deluge
(Edinburgh, 1911).
[945] Annals of the Kings of Assyria, by Budge and King (1903), p. 138. ‘Dolphin’
is the translation of Nakhiri, doubtless from the same root, which in Arabic is
Nakhara, to spout, and occurs in the same sense in Syriac and Ethiopic. In view of
the evidence of Pliny and other authors as to the former existence of the whale in
the Mediterranean, I suggested to Professor King an alternative rendering of
nakhiri as ‘whale,’ and he informed me he accepts my suggestion as the more
probable of the two.
[946] Another translation (R. Asiatic Proc., XIX. pp. 124-5) renders these lines
“creatures of the Great Sea which the King of Egypt had sent as a gift, and
entrusted to the care of men of his own country,” either as carriers or permanent
attendants. But see p. 53 of the Introduction to The Annals of the Kings of
Assyria, op. cit. Dr. St. Clair Tisdall writes: “If Nam-su-hu (Budge and King’s
translation) be right, it is evidently the Egyptian name ’msuhu = crocodile, with
the plural Na prefixed. Egypt in Arabic is still Mīsr.”
[947] Op. cit., Introduction, pp. 372 ff.
[948] The Assyrians, probably from having no admixture of the softer Sumerian
blood, from living in a less enervating climate, and from Hittite influence, stand
out as more virile, fiercer fighters, and crueller foes than the Babylonians.
[949] W. Hayes Ward, op. cit., p. 418, states the dog appears in cylinders very
early—chiefly as guardian of the flock. Cf. Figures 391, 393, 394, 395. He is seen
in the late Babylonian: cf. Figs. 549, 551, 552, and later still in hunting scenes,
Figs. 630, 1064, 1076 and 1094, which last shows in a very spirited manner four
dogs in a fight with two lions. The dog running away is fairly “making tracks!”
[950] Cf. Tobit v. 16, and xi. 4.
[951] Layard Monuments of Nineveh (op. cit.), vol. II. p. 438.
[952] The identification, which is avowedly more of a philological than a
scientifically zoological nature, is in the cases of Nos. 2 and 3 a “terminological
inexactitude,” for as Dr. Boulenger’s lists show, neither the turbot nor the sole
occur in the Persian Gulf. Cf. Proc. Zoological Society, 1887, p. 653; 1889, p. 236,
and 1892, p. 134.
[953] Monograph, Kleine Beiträge zum assyrischen Lexicon (Helsingfors, 1912).
[954] Sumerian Grammar (London, 1917), p. 60.
[955] Proc. of Soc. of Biblical Archæology (London, May, 1918), p. 83.
[956] Lewysohn’s (Zool. d. Talmud, 248, as quoted by Keller, op. cit., p. 330)
“Euphrat heisst etymologisch der fischreiche” is far from generally accepted. The
river in Babylonian is Purattu, pronounced by the Persians Ufratus, which became
when borrowed by the Greeks, Euphrates. So far from meaning rich in fish,
Langdon traces the name to the Sumerian buranna, burnuna, meaning great
basin.
[957] Diod. Sic., III. 22.
[958] See General Marshall’s Report on Mesopotamian Campaign in The Times,
Feb. 21, 1919.
[959] History of Sumer and Akkad (London, 1910), p. 268.
[960] The hiatus probably may be filled by the word “recall,” or“ bring away.”
[961] Letters of Hammurabi (London, 1898-1900), vol. III. pp. 121-3, L. W. King.
[962] N. H., V. 27.
[963] N. H., VI. 31.
[964] Ibid., XXXI. 19.
[965] N. H., XXXI. 22.
[966] N. H., XXXII. 7.
[967] Hibbert Lecture (London, 1887), p. 57.
[968] On the ancient goddess Ninâ, see Langdon, Tammuz and Ishtar (London,
1914). There is no known representation of Ninâ. Of Bêlit, or Ishtar, many exist; of
Ishtar arma ferens that on a seal in Tammuz and Ishtar, Plate I., No. 1, is perhaps
the best.
[969] See Nikolski, Documents de la plus ancienne époque chaldéenne, Nos. 265
and 269; this last tablet (c. 2900 b.c.) records the delivery of large numbers of fish
of various kinds by fishermen for two great festivals.
[970] Cf. antea, p. 217, as regards Rome.
[971] Postea, p. 427.
[972] See Greek-Roman section, Chapter XVI.
[973] Op. cit., p. 358.
[974] Semitic Magic (London, 1908), pp. 181, 186.
[975] Babylonian Magic (Bologna, 1914), pp. 237-8.
[976] “In Israel not to be buried was a terrible disgrace which one could hardly
wish for one’s enemy: the spirits of the unburied wandered restlessly about. Burial
alone so bound the spirit to the body that it had rest and could harm no one.”
Cheyne’s assertion in Encyl. Bibl. (op. cit.), p. 1041, seems to me hardly
warranted, at any rate by the O.T. passages which he adduces in support of this
statement, in attributing to Israel the idea of the unburied dead being condemned
to miserable wandering. For the Greek conception see inter alia the Antigone of
Sophocles.
[977] See Egyptian Book of the Dead (London, 1910), ch. LIII., with reference to
the deceased being obliged, from lack of proper food in the under-world, to eat
filth—“Let me not be obliged to eat thereof in place of the sepulchral offerings.” To
provide food for the dead, asphodel was planted near tombs (Odyssey, XI. 539
and 573) by the Greeks. From Hesiod (Op. 41) we learn that the roots of the
asphodel were eaten as a common vegetable, as was the mallow. Merry states
that in the Greek islands, where customs linger longer than on the mainland, this
“kind of squill is still planted on graves.” If the Homeric ‘mead of asphodel’ turns
out, as some editors maintain, to have had a strictly utilitarian significance, how
many poets and poetasters have mistaken ‘greens’ for ‘greenery!’
[978] King, Babylonian Religion (op. cit.), p. 45, and Babylonian Magic and
Sorcery (London, 1896), pp. 119 ff., where the incantation appropriate for
exorcising demons is set out.
[979] Gilgamesh here learns how infinitely better is the condition of those to
whom the rites of burial have been paid, compared with that of those who have
been unburied. R. F. Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian Literature (New York, 1901),
363 ff.
[980] The Hebrew conception of Sheol coincides in regarding it as “a land whence
none return,” Job vii. 9-10; as “a place of darkness,” Job x. 21-22; as a place of
“dust,” Psalm xxx. 9, and Job xvii. 16.
[981] Priests dressed as fish or with some fish-like raiments often attend the
Sacred Tree (see Ward, op. cit., Nos. 687, 688, 689). These are held by some to
be genii of the deep. In Ward, No. 690, two fish-men are guarding the Tree of
Life.
[982] Compare the exorcism by Tobias of Sara’s demon in Tobit. Langdon,
Babylonian Magic and Sorcery (op. cit.), p. 223, commenting on the difficulty,
which Semitic philology does not clear up, as to whether a wizard is one who cuts
himself (as Robertson Smith and most scholars suppose), or whether he is one
who casts his spell by whispering or ventriloquy, holds that “from the Sumerian
word and the Sumerian ideogram of the word uhdugga which means one who
whispers as he casts saliva, we can settle at once the most primitive method of
sorcery known to us.”
[983] Cf. with those of Moses and Sargon the stories of Gilgamesh King of
Babylon (Ælian, XII. 22), of Semiramis Queen of Assyria (Diodorus Siculus, ii. 4),
and of Karna in the Indian Epic of Mahabharata (Cheyne’s Traditions and Beliefs of
Ancient Israel London, 1907), p. 519. “It has been conjectured,” writes Frazer (op.
cit.), II. p. 454 ff, “that in stories like that of the exposure of Moses in the water
(in this case, unlike most others, all supernatural elements are absent) we have a
reminiscence of the old custom as practised by the Celtæ on the Rhine, and
according to Speke by some Central African tribes in the last century, of testing
the legitimacy of children by throwing them into the water to sink or swim; the
infants which sank were rejected as bastards. In the light of this conjecture it may
be significant that in several of these stories the birth of the child is represented
as supernatural, which in this connection cynics are apt to regard as a delicate
synonym for illegitimate.” On p. 454 he touches on the question whether Moses,
the son of Amram by his (Amram’s) paternal aunt, was thus the offspring of an
incestuous marriage, and therefore exposed on the Nile.
[984] See Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (London, 1912), pp.
135 ff.
[985] From Astronomy many Assyrian dates have been ascertained. Kugler by
stellar researches has settled the vexed question of the date of Hammurabi, and
probably that of Abram, at about 2120 b.c., which unites within one year the latest
conclusions of King, Jastrow, and Rogers, and so establishes an important degree
of accord among Assyriologists on events subsequent to 2200 b.c. as regards
which they have hitherto been wide apart. Then again modern astronomers have
worked out that there was a total eclipse of the sun at Nineveh on June 15, 763
b.c. The importance of the fixing of this date can as regards Assyrian chronology
hardly be exaggerated. The Assyrians, rejecting the Babylonian system of
counting time, invented a system of their own, by naming the year after certain
officers or terms of office, not unlike the system of the Archonates at Athens, and
the Consulates at Rome. These were termed limus: a list of these functionaries
during four centuries has come down to us. In the time of one of them, Pur
Sagali, there is a mention of the eclipse of the sun. As this eclipse has now been
fixed for the year 763 b.c., we possess an automatic date for every year after of
the limus.
[986] Apollo to the Greeks was at once archer-god and god of divination. The
word ἀγεῖλε, “he gave as his oracular response,” means literally “he picked up”
(the arrows). Indeed the curious fact that λέγω in Greek denotes “I say” and in
Latin “I read” is best explained by O. Schrader, who points out that it meant
originally “I pick up” or “collect” (the arrows of divination) and so both read and
declare the will of heaven. See O. Schrader, Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan
Peoples, trans. F. B. Jevons (London, 1890), p. 279.
[987] Koran, Sur. v. 92.
[988] Proverbs, vii. 23.
[989] See, e.g. C. Thulin, Die Götter des Martianus Capella und der Bronzeleber
von Piacenza, Gieszen, 1906.
[990] Ency. Bibl., p. 1118.
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