[744] Eurip., Hel., 34.

[745] Plat., Phardi., 243A; Isokr., Hel., 65; Pausanias, III. 19, 13.

[746] Op. cit., IV. 16. In his palinode, of which a few lines (frag. 32, Bergk⁴) are extant, Stesichorus asserts that it was not Helen herself, but only her semblance or wraith, which Paris carried off to Troy. Greeks and Trojans slew one another for a mere phantom, while the real Helen never left Sparta. Hdt., 2, 112 ff., gives a rather different turn to the story. According to him, Helen eloped from Sparta with Paris, but was driven back by a storm to Egypt, where Paris told lies and was punished by Proteus. Euripides in his Helena combines the two versions. Like Stesichorus, he makes the truant a mere phantom, an ‘eloping angel.’ Like Herodotus, he sends the real Helen to Egypt. Menelaus, who, escorting the phantom home from Troy, arrives in Egypt, is there confronted with the real Helen 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 IV^e 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

[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.