[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):—

[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:

[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.