[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.

[991] According to Langdon, Tammuz and Ishtar (op. cit.), p. 47, “Ninâ, a water deity, was identified at an early date with the constellation, Scorpio; for this reason her brother Ningirsu, also a water deity, was identified with one of the stars of Scorpio.”

[992] The Biru or Kasbu represented the distance walked by an ordinary man in one Sumerian hour, which, as they divided their whole day into twelve, equals two of our hours. The prehistoric Sumerians, like other nations, reckoned the year by the Moon, not by the Sun. The historic calendar-makers endeavoured to bridge the hiatus and correlate the solar with the lunar year by inserting an intercalary month. They combined the decimal and the sexagesimal in their scheme of numbers—hence, though curiously, their multiplication was always by six, not ten. Cf. W. Zimmern, Zeit und Raumrechnung, who instances the twelve—6 × 2—signs of the Zodiac, etc.

[993] Aquarius.

[994] Capricorn.

[995] Similarly in the Gigantomachy as figured on the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi, Æolus, god of the winds, helps the deities against the giants by deflating two bags of wind. He is represented by an Ionian sculptor as working his wind-bags with all the concentration of a Hun working his machine-gun. See G. Perrot—C. Chipiez, Histoire de l’Art dans l’antiquité (Paris, 1903), VIII. 368 and 375, fig. 172.

[996] Cf. Babylonian Religion (op. cit.), pp. 62-85.

[997] Throughout my pages the words, Jews and Jewish, are generally used in the popular sense, and not as merely signifying members of the tribe of Judah. To my friend Dr. A. R. S. Kennedy, Professor of Hebrew at Edinburgh University, my thanks are due for advice and for reading the proof-sheets of my section on the Jews.

[998] In this chapter the word Assyrian generally stands for Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian proper.

[999] Remains of the Hyksos kings are far-scattered; e.g. an alabaster vase-lid of very fine work, bearing the name of Khian, was discovered in the palace of Cnossos in Crete, while a granite lion bearing the king’s cartouche on his breast, unearthed many years ago at Bagdad, is to be seen in the British Museum. J. H. Breasted, History of Egypt, p. 218 (London, 1906).

[1000] The verse is not conclusive that they were called Israelites during their sojourn in Goshen. The name used by the older sources is Ibrim, probably identical with the Egyptian word Aperu or Apriu.

[1001] This is probably a shortening of the Sumero-Babylonian Abara-rakku, equalling seer. H. de Genouillac was the first to connect the word with the Hebrew Abrek, in his Tablettes Sumériennes Archaiques.

[1002] See p. 94, Flinders Petrie, Israel and Egypt, of which in this section I frequently avail myself. Inscriptions of c. XXVIth Dynasty, or c. 600 b.c. disclose that there was an actual priesthood dedicated to the god YHW, which word is clearly spelt out.

[1003] Archæology and the Bible, p. 109 (London, 1916).

[1004] The Civilisation of Palestine, p. 33.

[1005] The Biblical World, Feb., 1910, p. 105. Inscriptions of Sinai (published in 1913 by the Egypt Exploration Fund) furnish much evidence as regards the intercourse between Egypt and Israel. For the trade between Solomon and Egypt, see 1 Kings x. 28, etc.

[1006] See Plates 370 and 371 in Wilkinson, and antea, p. 314.

[1007] See antea, pp. 355-9.

[1008] In Singer, Jewish Ency., V. p. 404. “Fishing implements such as hook and line, sometimes secured on shore to need no further attention (Shab. 18A), and nets of various constructions” are practically all that are given.

[1009] After acknowledging (Notes and Queries, Dec. 2, 1916) that there is no mention in either Old or New Testament of a Rod, Mr. Breslar goes on, “Yet there are places such as Job xl. 31 (xli. 7) where the Hebrew words are translated barbed irons and fish spears, and in Job xl. 26 (xli. 2) a thorn. A fishing-rod in the modern sense no one could reasonably demand, though I opine that in agmoun (Isaiah lviii. 5), used in that sense in Job xl. 26, we have the nucleus of one.” Mr. Breslar is evidently not aware or does not realise that fish spears, bidents, etc., were of the earliest weapons of fishing, long anterior to the Rod, and that these are the weapons referred to in Job. A reference to the Jewish Encyclopædia edited by Isidore Singer, would have shown him that ẓilẓal dagim in Job xli. 7 was in all probability a harpoon. Then, “that this phrase (Klei metzooda) or a similar one is not found in the Bible is merely an accidental omission like, I believe, that of the name of Jehovah from the Book of Esther.” This is hardly helpful: let us grant that the omission of a name from a short book like Esther was an accident. How can this be “like” the omission of all mention of or allusion to the Rod in the vast literature of the Old and New Testaments and of the Talmud, especially when we find in all three numerous passages dealing with fishing and the tackle employed for fishing?

[1010] At the beginning of the world (Buddha tells the Monk of Jetavana) all the fishes chose Leviathan for their King. No hint as to what fish this Leviathan represented is given us: but the Leviathan conceived by the Talmudists seems to have been an indefinable sea-monster, of which the female lay coiled round the earth till God, fearing that her progeny might destroy the new globe, killed her and salted her flesh and put it away for the banquet which at the end awaits the pious of the earth. On that day Gabriel will kill the male also, and make a tent out of his skin for the Elect who are bidden to the banquet (Robinson, op. cit., p. 8). As Robinson is somewhat misleading, especially as regards the word Leviathan, I give the story as told by Buddha with reference to Anqulimāta from Jātaka, nv. 537, vol. V. p. 462. A certain king had been a Yakkha, and still wanted to eat human flesh. His commander-in-chief tells him a tale to warn him. “Once upon a time there were great fishes in the Ocean. One of them, Ānanda, was made king of all the fish, ate the other fish, and finally ate his own tail thinking it was a fish. The remaining fish smelling blood, devoured Ānanda’s tail until they reached his head, and all that was left of Ānanda was a heap of bones.” Leviathan is a gloss of Robinson’s, because the only word in the text which could in any degree correspond to Leviathan is Mahā Maccho = great fish. For the election of a King of fish, see also the Naĉĉa Jātaka, and the Ubrīda Jātaka.

[1011] Bk. II. 70.

[1012] See, however, an article in The Spectator, Feb. 14, 1920, which asserts that the existence of crocodiles in the Nahr-ez-Zerka, or the River of Crocodiles of the Crusaders, cannot be questioned, and also H. B. Tristram, Land of Israel (London, 1865), p. 103, to similar but unconvincing effect.

[1013] Cf. Isaiah xxxvii. 29, “Therefore will I put my hook (ḥoḥ) in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips,” and 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11, “Which took Manasseh with hooks” (R.V. margin).

[1014] In a letter to A. Dalziel, Sept. 3, 1803, Porson states that these lines were an effort made to English an epigram by an Etonian friend, in imitation of Phocylides’s saw (Strabo, X. p. 487):

[1015] Op. cit., p. 53.

[1016] The inscription mentions the existing conditions of foreign affairs with neighbouring countries as satisfactory. It is in this connection that the “people of Israel” come in. Their Exodus, according to Pharaonic fashion, would have been described by the King as an expulsion and not as an escape against his will. The author of the inscription, who wrote from a point of view which was not that of the Biblical account, seems not unsupported by Exodus xii. 39, “Because they were thrust out of Egypt and could not tarry.” Even stronger is the Revised Version marginal rendering in Exodus xi. 1, “When he shall let you go altogether, he shall utterly thrust you out hence.” Sir Hanbury Brown, Journal of Egyptian Archæology (Jan. 1917), p. 19.

[1017] In connection with, perhaps even helping to fix, the date of the Exodus, it is in the victorious hymn of Menephtah that the earliest written reference to Israel appears: “Israel is desolated: her seed is not. Palestine has become a (defenceless) widow of Egypt” (Breasted), or “The Israelites are swept off: his seed is no more” (Naville). Petrie’s translation, “The people of Israel is spoiled: it has no corn (or seed),” does not for various reasons seem to find favour. The majority of Egyptologists now identify Aahmes I. with the “new king who knew not Joseph,” c. (1582), Rameses II. as the first Pharaoh of the Oppression, and of Exodus ii. 15 (c. 1300), and Menephtah the son of Rameses II. with the Pharaoh of the Plagues and the Flight from Egypt (c. 1234).

[1018] Egyptian Archæology (1902), 3-4. Erman, op. cit., 417. The English translators state that the bricks were usually unburnt and mixed with short pieces of straw.

[1019] If the Egyptian Rod was unknown, “the Egyptian fish (probably salted) that came in baskets” were regularly imported. Mishna Makhshirin, VI. 3.

[1020] See 1 Kings iv. 33, “And he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.” Some authorities hold that this mention of Solomon’s natural history researches is quite late, and meant to be a set off against Aristotle’s.

[1021] Herod seems, from notices in Josephus, to have been quite a sportsman, for he kept a regular stud (Ant., XVI. 10, s. 3), and hunted bears, stags, wild asses, etc., with a record bag of forty head in one day (ibid., XV. 7, s. 7; and B. J., I. 21, s. 13).

[1022] It is fair to record that some of the Assyrian monarchs preferred a battle mid safer surroundings, for in representations the head keepers are seen letting the lions, etc., out of cages for their royal master to pot! Parks (παράδεισοι) and districts were strictly preserved by both Assyrian and Persian rulers; in England for several reigns the penalty for poaching in the New and other Royal Forests was death.

[1023] E. B. Tylor, Anthropology (London, 1881), p. 220.

[1024] M. G. Watkins, Gleanings from Natural History (London, 1885), ch. 10.

[1025] The classification, if unscientific and incorrect—e.g. Eels possess rudimentary scales—had as its practical purpose the elimination of the Siluridæ—i.e. the Catfish Clarias, Bagrus, Synodontis, etc.—which even if, as with the Catfish, pleasant to the taste were very unwholesome, causing diarrhœa, rashes, etc. Doctors inform me that even in our day Jews who eat crustaceæ, especially lobsters, are far more liable to these diseases than Christians—presumably from an abstention of centuries. The ban on Eels from their infrequency in Palestine was almost superfluous, but on the Clarias, which abounds in and near the sea of Tiberias, very practical. The abstention, whether originating from supposed reasons of health or from some obscure tabu, was and still is prevalent in Asia, Africa, and South America. A curious trace of it at Rome is discoverable in Numa’s ordinance that in sacrificial offerings no scaleless fish, and no scarus should figure (Pliny, N. H., XXXII. 10). The abstention is sometimes merely partial, as with the Karayás in the Amazon valley, see W. A. Cook, op. cit., p. 96.

[1026] 700! according to the Talmud, Hul., 83^b.

[1027] Cf. Nidda, 51^b. For authoritative decisions regarding clean and unclean fish, see Hamburger, vol. I., Art. Fisch, Die jüdischen Speisegesetze (Wien, 1895), p. 310 ff.

[1028] Forlong, in his Rivers of Life, asserts that even at the present day the Eastern Jews do not eat fresh fish, but at marriages they place one on the ground, and the bride and bridegroom walk round or step over it seven times as an emblem of fecundity.

It is curious to note the mistake of Pliny in XXXI. 44: “Aliud vero castimonarium superstitioni etiam, sacrisque Judæis dicatum, quod fit e piscibus squama carentibus.” C. Mayhoff’s edition (Lipsiæ, 1897), however, runs, XXXI. 95: “Aliud vero est castimoniarum superstitioni etiam sacrisque Judæis dicatum, quod,” etc.

[1029] Sir Thomas Browne, in his Miscellaneous Writings, discourses of fish mentioned in the Bible.

[1030] Walton (in his Introduction) makes Piscator, after speaking of these four Apostles as “men of mild and sweet, and peaceable spirits (as indeed most fishermen are),” continues, “it is observable that it is our Saviour’s will that his four Fishermen Apostles should have a prioritie of nomination in the catalogue of his Twelve Apostles. And it is yet more observable that at his Transfiguration, when he left the rest of his Disciples and chose only three to accompany him, that these three were all Fishermen.” As a contrast to the excellent character given to the four fisher Apostles by Walton, a learned divine of Worms, J. Ruchard, found it incumbent in 1479 to defend Peter from the charge of instituting abstinence from flesh, so that he could profitably dispose of his fish! Keller, op. cit., p. 335.

[1031] B. J., III. 10, 18. “It is watered by a most fertile fountain. Some have thought it to be a vein of the Nile, as it produces the Coracin fish as well as that lake does, which is near Alexandria.”

[1032] Smith’s Hist. of the Bible (1890), and Singer’s Jewish Encyclopædia, V., p. 403, however, mention the Tunny, Herring, Eel, etc.

[1033] See, also, E. W. G. Masterman, Studies in Galilee, Chicago, 1909.

[1034] Dr. Boulenger points out, however, that the affinity between the two rivers is restricted to a few species of the Silurids and Cichlids, whose importance is outweighed by the total absence from the Jordan of such characteristic African families as the Polypteridæ, Mormyridæ, and Characinidæ.

[1035] This statement of Tristram’s is controverted by Masterman, op. cit., p. 44, note 1, who writes, “This is impossible. They leave the shelter of their fathers’ mouths when about the size of a lentil, and apparently never return.” The male Pipe fish Syngnathus acus not only carries the eggs, but also the young fish in a pouch, in a manner similar to the kangaroo. The young, even after they have begun to swim about, return when alarmed to the parental cavity. There are only one or two instances of a female fish taking sole charge of the ova: of these is Aspreto batrachus, which by lying on the top of her eggs presses them in to her spongy body and carries them thus, till they are hatched.

[1036] In islands off Northern Australia are found walking and climbing fish, Periophthalmus koelreuteri and P. australis, which ascend the roots of the mangrove by the use of ventral and pectoral fins, and jump and skip on the mud with the alertness of rabbits (The Confessions of a Beachcomber, p. 204, London, 1913).

Ktesias, a possible contemporary of Herodotus, writes that in India are little fish whose habit it is now and then to have a ramble on dry land.

[1037] Wilkinson, op. cit., II. p. 118.

[1038] Encyl. Bibl., ii. col. 1528, from Thomson, The Land and the Book, p. 402.

[1039] Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis, vol. I., Digest, 41, 1, 1.

[1040] Op. cit., supra, p. 405.

[1041] Goldschmidt’s Der Babylonische Talmud, vol. VI. p. 1005.

[1042] “The first fisherman has already bestowed labour on the fish, and regards them as his property.”

[1043] Zuckermann, a leading Jewish authority, in Das jüdische Maassystem, p. 31, gives, it is true, the following equivalents: 1 Parasang = 4 Mil. (Lat. mille = 30 Ris) (stadia)—8000 Hebrew cubits. Reckoning the cubit at, in round figures, 18 inches, we get a parasang of 4000 yards, or about 2¼ miles. Later authorities, however, are agreed that the Persian parasang was at least 3½ miles, or more.

[1044] Nehemiah xiii. 13-16.

[1045] Talmud, Ned. 20^b.

[1046] Many hold that Deuteronomy was written not earlier than the seventh century, or even as late as 550 b.c., previous to which there had taken place a large influx of foreigners, especially from N.W. Mesopotamia and Babylon, where gods were represented by scores.

[1047] Egypt and Israel, pp. 60, 61. Objection to the use of images in Israel was not apparently general till the latter half of the eighth century B.C. Their existence may, perhaps, be explained by (A) the universal existence of such worship among the Canaanites, (B) the proportion of Israelites to Canaanites being about as small as that of the Normans to the Saxons in England.

[1048] Of the fate of this and other temples erected by Solomon we read in 2 Kings xxiii. 13, “and the high places which Solomon had builded for Ashtoreth, the abomination of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom, the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile,” i.e. King Josiah some three centuries and a half after.

[1049] For data on Atargatis and Derceto, and for various Syrian coins bearing fish, see J. B. Pitra, Spicilegium Solesmense, III. pp. 503-4 (Paris, 1855).

[1050] Ency. Bibl., p. 379.

[1051] In Some Palestinian Cults in the Greek and Roman Age (Proceedings of British Academy, vol. V. p. 9), Mr. G. F. Hill, speaking of the worship in the two cities, concludes that the one at Ascalon is identified by Herodotus with that of Aphrodite Urania, and that at Gaza with Derceto, or Atargatis. Lucian (if he wrote De dea Syria) distinguishes the goddess of Ascalon from her of Hierapolis, who was worshipped in human not semi-human form, but there is little doubt of the connection between them. The Greeks identified both with Aphrodite. Other writers state that the Canaanite Ashtoreth, pre-eminently the goddess of reproduction and fecundity, became the goddess of fish (which, as sacred to her, were forbidden food) and of the pomegranate, both of which from their thousands of eggs or seeds are striking emblems of fertility.

[1052] Graf Wolf von Baudissin in Hauck’s Protestantische Realencycl., 3rd ed., vol. II., p. 177, s.v. Atargatis, “If Atargatis be, as we suppose, originally identical with Astarte, and if the latter be the representative of the generative night-sky—in particular of the Moon—then the representation of the former as a water and fish deity will be connected with the conception, so widespread in antiquity, of the Moon being the principle of generative moisture.”

[1053] 1 Sam. v. 4.

[1054] Frazer, The Golden Bough, I. pp. 14 and 70, gives many instances similar to the periodic offering by the Scape-Goat among the Chinese, Malayans, and Esquimaux.

[1055] Pitra, op. cit., p. 515 (who refers to Buxtorf, Synag. Jud., chapter XXIV.), is incorrect, according to the Jewish Ency. (New York, 1906, vol. XII. 66 f.), which states the Tashlik—the propitiatory rite referred to—does not occur in the Talmud or the geonic writers. Fish illustrate man’s plight and arouse him to repentance, “As the fishes that are taken in an evil net,” Eccl. ix. 12; and, as they have no eyebrows and their eyes are always open, they symbolise the Guardian of Israel, who slumbereth not. See R. I. Harowitz, Shelah, p. 214.

[1056] Psalm cvi. 36 ff.