[717] Penzance, 1816, p. 91
Let this passage be compared with the following, which gives an account of the use of the same kind of net among the Arabs. It will then appear how extensively it is employed, since we find it used in exactly the same way both by our own countrymen and by tribes which we consider as ranking very low in the scale of civilization; and on making this comparison, the inference will seem not unreasonable, that the ancient Greeks and Romans, who in several of their colonies in the Euxine Sea, on the coasts of Ionia, and of Spain, and in other places, carried on the catching and curing of fish with the greatest possible activity and to a wonderful extent, used nets of as great a compass as those which are here described.
“The fishery is here (i. e. at Burka, on the eastern coast of Arabia) conducted on a grand scale, by means of nets many hundred fathoms in length, which are carried out by boats. The upper part is supported by small blocks of wood, formed from the light and buoyant branches of the date-palm, while the lower part is loaded with lead. To either extremity of this a rope is attached, by which, when the whole of the net is laid out, about thirty or forty men drag it towards the shore. The quantity thus secured is enormous; and what they do not require for their own consumption is salted and carried into the interior. When, as is very generally the case, the nets are the common property of the whole village, they divide the produce into equal shares[718].”
[718] Lieutenant Wellsted’s Travels in Arabia, vol. i. (Ornam), pp. 186, 187.
That this method of fishing was practised by the Egyptians from a remote antiquity appears from the remaining monuments. The paintings on the tombs show persons engaged in drawing the sean, which has floats along its upper margin and leads along the lower border[719]. An ancient Egyptian net, obtained by M. Passalacqua, is preserved in the Museum at Berlin. Some of its leads and floats remain, as well as a gourd, which assisted the floats[720].
[719] See Wilkinson’s Manners and Customs of Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. p. 20, 21; see also vol. iii. p. 37. One of these paintings, copied from Wilkinson, is introduced in [Plate X.] fig. 3. of this work. The fishermen are seen on the shore drawing the net to land full of fishes. There are eight floats along the top, and four leads at the bottom on each side. The water is drawn as is usual in Egyptian paintings.
[720] Un filet de pêche à petites mailles, et fait avec du fil de lin. Cet objet, qui est garni de ses plombs, conserve encore les morceaux de bois qui garnissaient sa partie supérieure, ainsi qu’une courge qui l’aidait à surnager.—Thèbes, Passalacqua, Catalogue des Antiquitiés découvertes en Egypte, No. 445. p. 22.
Besides the verses of Oppian, which are above quoted, we find another passage of the same poem (Hal. iii. 82, 83), which mentions the following appendages to the σαγήνη, viz. the πέζαι, the σφαιρῶνες, and the σκολιὸς πάναγρος. As the πόδες, or feet of a sail were the ropes fastened to its lower corners, we may conclude that the πέζαι were the ropes attached to the corners of the sean, and used in a similar manner to fasten it to the shore and to draw it in to the land, as is described by Ovid in the line already quoted,—
Hos cava contento retia fune trahunt.
The σφαιρῶνες, as the name implies, were spherical, and must therefore have been either the floats of wood or cork at the top, or the weights, consisting either of round stones or pieces of lead, at the bottom. The σκολιὸς πάναγρος must have been a kind of bag formed in the sean to receive the fishes, and thus corresponding to the purse or conical bag in the ἄρκυς. The term is illustrated by the application of the equivalent epithet ἀγκύλα or “angular,” to hunting-nets in a passage from Brunck’s Analecta, which was formerly explained, and by the epithet “cava” in the line just quoted from Ovid[721].