Other pools, however, remained till the returning inundation, as so many vivaria in which the fish were preserved for dwellers on the banks. Fishing with the harpoon, made either of stone or of metal, with the line, with a net or with traps, were all methods of fishing known and used by the Egyptians from early times. Where the ponds failed, the neighbouring Nile furnished them with inexhaustible supplies. Standing in light canoes, or rather supported by a plank on bundles of reeds bound together, they ventured into mid-stream, in spite of the danger arising from the ever-present hippopotamus; or they penetrated up the canals amid a thicket of aquatic plants, to bring down with the boomerang the birds which found covert there.
1 Tomb of Ti. Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Dûmichen,
Besultate, vol. ii. pl. x.
The fowl and fish which could not be eaten fresh, were dried, salted, or smoked, and kept for a rainy day. Like the river, the desert had its perils and its resources. Only too frequently, the lion, the leopard, the panther, and other large felidse were met with there.
1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a painting by Beni-Hasan,
Lepsius, Denhm., ii. 136.
2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief of Ptahhotpû.
The dogs on the upper level are of hyenoid type, those on
the lower are Abyssinian greyhounds.
The nobles, like the Pharaohs of later times, deemed it as their privilege or duty to stalk and destroy these animals, pursuing them even to their dens. The common people preferred attacking the gazelle, the oryx, the mouflon sheep, the ibex, the wild ox, and the ostrich, but did not disdain more humble game, such as the porcupine and long-eared hare: nondescript packs, in which the jackal and the hyena ran side by side with the wolf-dog and the lithe Abyssinian greyhound, scented and retrieved for their master the prey which he had pierced with his arrows. At times a hunter, returning with the dead body of the mother, would be followed by one of her young; or a gazelle, but slightly wounded, would be taken to the village and healed of its hurt.