Fishing from the Earliest Times

by William Radcliffe

In belief and equipment the Egyptians differed toto orbe. For them after death was pre-ordained a life to obtain which the body must be preserved from destruction; otherwise it hastened to dissolution and second death, i.e. annihilation. To avoid this fate, they resorted to permanent tombs, embalmment, and mummification.

But as the Double, or Ka, of the departed (unlike the Soul, or Ba, which fared forth to follow the gods) never quitted the place where the mummy rested, daily offerings of food and drink for its sustenance had to be placed in the chapel chamber of the richer tombs. Sooner or later came the time when for reasons of expense, or other, the dead of former generations found themselves neglected, and the Ka was reduced to seeking his food in the refuse of the town. To obviate such a desecration, and ensure that the offerings consecrated on the day of burial might for all time preserve their virtue, the mourners hit upon the idea of drawing and describing them on the walls of the chapel.

Furthermore to make homelike and familiar his new abode, or the “Eternal House” (in contrast to which the houses of the living were but wayside inns) elaborate precautions were taken. We find depicted on the walls of the chapel the lord of the domain, surrounded by sights and pursuits familiar to him when alive. “The Master in his tomb,” writes Maspero, “superintends the preliminary operations necessary to raise the food by which he is to be nourished in the form of funerary offerings: scenes and implements of sowing, harvesting, hunting, fishing meet his eye.”

From these representations of actual life, intended for the comfort of the dead, we, the living, are enabled not only to reconstruct in part the manner and social economy of the Ancient Egyptians, but also to gather, aided by excavated tackle, fairly accurate knowledge of their various devices for catching fish. And so to the religious conception which fostered the adornment of the tombs the gratitude of all fishermen is due, and should be deep.

If the god Hapi, who is represented with the girdle of a fisherman round his loins, and bearing lotus flowers, fowl, and fish, was hymned by the people as “the Creator of all things good,” to the Father of Rivers[755] the Father of History renders tribute for his gift of one “thing good” which furnished to all, bar kings and priests, a stable and staple food, fish.

Its economic importance can hardly be over-rated. Testimony as to its cheapness and abundance is not wanting. Of such is the wail of the poorer folk that the price of corn might be that of fish.[756] Not less impressive rings the plaint of wandering Israel—even heaven-sent manna apparently palls!—“we remember the fish we did eat in Egypt for naught.” The Egyptians accounted the fish plague, next to the death of the firstborn, as direst in result.

Confirmatory witnesses are Diodorus Siculus, who notes the great number and the many varieties of fish found in the Nile,[757] and Ælian, who neatly and truly characterises the aftermath of the annual inundation as “a harvest of fish.”[758] Evidence, again, of “a plenty” of fish, its pursuit, and its copious consumption fronts us in the prehistoric kitchen-middens and in the bone or horn harpoons of pre-dynastic graves. Later, the frequent tomb fishing-scenes and some textual notices attest absence of dearth.

The numerous slate palettes in the pre-dynastic graves furnish Mr. Bates with further proof, and with a new theory, which seems to me, if ingenious, too ingenuous and too far-fetched.

The palettes,[759] almost invariably presenting the profile of only those fishes, birds, or beasts that historic men pursued for food, were intended (by the aid of colours extracted from the malachite, galena, etc., crushed upon them) to establish an unpalpable, but, in human eyes, very serviceable connection between the fisher and his prey.

One method of such connection consists in creating a likeness of the intended quarry. Such a likeness, by the belief that the simulacrum is actively en rapport with that which it represents, bestows on the possessor power over the original. “Cases,” Bates correctly adds, “of this sort are the commonplaces of imitative magic.” Usually a hunting or fishing amulet which simulates the form of the quarry was worn by the owner, or attached to his gear.