“Those” were the Ombites, “These” the Tentyrites, who hated the crocodile worshipped at Ombos: hence
“Blind bigotry, at first, the evil wrought, For each despised the other’s gods, and thought Its own the true, the genuine—in a word The only deities to be adored.”[845]
The Phagrus had the distinction of being venerated in Egypt and Greece, whose writers, bothered by none of our scientific hesitation, regarded him not as one of the Mormyri, but as the Eel. They scoffed alike at his deification and his devotees.[846]
The Phagrus, and the Mœotes, which is Wilkinson’s addition to the four other sacred fish, were probably the same under different names. Ælian, indeed, states that the former, worshipped at Syene, was called the Mœotes by the people of Elephantine (quite close to Syene), and attributes its sanctity to its annual appearance always heralding the rise of the Nile,[847] a property of prescience transferred by Plutarch to the Mœotes.[848]
We know so little about the locus of the Lepidotus (Barbus bynni) cult that Wilkinson’s assertion, “its worship extended over most parts of Egypt,” needs confirmatory data.
The Crocodile, like the Lates, was worshipped here and there, but elsewhere keenly hunted. Of the first Thebes and Lake Mœris furnish types. Each place (according to Herodotus) harboured one crocodile in particular, very tame and tractable.[849] They adorned his ears, as Antonina her Muræna, “with earrings of molten stone or gold, and put bracelets on his forepaws, giving him daily a set portion of bread, with a certain number of victims: when he dies, they embalm and bury him in a sacred place.”[850]
Of the various methods for catching the crocodile our author sets forth one which we all must agree as “worthy of mention.” “They bait a hook with a chine of pork, and let the meat be carried out into the middle of the stream, while the hunter on the bank holds a living pig which he belabours. The crocodile hears its cries and making for the sound encounters the pork, which he instantly swallows down. The men on the shore haul and, when they have got him to land, the first thing the hunter does is to plaster his eyes with mud. This once accomplished, the animal is despatched with ease, otherwise” (it may surprise you) “he gives great trouble.”[851]
Both the Phagrus and the Crocodile possessed foreknowledge as to the rise of the river, the first as to time, the latter as to extent, for “in what place soever the female lays her eggs, that may be concluded to be the utmost extent to which the Nile will spread that year.”[852]
Blackman[853] praises the art of a scene, as (although the crocodile is but roughly blocked out) one ranking with the finest specimens of ancient Egyptian bas-reliefs: “not even the Old Kingdom mastabas at Sakhara can produce anything to surpass it for vigour and beauty of technique.”[854]