“A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day,”
we are forced once more to “scrat head,” and very hard. Imagination reels before the mesh of a Net, capable alike of catching a marketable fish and denying a gnat!
Fish intended for immediate use were usually dressed on the boat and quickly dispatched to market; the rest of the catch was opened ashore, split, salted, and hung to dry in the sun. Pictures[863] of all these operations, and examples of splitting knives, survive. Splitting in the earlier eras, for some reason, ran, not sheer down the back, but always rather to one side or other.
Promptness of curing in a hot climate like Egypt was all important. Diodorus, indeed, tells us that practically all fish were at once pickled or salted, a statement confirmed by Julius Pollux’s mention of the Egyptian tariché, especially that from Canopus, being exported[864] far and wide, certainly to Palestine, whither “the Egyptian fish came in baskets or barrels.”[865]
Prices of wheat, honey, fish and other wares occur in Spiegelberg’s work,[866] but no attempt is made by him (as far as I know) to correlate the prices in ancient and modern Egypt.
I essay the task more as a jeu d’esprit than for any result of economic value, by means of the Mugil capito. This grey mullet has been identified with the ancient ’Ad, a fish which figures frequently in the representations, e.g. in the Tomb of Ti, of Ptahhetep,[867] and of Naqada.[868] Its habit of ascending the Nile from the sea was known and noted by ancient authorities. Strabo, after stating that it, the Dolphin, and the Shad were the only fish so to do, informs us that the Mullet in his upward journey carefully consorted with the Schalls, or Catfish, whose strong spikes afforded it protection against the crocodiles.[869]
We find at the end of the XXth Dynasty, say 1200 b.c., that 300 of Ireth fish, 100 of Shena’, and 800 ’Ad (each lot) fetched 1 kite of silver—the kite being 1⁄10 of a deben of 91 grammes. Although in the XVIIIth Dynasty gold had been just twice as valuable as silver, at this time silver stood to gold in a ratio of 1⅔ to 1.
Thus 100 Shena’, 300 Ireth (both of which are as yet unidentified) and 800 ’Ad fish were (each lot) worth 91⁄10 × ⅗, i.e. 5·46 grammes of gold.
Now one sovereign weighs 123·27447 grains, and as 11⁄12 of this is gold it contains 113·0016 grains of gold. As a gramme equals 15·432 grains, the value of 5·46 grammes of gold thus works out at about 14 shillings and 11 pence to the nearest farthing. The whole calculation, however, depends on the assumption that the kite is known to be exactly 9·1 grammes.
This, the latest estimate of its probable weight, can only be an estimate, for the Egyptians of the XVIIIth Dynasty, at any rate, did not make weights to a minute fraction of a gramme. A calculation therefore to the nearest farthing is somewhat meaningless, unless the weight of the kite is determined to be 9·10, and not 9·09 or 9·11 grammes. Since the weight is certainly not known to two places of decimals, it is doubtful if it can be regarded as correct to the first place. Hence 14s. 11d. is not absolutely a more accurate estimate than 15/-.[870]