The parties to the contract are Ribat, the steward of the rich Babylonian banker Rimut-Ninurta, and five Aramaic fishermen. In consideration of Ribat’s furnishing five nets, they bind themselves to deliver by the 15th of Tishri (about September), i.e. within twenty days from the making of the contract, five hundred fish. On failure to do so, the time is extended by five days, but the number of the fish is then increased to one thousand. Each of the five fishermen “goes bail” for delivery of five hundred, or if need be, of a thousand fish, but an outsider, Bel-ibni, son of Apla, cautiously limits his bail or guarantee to the first figure.
These documents possess many points of interest.
(A) They are not only the very earliest, but I suggest the only extant fishing contracts (proper) prior to the third century a.d. In Egypt, during the Ptolemaic period, fishermen, it is true, had to pay to the Government a quarter of the value of their catch (τεττάρτη ἁλιέων), but this seems to have been a regular tax. Later on we find fishermen paying to the priests of Lake Moeris a φόρος (not to be confounded with ἰχθυηρὰ δρυμῶν, or state tax) which presumably included the purchase of the right to fish, as well as the hire of boats. But this was in the nature of a royalty or rent, was a continuous obligation, and proportioned to the catch, whereas in our second document the time is limited, and the payment fixed, not proportioned.[916]
(B) The second contract demonstrates that the custom of additional guarantors is no mere modern institution.
(C) It also tends to show that the system, previously known as employed by Babylonian landlords, of letting their farms to tenants for a fixed proportion of the crops, extended occasionally to their waters as well.
CHAPTER XXXIII
FISH-GODS—DAGON
I find no trace in Assyria of Ichthyolatry, or of certain fish being accounted sacred, or forbidden as food. The nearest approach to abstention occurs in the warning that on the 9th day of Iyyar to partake of fish was almost certain to bring on an attack of sickness, just as in Syria ichthyophagy was held to entail ulcers and wasting diseases.[917]
Despite the Dagon or Oannes traditions, I am not convinced that in the crowded pantheon of Babylon or Assyria there can be found a fish-god proper, or god of fishing, i.e. a deity similar to those of Greece and Rome with a temple and established priesthood, to whom fishermen made prayer and offerings either for boons received or favours to come.