CHAPTER XXIV

TACKLE

“_I tell you that the fisherman suffers more than any other. Consider, is he not toiling on the River? He is mixed up with the crocodiles: should the clumps of papyrus give way, then he shouts for help._”[761]

Now let us see by what implements and devices this “plenty of fish” was made to pay toll.

The documentary evidence on Egyptian fishing is so slight and fragmentary that were it not for extant implements and representations of fishing scenes its technical history could not be reconstructed even partially. The implements carry us back to about the beginning of the pre-dynastic age, and constitute our principal source of information regarding Nilotic fishing.

But from the beginning of the Old Kingdom until the Roman period the material remains dwindle, while the tomb scenes increase in importance. Later—perhaps in part owing to the changes in the interests of the Egyptian artist—the implements themselves again become of prime significance.[762]

It is impossible in Egypt, or elsewhere, to allot definite priority to Spear (or Harpoon), Net, Hook and Line, or Rod. The fact that all four methods were _c._ 2000 B.C. in synchronous use establishes merely a date _a quo_, a date which indicates (if a first appearance really prove anything) that Egypt in Angling by over a thousand years precedes China, where the earliest _mention_ occurs, _c._ 900 B.C.[763]

The Spear and the Harpoon, with their cousin the Bident, concern us first. Of the Trident there seems to be neither example or representation. Priority of use may possibly be conceded to the Spear in Palæolithic times. The fact that in Egypt we are dealing with an age, the Copper, separated from the Palæolithic by the New Stone era, prevents even a guess as to priority on the Nile. Egypt, it is true, bequeaths us the oldest historical as apart from archæological data, but these are merely great-great-grandchildren of the _débris_ data of France, and comparatively modern.

Then again, in Europe the Harpoon was rarely combined with objects of the Copper Age, in Egypt frequently.

_The Harpoon_ has been divided by Bates, but, I think, somewhat needlessly, into two types.

(1) A spear barbed unilaterally or bilaterally.

(2) A similar Spear which has its head so socketed as to come free from the shaft when the object has been struck, the quarry being thereafter retrieved by means of _a line made fast to the head itself_.

One of the simplest specimens is, perhaps, that figured by Reisner,[764] while two by Petrie[765] are, though probably pre-dynastic, of more elaborate workmanship.

To the latter the earliest Harpoons in Egypt appear to be the three-toothed bone Harpoons of the first prehistoric age. The representation of launching the Harpoon at fish is one of the commonest in tombs from the Vth to the XVIIIth Dynasties. The truth seems to be that the Harpoon as a means of livelihood ceased in the second prehistoric age, but as an instrument of sport lasted much later, though in the latest paintings it may be only a religious archaism.[766]

Seventy years have failed to displace substantially Wilkinson’s statements: fish-spearing from bank or papyrus punt was the sportsman’s method: the spear or bident,[767] about nine to twelve feet long, was thrust at passing fish: to it a long line (held in the left hand) was usually fastened for the purpose of recovering the weapon and the fish, if struck. Sometimes the weapon was feathered like an arrow (the author was possibly misled by or is alluding to the hieroglyph [hieroglyph]), or was just like a common spear.

If the statement be correct that “the _bilaterally_ barbed Harpoon is almost unknown before the Middle Kingdom times,”[768] we are faced by the remarkable fact of a weapon found again and again in the Magdalenian epoch of Palæolithic Man—each reader can supply his own conjecture how many millenniums before—being absent in a culture familiar with Copper Age hooks and harpoons.

But hold what view we may as to the original priority of implement, _examples_ of Spear-Harpoons are found in Egypt, at any rate, much earlier than those of either the Net or the Hook.

An illustration or two will serve to confirm the sporting use of the Harpoon, as advanced by Wilkinson and Petrie.

The first, a fine representation, depicts, in fig. 3, probably Khenemhetep standing in a papyrus boat in the act of spearing two large fish; beside him stands an attendant holding a bident Harpoon and a Reel unfixed.

In fig. 4 (an enlargement in colour of the preceding plate) the _barbed_ heads transfix the heads of two big fish: an attendant holds a spare harpoon and a reel of cord evidently meant to revolve in its handle.[769]

In the second[770] “Senbi, accompanied by his wife Meres, stands in a skiff constructed of reeds spearing fish. The subject is depicted over and over again in the tomb-chapels, but here it is imbued with new life. How realistic are the monster hippopotami who bellow, and display their gleaming white tusks, as Senbi comes skimming over the water in his frail canoe! The inscription over Senbi fishing runs as follows: ‘Spearing fish by him who is honoured by Osiris, Lord of the Western Desert, the Nomarch, the Superintendent of the Priests, Senbi the Justified.’”

Before passing to the Hook, a few words as to the Reel. Although Wilkinson would limit its use to Hippopotami, as in Khenemhotep’s scene, may we not fairly deduce its employment also in the spearing of large fish?

The surprise sometimes expressed as to the absence of any evidence that the Reel did duty with the Rod is quite superfluous. The Line of the Nile, and, indeed, of all Europe till the seventeenth century, was the _tight_, not the _running_ Line.[771] A possibility, but not a probability, of a Reel being used by a man catching a catfish _with line and hook_ has been detected in Plate 141 of the famous tomb of Ti, which shows the right hand carrying what may be merely a club, or more likely a stick for the line to be wound on, when not in use.[772]

From the beginning of the Middle Kingdom onward the Reel, of which a fine example comes from Beni Hasan,[773] appears to have found employment against Hippo. From the stick on which the hanks of cord were wound, perhaps, came its invention.[774] The most developed form shows merely an axle run through holes in the ends of a semi-circular handle. The ends of the axle were set in handles, which to some extent facilitated the process of winding up.[775]

The pursuit of the Hippo originated, like that of the fox in England, from economic causes, _viz._ the destruction wrought on crops, not on flocks and poultry. The beast in pre-dynastic times existed in Lower Egypt, but by the end of the Old Kingdom seems to have retreated to Upper Ethiopia. Pliny, however, speaking of its ravages at night on the fields indicates its survival above Saïs.[776]

Diodorus Siculus,[777] after surmising that if the Hippo were more prolific things would go hard with the Egyptian farmer, furnishes the details, but not the _locus_ of a hunt. “It is hunted by many persons together, each being armed with iron darts.” With the substitution of copper harpoons for iron darts, the description applies almost _verbatim_ to some of the hunting scenes of the Old Kingdom.[778]

_The Hook._—At the end of the pre-dynastic or beginning of the First Dynastic period the Hook, fashioned in no rude method, and wrought of no primitive material, but of _copper_, makes its appearance.

From this it is clear that Egypt (_a_) can lay no claim to have invented this method, and (_b_) had travelled many stages on the long road of piscatorial invention. The complete absence in the Nile Valley of hooks of bone, flint, or shell which occur in so many neolithic centres in other parts of the world adds confirmatory evidence.

In Egypt no records of the progenitor of this copper Hook survive. No family tree helps us, as elsewhere, to surmise whether the thorn, the flint, or the shell constituted the material of the first hook, for no non-metallic prototype has come to light. The numerous bone and ivory points, all more or less like the slender rod or pin of ivory shown in _El Amrah and Abydos_,[779] may, perhaps, indicate the gorges used by fishermen in pre-dynastic times. The absence, however, in the above example of any indentation in the middle, round which the line was frequently attached, tends (in my view) rather to negative the suggestion.

The earliest hooks were of simple shape. The point was barbless. The head, which in all cases lay in the plane of the hook, was formed by doubling over the end of the shank against the outside of the latter, so as to form a stop or an eye, which might, or might not, have been an open one.[780] Their length (varying from 2 to 6 cms.), if contrasted with the bronze hooks of the Swiss Lakes, is short in proportion to their width from the outside of the point to the outside of the shank.[781]

The XIIth Dynasty displays a few barbed hooks alongside barbless ones. One of the latter, belonging to Petrie, excites our interest, for the string of its attachment (some nine inches in length) is composed of double stout twist, while another proves itself the ancestor—in fact itself is—the Limerick hook with a single barb.

By the XVIIIth Dynasty barbed hooks, usually of bronze, largely predominate. Instead of being headed up in the older fashion they show the end of the shank expanded, so as to form a small flange in a plane at right angles to that of the hook. A line bent on the shank below this flange (even if slight), and drawn hard up against it had the advantage of chafing less than when made fast to a hook of the earlier type. The New Kingdom hooks, which continue scarcely altered in Roman times, are well designed, but their barbs are less intelligently placed than are those of the Middle Kingdom.[782]

But even in Roman times several types of hook, fairly well distributed in the Northern Mediterranean, seem unknown in Egypt; for instance, double hooks, barbed or barbless, of the Bronze Age in Switzerland, hooks with a split eye or an eye made by twisting the end of the shank round itself (as found in Crete) and many others are yet to seek.[783]

The cluster or gang hook early confronts us in the tomb of Gem-Ni-Kai.[784] The fisherman here extends his index finger to feel the faintest bite: below the water the line ends in a cluster of five hooks, one of which holds a large fish.

The ancient monuments sometimes portray fishing from a boat with hand-lines. Those of the Old Kingdom as often as not depict the fisher as an elderly peasant, presumably no longer equal to the brisker business of hauling a heavy seine.

Occasionally two lines are employed, as in the scene which Blackman[785] describes: “A small reed skiff, containing two men, one of whom, lolling at ease in the stern, has just secured a catch upon one of his lines, while his companion, standing upright in the bow, is pulling his loaded net out of the water.”

Another instance of hand-lining comes from Beni Hasan.[786] The same register contains a representation which is not only the earliest (_c._ 2000 B.C.) of fishing with a Rod known in the whole world, but is also (with the exception of that from the tomb of Kenamūn at Thebes[787]) the only depictment, I believe, of the Rod till we reach Greece about the sixth century B.C.

Unless the passion for sport pure and simple dominated rich and poor alike, we can fairly surmise that Angling yielded good results. The man in the Beni Hasan illustration, whether a fishing ghillie, or a professional fisherman belonging to the province which the tomb’s owner governed, or a peasant fishing on his own, is not merely posing for his picture.

The Theban illustration (some six hundred years later) squares with Wilkinson’s statement “sometimes the angler posted himself in a shady spot by the water’s edge, and, having ordered his servants to spread a mat upon the ground, sat upon it as he threw his line: some, with higher ideas of comfort, used a chair, as stout gentlemen now do in punts upon retired parts of the Thames.” The beat of our _piscator_, whose fishing lines should be closely studied, was probably not on “a retired part” of the Nile, but on one of his own _vivaria_, which, as in Assyria and Italy, ensured a supply of fresh fish in hot weather.

The lengths of the Rod and of the Line, if we may compute them by the height of the Anglers, assimilate fairly well to the eight cubits or six feet of Ælian’s Macedonian weapon some two millennia later.

Figures of fish caught by the mouth indicate baits, but no data enable us to identify their nature. Wilkinson’s statement “in all cases they adopted a ground bait, without any float” leaves itself open to question. In the Beni Hasan scene of Angling, which he entitles _Fishing with Ground Bait_, neither the hieroglyph attached nor anything else shows that, although in this instance no float appears, the bait was resting at the bottom, and not moving in the stream. The tombs generally may have led him to conclude that floats were unknown, but a netting scene in the Tomb of Ti shows a large float, presumably indicating the exact spot occupied by the trap in the water.[788]

The ancient Egyptian, if he employed the practice of his modern successor, used scraps of meat, lumps of dough, minnows, and bits of fish.[789] In connection with the last two a very curious passage in the Book of the Dead runs, “I have not caught fish with bait made of fish of their kind.”[790]

Such was the plea by the soul of the dead man not to be punished for what seemingly was a heinous sin. It is hard to discover where the enormity of the crime arises.[791] As most fishes are cannibals, the bait here presents one of their natural foods. In the case of an _artificial_ bait, which from the fish’s point of view amounts to cheating and deception, the punishment presumably fitted the crime, for which no prayer could atone, no pardon be possible!

Perhaps this conception indirectly caused and still causes the abstention from such lures as the artificial fly, which the native even now generally rejects. The implied prohibition, if the whole passage be not metaphorical, probably sprang from and is a relic of Totemism, which widely prevailed in early times.

_The Net_: the first _examples_, owing to their more perishable materials, naturally post-date those of the Harpoon and the Hook, but occur in representations far earlier than either. The suggestion that a part of a Net figures in the hieroglyph of the scenes from the Royal Tombs at Abydos[792], and so denotes its appearance in the 1st Dynasty, carries no conviction.

Close inspection shows the object to be a bag, or piece of cloth. The Net’s delineation by an artist at the end of the IIIrd or very beginning of the IVth lies not open to cavil.[793]

Peculiar importance pertains to this scene, because it is the first portrayal of the Net in Egypt, and possibly the very first _representation_ connected with _fishing_ the whole world over. It, moreover, as an illustration merely of fish, antedates (if avoiding the Scylla of Petrie’s and the Charybdis of Albright’s chronologies we steer by Lepsius’s chart) the famous Sumerian scene of Gilgamesh carrying fish, by some four centuries.[794]

The tomb of Zau furnishes one or two representations of special interest. Apart from that of Zau himself “dressed in sporting attire” and spearing fish from a papyrus skiff, the artist in another has let himself go more freely.

Not content to show what is happening above the surface of the pool, he breaks through all embarrassing congruities in order to display the crowded scene below, without which his subject would not have been completely set forth. The waters extend also to the left, where seven fishermen haul into a boat a drag-net full of fish, which include, as in the tomb of Aba, eight different species. Hippopotami and crocodiles do not fail to appear: even the humble frog, who sits among the water reeds, is remembered.[795]

Netting obtained more widely than its depictments, in proportion to those of Harpooning and Angling, indicate. Representations of the latter methods occur nearly always in the durable tomb-chapels of the rich, who from their ampler leisure more often ensued sport, while the professional fisherman, like his Greek and Roman brother, came of the tribe whose badge was poverty. Then, too, it must be remembered that the Netsmen mainly inhabited the Delta, which from reasons of humidity has yielded fewer pictures of life.

Practically every kind of Net known to the ancient world found employment in Lower Egypt, as the list drawn up by Julius Pollux, by birth himself a Deltan, makes clear. The representations give us many Nets. The hand, the double-hand, the cast (most rarely), the stake, the seine, etc., all find place. Weights of stone, but none of lead (according to Bates), meet our eyes in the monuments.[796]

Netting needles range from pre-dynastic to Roman times. The first, of a very simple type, are merely flat pieces of bone, pointed at each end, and pierced in the middle.[797] Net-making and Net-mending scenes are not absent. In one of the latter the artist, of naturalistic turn, shows an old fisherman mending a hand-net, and gripping the end with his toes, while a lad, preparing twine, rubs his spindle on his thigh.[798]

Actual specimens of Net twine prepared from flaxen and other vegetable fibres were discovered at Kahun in balls of two-strand and of three-strand string of the XIIth Dynasty. Fragments of Nets “having ½ to ¾ inch (1·2 to 1·9 cm.) mesh, the smallest being ⅛ inch (say 0·3 cm.) square,” came to hand at the same locality.[799]

Kahun yielded also some fragments of later, probably XVIIIth Dynasty, Nets, with meshes from 0·5 to 1·5 cm. and made of coarser twine than the earlier examples,[800] whose fineness of mesh tallies with the small size of some of the ancient needles.

Weels or wicker fisher traps (especially in the Old Kingdom) come down to us either small (about 1 m. 50 long), simply constructed, and capable of manipulation by two men, or very large, of more complex fashioning internally, and requiring several men to handle.[801]

Whether the Egyptians employed poisons, like most of the Mediterranean nations, I have not discovered. As examples, they are impossible of survival; for depictment of their actual use not even the boldest Nilotic Cubist would have been adequate, unless he imitated the Athenian artist by hieroglyphing “These be poisons”!

FOOTNOTES:

[761] _The Scribe on the Praise of Learning._ Cf. Maspero, _Le Genre épistolaire chez les Égyptiens_ (1872), p. 48.

[762] Bates, p. 199.

[763] See Chinese Chapter.

[764] The _Archæological Survey of Nubia_ for 1907-8 (Cairo, 1910), Plate LXV., b. 5.

[765] _Naqada and Ballas_ (London, 1896), Plate LXV. 7; and _Ancient Egypt_ (1915), Part I. p. 13, f. 3.

[766] _Tools and Weapons_ (London, 1917), p. 37.

[767] Bates holds (244) that the bident was only used by the nobles, and never by the professional fisherman, who employed nets, lines, traps, etc., but never the bident. He sees an analogy in the throwing sticks used by the nobles in the Old Kingdom fowling scenes, “whereas the peasants appear to have taken birds only by traps or clap nets.”

[768] Bates, p. 239.

[769] F. Ll. Griffith, _Beni Hasan_, Pt. IV. p. 3, Pl. XIII. fig. 3, 4. See also Newberry, _op. cit._, Pl. XXXIV.

[770] A. M. Blackman, _The Rock Tombs of Meir_ (London, 1914), vol. i. 28. Cf. also Steindorff’s _Das Grab des Ti_ (Leipzig, 1913), Pl. 113.

[771] Cf. _Introduction_.

[772] Steindorff, _Ibid._

[773] F. Ll. Griffith, _Beni Hasan_, Pt. 4 (London, 1900), Pl. XIII. 4. For kind permission to reproduce this and the next illustration I have to thank the Egypt Exploration Society.

[774] Cf. the Ø hieroglyphs in Griffith’s _Hieroglyphs_ (London, 1898), Pl. 9, fig. 180, and text, p. 44. The more elaborate form is shown by Paget-Pirie, _The Tomb of Ptahhetep_, bound in Quibell’s _Ramesseum_, London, 1898.

[775] Bates, p. 242.

[776] _N. H._, XXVIII. 831. Perhaps he derived his information from the not-trustworthy _Theriaca_ of Nicander, 566 ff.

[777] I. 35. He visited Egypt _c._ 20 B.C.

[778] P. 243. From Newberry’s _Beni Hasan_, there come, curiously enough, only two representations of Hippos and not one of a Hippo hunt. From Herodotus, II. 71, we gather that, if the beast was elsewhere hunted, at Papremis it was traditionally sacred.

[779] Mac Iver and Mace (London, 1902), Pl. VII. 1.

[780] T. E. Peet, _The Cemeteries of Abydos_ (London, 1914), Pt. 2, Pl. XXXIX. 3.

[781] For twenty-five figures of hooks, see Bates, Pl. XI. For others curiously shaped, probably Vth Dynasty, see Lepsius, _Denkmäler_, etc. (Berlin, 1849), II. p. 96.

[782] Petrie, _Kahun, Gurob, and Hawara_, p. 34.

[783] Bates, p. 249.

[784] F. von Bissing, _Die Mastaba des Gem-Ni-Kai_ (Berlin, 1905), vol. I., Pl. IV. fig. 2.

[785] _Op. cit._, vol. III., Pl. VI.

[786] P. E. Newberry, _Beni Hasan_ (London, 1893), Part 1, Pl. 29. Cf. Wilkinson, _op. cit._, vol. I., Pl. 371.

[787] _Ibid._, Pl. 370. This faces my introduction.

[788] Steindorff, _op. cit._, Pl. 110. Bates, p. 240, holds that “floats attached to Harpoon lines were probably in common use”: the infrequency—to say the least of it—of their representation lends but a slender support to his suggestion.

[789] Klunziger, _Upper Egypt_ (1878), p. 305, states that the townsfolk hand-lined with these baits, but that the fish-eating Bedouins still employed the Spear.

[790] Budge, Trans. _Book of the Dead_, vol. II. p. 362.

[791] Yet compare the Scriptural prohibition, “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk,” which appears to have been one of the commandments included in the earliest Decalogue. Sir J. G. Frazer discusses this curious injunction in _Folklore in the Old Testament_, vol. III. p. 111 ff.

[792] Vol. I. pl. 10, f. 11.

[793] Petrie, _Medum_ (1892), Pl. XI. A good example (Vth Dynasty) of a Net heaped up in a boat is found in N. de G. Davies, _Ptahhetep_ (London, 1901), Pl. VI., in the right-hand column of the hieroglyphs.

[794] See my Assyrian Chapter, p. 368. The Gilgamesh representation dates _c._ 2800 B.C.

[795] N. de G. Davies, _The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrawi_ (1902), Pt. II. Pl. V.

[796] P. 259. The reason assigned is not convincing: “No lead weights are depicted on the monuments, for by the time they were introduced the artist was devoting himself to mythological and religious scenes.” Petrie, _Kahun, Gurob, and Hawara_, p. 34, however, assigns some weights of lead from Kahun to XVIIIth Dyn.

[797] Cf. Petrie, _Abydos_ (London, 1902), pl. 41.

[798] J. J. Tylor, _The Tomb of Paheri_ (London, 1895), Pl. VI., probably XVIIIth Dyn.

[799] Petrie, _Kahun_, p. 28.

[800] _Ibid._, p. 34.

[801] Illustrations of both kinds can be found in Steindorf’s _Das Grab des Ti_, Pls. CX. and CXI.