CHAPTER XXVI

SACRED FISH

Apart from the mythological fishes, the _Abdu_ and the _Ant_, which were supposed to accompany the boat of the Sun, we find others held sacred or worshipped in different Nomes or cities.

Before considering these, I draw attention to the cut of a representation from Gamhud,[833] and to the account by E. Mahler of a _Stele_, attributed to Thotmes III., now in the Museum at Buda-Pesth.[834]

Both are remarkable; for in both _Fish_ takes the place of the usual Bird-Soul. As the Buda-Pesth _Stele_ is unpublished, we have to depend on Mahler’s account. He tells us that in the ancient beliefs and myths of Egypt the fish was a symbol of eternity, and guided the boat which bore the dead to the waters of the blessed.

The Gamhud illustration, attributed to the Ptolemies, who held fast to the tradition that the parts of Osiris were eaten by three fishes, one of which was the _Oxyrhynchus_, has a distinct interest, because here for the first time the _Oxyrhynchus_ figures as a substitute for the Bird-Soul.

The Buda-Pesth _Stele_ probably deduces from Gurob, where there is, or rather twenty years ago was, a fish cemetery excavated by Petrie. Here, too, was a temple built by Thotmes III., and a smaller one erected in his honour.

The idea of the dead man may well have been “I have embalmed thousands and thousands of fish. Now then, one of you, in return do your best to secure for me immortality.”

Herodotus[835] states that only two fishes are venerated, the _Lepidotus_ and the _Phagrus_. The Father of History is not open in this case to the charge of exaggeration, for with these the _Oxyrhynchus_, and (according to Strabo) the _Lates niloticus_, and (according to Wilkinson) the _Mœotes_ should be included.

Various reasons are assigned for the veneration, local if not national, of these particular fishes. Wilkinson suggests, with a touch of ironical humour—“the reason of their sanctity (_i.e._ the _Oxyrhynchus_ and _Phagrus_) was owing to their being unwholesome: the best way of preventing their being eaten was to assign them a place among the sacred animals of the country!”

Some writers detect in their sanctity a remnant of local Totemism, a word which in blessedness equals and in length of inadequate definition surpasses Mesopotamia.[836]

But Robinson, disagreeing with Robertson Smith and Frazer in their conception of Totemism, denies that these fish were totems in any proper sense. Primitive man performs an act of positive sacrifice when he devotes to the religious tribal idea the best fish of the waters, and thenceforth abstains from eating them; whereas the Egyptians shabbily denied themselves only the refuse. They made that sacred which they could not eat. All the evidence tends to the suspicion that the gods were put off by the priests with the very worst of the fish. If a species were poisonous or belonged to a class that was unwholesome, it was straightway declared sacred.[837]

Speaking from my own experience and purely on palatal grounds, had I been High Priest I should have banned nearly all Nile fishes for their insipidity and muddiness. Tastes, of course, differ. The _Lates_ is passable, but the _Oxyrhynchus_ attracts no opsophagist devotees, which is probably the fault of “The Creator of all things good” in either the temperature of his water or the character of their food, since a cousin, _O. mormyrus_, geographically not far removed, is ranked by epicures as delicious.[838]

The reason assigned by the priests to Plutarch for the abstention from and local veneration of the _Oxyrhynchus_, _Phagrus_, and _Lepidotus_ possesses, whatever its truth, the charm of an antiquity reaching back to the dawn of goddom.

After the slaying of Osiris by Typho, Isis made unwearied search for his body. But she could never recover his private part, for it had been flung into the Nile, and eaten by the _Lepidotus_, the _Phagrus_, and the _Oxyrhynchus_: “fish which of all others, for this reason, the Egyptians have in more especial avoidance. But Isis made its effigies, and so consecrated the _phallos_, for which the Egyptians to this day observe a festival.”[839]

The same author vouches for the veneration of the _Oxyrhynchus_, as shown by the people of the city named after that fish; “they will not touch any kind of fish that have been taken with an angle, for they are afraid lest perhaps the hook may be defiled by having at some time or other been employed in catching their favourite fish.”[840] Ælian goes farther: “were but one of these fish taken in a net, the townsmen would let the whole catch free.”[841]

Holy Wars, even if unpreached by a tarbushed Kaiser, came to pass in Plutarch’s day; “within our memory, because the people of Kynopolis presumed to eat their fish, the Oxyrhyncites[842] in revenge seized on all the dogs, or sacred animals of their enemies that came in their way, offering them in sacrifice, and eating their flesh in like manner as they did that of their other victims: this drew on a war between the two cities, wherein both sides, after doing each other much mischief, were at last severely punished by the Romans.”[843]

To another religious war, between the Ombites and the Tentyrites, we owe the great Satire XV. of Juvenal, when banished to Egypt at the age of eighty.[844] The poem ranks high, not only for its mordant irony but also for its description of the origin of civil society, “a description infinitely superior to anything that Lucretius or Horace has delivered on the subject,” according to the not always laudatory Gifford.

“Who knows not to what monstrous gods, my friend, The mad inhabitants of Egypt bend? The snake-devouring ibis, These enshrine, Those think the crocodile alone divine.”

“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]

FOOTNOTES:

[833] Ahmed Bey Kamal, _Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte_, 1908, IX. 23 f., Pl. 1.

[834] _Actes du IV^e Congrès International d’Histoire des Religions_, 1913, p. 97 f.

[835] II. 72.

[836] For a description, not a _definition_ of Totemism, see Robertson Smith, _loc. cit._, or J. G. Frazer’s four volumes on _Totemism and Exogamy_. The _Oxford Dictionary_ for once is not very helpful in, “Totemism, the use of Totems, with a clan division, and the social, marriage, and religious customs connected with it.”

[837] _Op. cit._, p. 37.

[838] The Mormyri, which number some 100 species, are peculiar to Africa.

[839] _De Iside et Osiride_, 18.

[840] Plut., 8.

[841] _N. H._, X. 46.

[842] The _Mormyri_, to which the _Oxyrhynchus_ belongs, figure on the walls, and in bronzes, _O. kannum_ and _O. caschive_ being most frequent; but the _Bana_ (_Petrociphalus bane_) and _Grathonemus aprinoides_ also occur. The best delineations are found in the tombs of Ti and of Gizeh.—G. A. Boulenger, _Fishes of the Nile_, London, 1907.

[843] Plut., _Ibid._, ch. 72.

[844] The banishment is disputed by Franke and others. Cf., however, _Sat._, XV. 45. “Aegyptus, sed luxuria, _quantum ipse notavi_.”

[845] From Gifford’s _Translation_.

[846] Cf. Athenæus, VII. 55, for the jests of Antiphanes, etc.

[847] _N. H._, X. 19.

[848] _Op. cit._, 7.

[849] Plato bears witness to the skill of the Egyptians in taming fish, and animals, even the shy wild gazelle. _Polit._ 532.

[850] Herodotus, II. 69, 70. _Rawlinson’s Trans._

[851] The story of the _trochilus_, with which alone out of all birds and beasts our author states the crocodile lives in amity, because the little bird enters its mouth (when on land) and frees it from myriads of devouring leeches, is too well known for reference, were it not for the dispute (_a_) as to whether the bird—_Pluvianus egyptius_—performs any service except uttering a shrill cry on the approach of man and thus warning the crocodile, and (_b_) whether for leeches, we should not substitute gnats. Cf. W. Houghton, _N. H. of the Ancients_ (London), pp. 238-244. The account of the connection between the bird and the beast given by Plutarch is far prettier and more spirited than that of Herodotus.

[852] Plutarch, _ibid._, 75. The beasts enjoyed both a hereditary transmission of holiness and a subtle discrimination as to the build of a boat, for fishermen who embark in one made of papyrus enjoy security from their attentions, “they having either a fear or else a veneration for this sort of boat,” because Isis in her search for the remains of Osiris used such a means of conveyance. Plutarch, _ibid._, 18.

[853] _Op. cit._, II. p. 14, Pl. 2, Register 3.

[854] Crocodiles and _Papyri_ seem a curious juxtaposition! Some time ago Dr. Grenfell was excavating ground likely to yield important finds. Bad luck dogged his digging: only preserved crocodiles came to light. One day a labourer, incensed at work wasted on the beasts, jabbed his pick into the latest specimen, whose head disgorged a roll of papyrus. Similar head-smashings were fruitful of results, most of which belong to the Hearst Collection.