CHAPTER XXXI

FISHING METHODS

The relevance to fish and fishing of all the preceding matter, except the last two sentences, may be challenged: a moment’s consideration, however, shows that it is apposite.

The object of introducing these historical facts is to demonstrate (1) the existence of an intercourse between Assyria and Egypt for certainly fourteen hundred, possibly three thousand, years, (2) to show cause for our astonishment at the absence of the Rod from all Mesopotamian representation or records, and at the non-adoption of a weapon which for centuries found favour with the Egyptians.

In my Jewish chapter I comment at length on the absence of any mention of or allusion to the Rod in Israelitish literature and on the unconvincing reasons advanced for this absence. Angling may have been unsuited to the Semitic temperament, because it yielded less lucrative returns than the Net.

Even if we grant that the ruling or only passion of this temperament was for fishing “in plenty,” why, we are driven to ask, did both nations condescend to fishing with hand-lines, which are not much more productive than the Rod? If hand-lining was prompted by some instinct of sport, why was Angling, the higher development of this instinct, not also reached?

Of the four implements of Fishing, the Spear, the Rod, the Line and Hook, and the Net, the Assyrians seem to have been acquainted only with the last two, Line and Hook, and Net.

Examples of the former method occur in _Monuments of Nineveh_ (1st Series). In Plate 39B, a man sitting on a terrace by a river is depicted in the act of landing a fish; in Plate 67B, a man is wading in a river with what seems to be identical with a creel. The first was excavated, and subsequently re-buried at Nimroud, the latter (also re-buried) at Kouyunjik. The second picture excites a livelier interest, for two men well into their fish are shown in the water astride the inflated skins of a goat—a method of crossing the Tigris as habitual then as in the present year of our century.[904]

Despite Rawlinson’s sentence, “of early Chaldean (_i.e._ Sumerian) there are found made of bronze materials chains, nails, and fish-hooks,”[905] no specimen of a fish-hook, bronze or other, has been as yet obtained in Mesopotamia. It is impossible thus to determine whether the hooks were straight like those recorded by Plutarch, bent like those of the Odyssey, or barbed. Cros, however, claims that Lagash excavations yielded “copper fish hooks.” _Rev. d’Assyr._, vi. 48.

Representations also fail to help, probably because a hook, plain and simple, hardly commends itself as a subject for artistic treatment. Nor does the primitive Assyrian sculptor, however distrustful of the imagination of the observer, go as far as to depict “by conventional device” a hook inside the mouth of the fish which is being taken!

In the Assyrian language there is apparently no word for fish-hook. From the resemblance between the Hebrew word _ḥōaḥ_, which means both thorn and fish-hook, and the Assyrian word _ḥâḥu_, which, it is alleged, means thorn, it has been conjectured that in the latter word we have the Assyrian term for fish-hook. Professor S. Langdon, who in a letter to me advances this conjecture, goes even farther—“in fact _ḥâḥu_ is our only direct evidence for the practice of fishing with hook and line in Assyria.”

Basing himself on a similar Hebraic resemblance, he would make the Assyrian _ṣinnitān_, “two reins,” come from a supposed _ṣinnitu_, a possible feminine of _ṣinnu_, which occurs perhaps in the sense of “thorn,” and carry the same meaning as the Hebrew _ṣên_, which probably equals “thorn,” while its plural _ṣinnōth_ does stand for “fish-hooks.”

He believes that in the word, _abarshu_, which Esarhaddon employs, “I snatched him (Abdi-Milkuti, King of Sidon) as a fish from the sea,” and again, of a chief of the Lebanon range who had rebelled and fled, “I caught him from the mountains like a bird,” we have evidence of a technical word for pulling or jerking out a fish with a line held in the hand, or perhaps attached to a Rod, because “snatch” would hardly be the appropriate term for the slower action involved in the drawing in of a net.[906]

Whether in the first simile the suggestion is philologically valid is a point for Assyrian scholars to determine. The adequate rendering or explaining of Sumerian words by Assyrian ones is often difficult and doubtful, for while the latter language is a great help to understanding the former, the Assyrian, especially the later Assyrian, equivalent does not entirely correspond to what would be expected from a literal analysis of the Sumerian word. The second simile, I hold, alludes to the Net of the fowler, with which the representations show the Assyrians to have been familiar.

While there may be doubt whether we possess any Assyrian word signifying hooks, there can be none as to their existence and their employment.

From the absence of any, even conjectural, word for or representation of a float, we can only infer that ground bait fishing was the chief, perhaps the sole, line method in vogue.

I can find no evidence that the Assyrians availed themselves of the spear, the trident, drugs or poison, but as the first two figure in Egyptian, Jewish, and Roman records, and appear to be the common property of all early peoples, the probability is that they were known and used in the Two Rivers.

The fish of these resembled the fish of the Nile in their alleged refusal to rise to a fly, but our soldiers have caught on the fly hundreds of “salmon” of good weight up to 112 lbs. One (hand-lined) scaled 170 lbs., and one (speared) ran up to 215 lbs. This “salmon” is a kind of mahseer, the noblest of the carp family,[907] or, according to Mr. Tate Regan, a barbel, probably the species _Barbus esocinus_ described by Heckel as coming from the Tigris.[908]

The second method was by Netting, which to judge from its repeated occurrence either as a pursuit or in metaphor was universal, and prevailed far more extensively than line fishing, especially in Sumeria. The only Sumerian word, according to Dr. Langdon, for fishing, _ha-dib_ (one of the oldest words in the world for the act or occupation), signifies or is akin to a word signifying “to surround,” _i.e._ with a net, as does the Babylonian term _bâru_. If this be the case, Netting probably constituted their universal, possibly their only fishing.

In the eastern division of Assyria proper lie the main tributaries of the Tigris, such as the Zāb and the Diyālā, rising among the Kurdish mountains. As Netting was naturally more restricted in this area than in the Persian Gulf, line fishing possibly obtained more widely here than in the South.

At any rate it is from the Sumerian excavations that we derive a well-known example of metaphorical Net fishing. This is to be found in what till lately has been held to be a fine representation[909] of Ningirsu, the god of the Sumerian Telloh or Babylonian Lagash, triumphing over his enemies.

The Net full of prisoners symbolises the capture of the enemies of the city. To indicate the impossibility of escape (Jastrow continues), “a prisoner who has thrust his head out of one of the meshes is being beaten back by a weapon in the hands of the god.”[910] King further elaborates the scene; “The god grasps in his right hand a heavy mace which he lets fall upon the Net in front of him containing captives, whose bodies may be seen writhing and struggling like fish in the broad meshes. On the relief, the cords of the Net are symmetrically arranged: the rounded corners at the top show it as a Net formed of ropes and cordage.”[911] But later Sumerian scholars deny that Ningirsu has anything to do with the Net or even figures in the scene. On the _Stèle des Vautours_ the person represented is not a god, but a king, Eannatum, with captured soldiers enclosed in the Net (_Shusgal_). What is more, the king in the accompanying inscription, not only designates the Net as that of Enlil, the earth god, but also of Ninharsag, the mother goddess, of Enki, the water god, of Siu, the moon god, and of Shamash, the sun god. All the greater gods were supposed to carry nets: Ningirsu must certainly have possessed one, but neither he or it are depicted here.

FOOTNOTES:

[904] We sometimes find with an army crossing a river, as delineated in the sculptures, each soldier with the skin beneath his belly and paddling with his legs and arms, but retaining in his mouth one of the legs of the skin, into which he blows as into a bagpipe. The act of paddling across a big river, like the Euphrates, would of itself need all his breath; but King points out that the sculptor, in the spirit of primitive art, which, diffident of its own powers of portrayal or distrusting the imagination of the beholder, seeks to make its object clear by conventional devices, wishes to indicate that the skins are not solid bodies, and can find no better way of showing it than by making his swimmers continue blowing out the skins.

[905] _Five Great Monarchies_ (London, 1862-67), vol. I. p. 99.

[906] In each case Esarhaddon “cut off his head.” Both heads were sent to Nineveh for exhibition. Asur-bani-pal was a greater specialist in heads than his father: the head of any foe whom he particularly hated or feared, such as Teumann of Elam, was preserved by some method, and hung conspicuously in the famed gardens of the palace. A sculptured representation hands down the scene to us. The king reclines on an elevated couch under an arbour of vines: his favourite queen is seated on a throne at the foot of the couch: both are raising wine cups to their lips: many attendants ply the inevitable fly-flappers, while at a distance musicians are ranged. Birds play and flutter among the palm and cypress trees; from one dangles Teumann’s head on which the eyes of the king are gloating. Such is the picture drawn by de Razogin, _Ancient Assyria_ (London, 1888).

[907] See _The Fishing Gazette_, January 6, 1917.

[908] See _The Field_, March 15, 1919. The fish is said to attain a weight of over 300 lbs.

[909] See Planche I. of _Restitution de la Stèle des Vautours_, by Leon Heuzey.

[910] _Civilisation of Babylonia and Assyria_ (Philadelphia, 1915), p. 387.

[911] _A History of Sumer and Akkad_, _op. cit._ (1910), p. 131. The scene is shown in the Plate which fronts this section.