CHAPTER XXXV

FISH—VIVARIA—THE FIRST INSTANCE OF POACHING

We find in two important sources of our knowledge of Assyria (proper) references to beasts or fishes of the sea and of the river.

The first occurs in _The Broken Column_ of Tiglath-Pileser I., in whose reign Assyria attained to high prosperity. This king, the first of that country to leave behind a detailed record of his achievements, was, as we have seen, a mighty hunter. After recounting his many military campaigns he adds in Column IV. a list of the beasts and fish which he had taken in his hunting expeditions. The text runs:—

1. The gods Ninurta and Nergal, who loved his priesthood, (the task) of hunting in the field, 2. Entrusted unto him, and in ships of the land of Arvad 3. he sailed, and he slew a mighty dolphin in the sea.[945]

Then follows a _catalogue raisonné_ of his famous Zoo, in which were collected the elephants, lions, mountain-goats, stags, dromedaries, which he captured himself or obtained (antedating Hagenbeck) “through merchants whom he had sent out,” and other numerous “wild beasts and fowl of the Heaven that fly, the work of his hands, their names together with (the number of) the beasts which my (_________) did not record ... have I recorded.” In addition to these, of which “he caused their herds to bring forth young,” we find—

29. “A great _pagûtu_, a crocodile, a hippopotamus (?), and beasts of the Great Sea, 30. the king of Musrê sent unto him and caused the people of his land to behold.”

We cannot determine what one of the subjects of this gift, “a great _pagûtu_,“ exactly was. _Tum-su-hu_ may possibly be the equivalent of the Egyptian _emsah_, Arabic _timsâh_, _i.e._ a crocodile. If so, Musrê must indicate Egypt.[946]

The Annals of Aṣur-Nasirpal form our second document of knowledge. The walls of his palace, lined with sculptures in relief, represent his exploits in the field of battle and in the chase. Details are most carefully and elaborately carved; the designs mark the acme of Assyrian art.

In Column III. he records[947]

“SOME MEN I TOOK ALIVE AND IMPALED THEM ON STAKES OVER AGAINST THEIR CITIES.[948]

AT THAT TIME I MARCHED INTO THE DISTRICT OF LEBANON, AND UNTO THE GREAT SEA.

IN THE GREAT SEA I WASHED MY WEAPONS AND I MADE OFFERING UNTO THE GODS.

THE TRIBUTE OF THE KINGS OF THE SEA FROM THE LANDS OF THE MEN OF TYRE AND SIDON AND ARVAD, WHICH LIETH IN THE MIDST OF THE SEA, SILVER AND GOLD AND A GREAT PAGÛTU AND A SMALL PAGÛTU AND IVORY AND A DOLPHIN, A CREATURE OF THE SEA, I RECEIVED AS TRIBUTE FROM THEM, AND THEY EMBRACED MY FEET.”

This “washing,” or as it has otherwise been rendered “dipping,” of a weapon in the sea is not to be taken, as it sometimes is, in a sense suggesting fishing by a harpoon or spear, or as typical of victory, but rather as a symbolical act of homage and propitiation to the unknown deities of the deep.

A later Assyrian king, Asurbanipal, no doubt from the value which the test of use in his many hunting expeditions afforded, regarded the dog from a point of view very different from that apparently taken by some of his subjects.

To judge by an old Assyrian prayer, “From the dog, the snake, and the scorpion, and whatever is baneful may Merodach preserve us,” the general feeling was that of fear.

But five clay models preserve for us representations of some of the king’s favourite hounds, with their names inscribed upon them. The appropriateness of their names betrays their master’s familiarity with canine traits, as we detect from _Chaser of the Wicked, Conqueror of the Foe, Biter of his Enemy, Mighty in his help, He crossed the road and did his bidding_![949]

At Harrān (according to al-Nadim), dogs were considered sacred and had offerings made unto them, a statement which is strengthened by the divine title at Harrān of _My Lord with the Dogs_, which seemingly points to Marduk and his four dogs, the name of one of which, _Iltebu_, “the Howler,” is as characteristic to-day as it was five thousand years ago.

In the Bible it is curious to note the low position of the dog. It is rarely spoken of with approval. Possibly the existence and proclivities of the numerous packs of pariah dogs account for the fact. Tobit seems the only person who makes his dog his companion, and then only when on journeys.[950]

Over two hundred kinds of fish are enumerated in the catalogue of Asurbanipal’s library at Nineveh: the attachment of the fish determinative constitutes our authority. No writer, even Dr. Boulenger, has classified or identified the fishes of Assyrian representations as thoroughly as Montet and others have those of the hieroglyphs.

The task would seem more formidable, for two reasons: first, the short time that cuneiform as compared with hieroglyph writing has been deciphered, and the wider study which Egyptian excavation has attracted; and second, the Assyrian artist treated his subjects more generally and more conventionally than his _confrères_ in Egypt. Although in the sea and river scenes fish and shells are introduced, scarcely any distinctions mark particular ichthyic species. Contrast with this the representations of the return of Hatasu’s expedition from the land of Punt or Arabia. Here the artists depict the fishes so characteristically that Doenitz has identified them as belonging to the Red Sea, and even determined the species of each.

We can recognise in the rivers, crabs, sometimes with a fish caught in their claws, eels (or water-snakes), and small turtles. When the sculptor wished to indicate the sea, he made these fish larger, and to emphasise his point added others, which are only inhabitants of salt water, _e.g._ the star-fish.[951]

Within the last five years identification[952] of Mesopotamian fish has been carried further by Dr. Harri Holma of Helsingfors,[953] and by Professor Langdon.[954]

From the latter I take the following list:—

“1. The _buradu_, of the skate and ray type. This flat fish is the most common of all species in Southern Babylonia from the earliest historical period. The Sumerians knew it as the _suḥuru_ fish, and speak of it as ‘bearded,’ referring to a kind of skate fish with long hairs about the mouth. They mention also the ‘goat-skate,’ and the ‘lower lipped skate.’ Dr. Holma’s statement (p. 96) that the _suḥuru_ cannot be the skate, turbot, or plaice, because these have no beards, has been contraverted, since fish of the skate type often have long feelers at the mouth resembling a beard.

“2. The _kuppû_, said to be the _rhombus maximus_.

“3. The _šênu_, in Greek σάνδαλον, in Latin _solea_, in English ‘sole.’ _S̆ênu_ means ‘sandal’ in Babylonian.

“4. _Sêlibu_, or ‘fox fish,’ perhaps so-called from its slyness; probably _Alopecias vulpes_.

“5. The _kalbu_, ‘dog-fish,’ said to be the Greek καρχαρίας κύων.

“6. The _piazu_, ‘pig-fish,’ _Galeus canis_, ‘sea sow,’

“7. The _puḥadu_, ‘lamb fish,’ perhaps _Pelecus cultratus_.

“8. The _balgu_, a fish well known in all periods, and said to be the same as the widely spread Mongolian _balyq_, the ordinary word for fish in Turkish; in some parts the sword fish, in others the ‘bull head.’

“9. The _qarshu_, probably the ‘shark,’ or a fish of prey of the Persian Gulf.

“10. The _gallabu_, ‘barber,’ not yet identified.

“11. The _simunu_, ‘swallow fish,’ by some identified with the ‘flying fish.’

“12. The _zingur_, supposed to be the ‘sturgeon.’”

Other fish names, especially Sumerian, remained unidentified till (in May, 1918), Langdon translated the only hymn (yet published) to Ninâ, the Fish Goddess, and spouse of Tammuz. Among its twelve fish we get the ‘electric fish’ (query the νάρκη), the ‘nun fish,’ the ‘fire fish of the sea,’ and the ‘swallow fish.’ The touching lines bewailing the death of Tammuz are, alas! imperfect.[955]

Fish abounded in the Two Rivers. Euphrates fish were so plentiful that they could be caught simply in one’s hand, apparently without any “tickling.”[956] The coast folk could not cope with their catches.[957] Wicker traps, automatically opened and shut by the tides, yielded their “harvest of ocean.”

Sluice gates were far commoner in Assyria than in Palestine. The numerous rivers, and scientific system of irrigation which from earliest ages threaded Sumeria and later on Western Assyria, account for the frequency.

According to Sir W. Willcocks, “The granary of the ancient is destined to be that of the modern world.” The success of the irrigation works, at Hit and elsewhere, may verify his prediction.[958]

_Vivaria_, or fish-dams, known only late in Palestine, were early and generally constructed in Mesopotamia. As adjuncts of Sumerian temples, they can be traced as far back as 2500 B.C. No decent-sized township eventually lacked, or could afford to lack, these _piscinæ_ with their ever-ready supply of fresh fish.

The keeper, or fisherman, attached to the temples (according to Langdon) seems to have been called _Essad_, a term which subsequently came to mean Tax Gatherer. It is open to doubt whether the latter meaning can, as has been suggested, be derived from or connected with the former on account of his extraction of a toll for fish caught by the public in the stew-ponds of the priests, or of a percentage, in lieu of pay, of the fish caught by him for use in the temples.

How real was the importance attached to fish, and how recognised its value as a food, can be discerned from early Sumerian documents. The excavations of Telloh furnish an elaborate description of the new temple built by Gudea in honour of Ningirsu. We read that with this god went also other deities, such as his musician, his singer, his cultivator of lands, and his guardian of fishponds.[959]

Then, again, among the officials who were deprived of office by Urukagina, on account of the profits illegally secured by farming out the public revenue, we come across the _Inspectors of Fisheries_. The drastic reforms and the thorough cleansing of the bureaucracy initiated by this monarch sprang from his desire to improve the condition of his poorer subjects, who for years had suffered from the oppression of the rich or the venality of public functionaries. How general and how numerous _vivaria_ had early become shows in the plaint that “if a poor man built himself a fishpond, his fish was taken; he received neither payment nor redress.”

A document of the twenty-first century brings to light further evidence of the economic importance of fish and of the rights of fishing, and what to us modern fishermen is of intenser interest—the first case on record of Poaching!

This occurred in the reign of Samsu-iluna, the successor to the great Hammurabi. The latter’s Code of laws of 287 sections was considered on its discovery some twenty years ago to be a Digest of Babylonian decisions, but the recent finding of a clay tablet, clearly the prototype of the Code, proves its Sumerian origin.

It not only illuminates vividly the social and economic conditions of Babylon, but established for generations the status, the rights, the duties flowing from contracts or arising from injury.

Its scope is curiously wide. It includes, for instance, provisions to meet such rare cases as injuries which resulted in the miscarriage of women. The similarity of enactment in these cases and in divorces demonstrates _inter alia_ how marked was the Code’s influence on the Mosaic legislation some seven centuries later.

Every one of Hammurabi’s subjects could by its help acquire a clearer conception of his individual property. The letter or rescript of Samsu-iluna shows that rights of fishing were acknowledged and enforceable.

The Rescript runs:—

“UNTO SIN-IDINNAM, KAR-SIPPAR, AND THE JUDGES OF SIPPAR SAY, THUS SAITH SAMSU-ILUNA. THEY HAVE REPORTED (UNTO ME) THAT THE SHIPS OF THE FISHERMEN GO DOWN UNTO THE DISTRICT OF RABĪM AND TO THE DISTRICT OF SHAKANĪM AND CATCH FISH. I AM THEREFORE SENDING (UNTO THEE) AN OFFICIAL OF THE PALACE GATE. WHEN HE SHALL REACH THEE, THE SHIPS OF THE FISHERMEN WHICH ARE IN THE DISTRICT OF SHAKANĪM (SHALT THOU ...[960]) AND THOU SHALT NOT AGAIN SEND THE SHIPS OF THE FISHERMEN DOWN INTO THE DISTRICT OF RABĪM OR THE DISTRICT OF SHAKANĪM.”[961]

This letter confirms what had previously been only surmised, _viz._ that the inhabitants of certain districts had enjoyed the exclusive right of fishing in their home waters. “It has already been inferred,” King continues, “that the duty of repairing the banks of rivers and canals, and of clearing the waterways, fell upon the owners of property along the banks, and it was no doubt as a compensation for this enforced service (or _corvée_) that the fishing in these waters was preserved.”

Mesopotamia and Armenia did not lack in fish of unusual, even fatal, properties. Thus of certain fishes near Babylon Ælian tells us[962] on the authority of Theophrastus, when the irrigation streams were without water, they remained in any small hole which was moist or held a little water, and were able to find a living in the herbage which grew in the dry channels, etc. Pliny (IX. 83) gives a somewhat similar story but a more detailed description of these fish, which “have heads like sea-frogs, the remaining parts like gudgeons, but the gills like other fish.” Emerging from their water holes, they travel on land for food, moving along with their fins, aided by a rapid movement of their tail. If pursued, they retreat to their holes and make a stand.

He notices too the stay-at-homeness of the fish in the Tigris and of those in the lake Arethusa. Though the river flows in and out of the lake, the denizens of the one are never to be found in the other. We discern the reason for such estranged relations in his previous sentence, “the waters of the lake support all weighty substances and exhale nitrous vapours.”[963] Ktesias mentions a spring in Armenia, the fishes of which are quite black and, if eaten, prove instantly fatal.[964]

The only spring of sweet-smelling water “in toto orbe,” Chabura, lies in Mesopotamia. The reason (according to legend) for its possessing this unique property was because in it the Queen of Heaven, Juno, or presumably her Babylonian counterpart, was wont to bathe.[965] But Pliny fails to indicate whether the unique scent was an effort of Nature to supply a bath meet for the Queen of Heaven, or was merely a by-product of her lavation. Possibly the fish of Chabura (like the thyme fish) exhaled a “most sweet scent,” and so effected “the sweet smelling.” But probably to preserve their power, “they will come to feed from men’s hands.”[966]

I have adduced sufficient proof that fish were plentiful in Mesopotamia. Additional testimony has needlessly been sought in Professor Sayce’s now fairly accepted suggestion that the ideogram for Nineveh implies the House of the Waters or of Fish.[967]

Another explanation of Nineveh as _The Lady of the Waters_ deduces from Ninâ (said to be a daughter of Ea and a fish goddess) lengthening into Nineveh. But the term _The Lady_, _i.e._ The Lady _par excellence_, in Assyrian especially applies to Bêlit the spouse of Asur, who became generally identified with Ishtar of Nineveh.[968]

If _The Lady of the Waters_ translate correctly the ideogram of Nineveh, the term may have sprung from a temple to this reputed Fish Goddess standing in that city. But even if the existence of such a temple can be inferred, its original site probably lay in Sumerian Lagash, not in Nineveh.

FOOTNOTES:

[945] _Annals of the Kings of Assyria_, by Budge and King (1903), p. 138. ‘Dolphin’ is the translation of _Nakhiri_, doubtless from the same root, which in Arabic is _Nakhara_, to spout, and occurs in the same sense in Syriac and Ethiopic. In view of the evidence of Pliny and other authors as to the former existence of the whale in the Mediterranean, I suggested to Professor King an alternative rendering of _nakhiri_ as ‘whale,’ and he informed me he accepts my suggestion as the more probable of the two.

[946] Another translation (_R. Asiatic Proc._, XIX. pp. 124-5) renders these lines “creatures of the Great Sea which the King of Egypt had sent as a gift, and entrusted to the care of men of his own country,” either as carriers or permanent attendants. But see p. 53 of the Introduction to _The Annals of the Kings of Assyria_, _op. cit._ Dr. St. Clair Tisdall writes: “If _Nam-su-hu_ (Budge and King’s translation) be right, it is evidently the Egyptian name ’_msuhu_ = crocodile, with the plural _Na_ prefixed. Egypt in Arabic is still _Mīsr_.”

[947] _Op. cit._, Introduction, pp. 372 ff.

[948] The Assyrians, probably from having no admixture of the softer Sumerian blood, from living in a less enervating climate, and from Hittite influence, stand out as more virile, fiercer fighters, and crueller foes than the Babylonians.

[949] W. Hayes Ward, _op. cit._, p. 418, states the dog appears in cylinders very early—chiefly as guardian of the flock. Cf. Figures 391, 393, 394, 395. He is seen in the late Babylonian: cf. Figs. 549, 551, 552, and later still in hunting scenes, Figs. 630, 1064, 1076 and 1094, which last shows in a very spirited manner four dogs in a fight with two lions. The dog running away is fairly “making tracks!”

[950] Cf. Tobit v. 16, and xi. 4.

[951] Layard _Monuments of Nineveh_ (_op. cit._), vol. II. p. 438.

[952] The identification, which is avowedly more of a philological than a scientifically zoological nature, is in the cases of Nos. 2 and 3 a “terminological inexactitude,” for as Dr. Boulenger’s lists show, neither the turbot nor the sole occur in the Persian Gulf. Cf. _Proc. Zoological Society_, 1887, p. 653; 1889, p. 236, and 1892, p. 134.

[953] Monograph, _Kleine Beiträge zum assyrischen Lexicon_ (Helsingfors, 1912).

[954] _Sumerian Grammar_ (London, 1917), p. 60.

[955] _Proc. of Soc. of Biblical Archæology_ (London, May, 1918), p. 83.

[956] Lewysohn’s (_Zool. d. Talmud_, 248, as quoted by Keller, _op. cit._, p. 330) “Euphrat heisst etymologisch der fischreiche” is far from generally accepted. The river in Babylonian is _Purattu_, pronounced by the Persians _Ufratus_, which became when borrowed by the Greeks, _Euphrates_. So far from meaning rich in fish, Langdon traces the name to the Sumerian _buranna_, _burnuna_, meaning great basin.

[957] Diod. Sic., III. 22.

[958] See General Marshall’s _Report on Mesopotamian Campaign_ in _The Times_, Feb. 21, 1919.

[959] _History of Sumer and Akkad_ (London, 1910), p. 268.

[960] The hiatus probably may be filled by the word “recall,” or “bring away.”

[961] _Letters of Hammurabi_ (London, 1898-1900), vol. III. pp. 121-3, L. W. King.

[962] _N. H._, V. 27.

[963] _N. H._, VI. 31.

[964] _Ibid._, XXXI. 19.

[965] _N. H._, XXXI. 22.

[966] _N. H._, XXXII. 7.

[967] _Hibbert Lecture_ (London, 1887), p. 57.

[968] On the ancient goddess Ninâ, see Langdon, _Tammuz and Ishtar_ (London, 1914). There is no known representation of Ninâ. Of Bêlit, or Ishtar, many exist; of Ishtar _arma ferens_ that on a seal in _Tammuz and Ishtar_, Plate I., No. 1, is perhaps the best.