Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

302 "THE NILE IS EGYPT"To Egypt, river or country, goes out the undying reverenceof all Anglers. Whether Egyptian or the Sumerian civihsationwere the older ; which of the two have left the earher signsof a written language i ; whether the Egyptian surpassed theAssyrian empire in extent or magnificence—about all thesepoints " disquisitions " (in Walton's word) have not ceased.But to Egypt belongs the glory of holding in future andhappy thrall world-wide subjects, who salute,or rather shouldsalute (had previous writers not been reticent on the point)her (and not Assyria)of the art of AngHng.as the historical mistress and foundressIn my Assyrian and Jewish chapters I stress the remarkableabsence, despite the close and long connections of these nationswith the land of the Nile, of anything graven or written whichindicates knowledge of the Rod. In Egypt two instances ofAngling are depicted : the first 2 probably (to judge by hisplace on the register) by a servant or fishing-ghillie as earlyas c.2000 B.C., the second by a magnate some 600 years later.^The argument of silence—because a thing is not depictedor mentioned it therefore never existed—often pushes itselfunjustifiably. May not absence of the Rod be an instance ?Had Mesopotamia (it may be further urged) been endowed withthe atmospherical dryness of Egypt and the consequentpreservative quahties of its soil instead of a widely-spreadmarsh-engendered humidity, would not scenes of Anglingthere probably meet our eyes ? Humidity may account forgreat losses in Mesopotamia, but its toll in the Delta of Egyptwas also heavy. This large area has yielded, compared withthe Upper Kingdom, inappreciable returns.But even if the country of the Two Rivers had possessedthe same cHmatic conditions as the Upper Kingdom, itcouldnever have become to the same extent the historical storehousefor posterity of the works and records of ancient Man.^J. H Breasted, A History of the Ancient Egyptians, 1908, p. 47, declaresthat the Egyptians discovered true alphabetical letters 2500 years before anyother people, and the calendar as early as 4241 B.C.« P. E. Newberry, Beni Hasan (London, 1893), Plate XXIX. Cf. Lepsius,Denk. Abt., 2, Bl. 127; J. G. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the AncientEgyptians (London, 1878), p. n6, pi. 371.* Ibid., loc cit., pi. 370.