Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

TOMB REPRESENTATIONS—ANGLERS' DEBT 303Difference in religious belief, for one thing, precluded.Sumerians, the lirstThesettlers recognised by history in the plainsof Shinar, conceived (as did their successors the Babyloniansand Assyrians) the next world to be a forbidding place ofdarkness and dust beneath the earth, to which all, both goodand bad, descended. Hence burial under the court of a houseor the floor of a room, often without any tomb or coffin, ormuch equipment for the hfe beyond the grave, was sufficient.In behef and equipment the Egyptians differed toto orbe.For them after death was preordained a lifeto obtain whichthe body must be preserved from destruction ; otherwise ithastened to dissolution and second death, i.e. annihilation.To avoid this fate, they resorted to permanent tombs, embalmment,and mummification.But as the Double, or Ka, of the departed (unlike the Soul,or Ba, which fared forth to follow the gods)never quitted theplace where the mummy rested, daily offerings of food anddrink for its sustenance had to be placed in the chapel chamberSooner or later came the time when forof the richer tombs.reasons of expense, or other, the dead of former generationsfound themselves neglected, and the Ka was reduced toseeking his food in the refuse of the town. To obviate sucha desecration, and ensure that the offerings consecrated on theday of burial might for all time preserve their virtue, themourners hit upon the idea of drawing and describing them onthe walls of the chapel.Furthermore to make homelike and familiar his newabode, or the " Eternal House " (in contrast to which the housesof the living were but wayside inns) elaborate precautionswere taken. We find depicted on the walls of the chapel thelord of the domain, surrounded by sights and pursuits familiarto him when alive. " The Master in his tomb," writes Maspero," superintends the preHminary operations necessary to raisethe food by which he is to be nourished in the form of funeraryofferings : scenes and implements of sowing, harvesting,hunting, fishing meet his eye."From these representations of actual hfe, intended for thecomfort of the dead, we, the living, are enabled not only to