Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

2^312 TACKLEappears to have found employment against Hippo. From thestick on whch the hanks of cord were wound, perhaps, cameits invention. 1 The most developed form shows merely anaxle run through holes in the ends of a semi-circular handle.The ends of the axle were set in handles, which to some extentfacilitated the process of winding up.The pursuit of the Hippo originated, Hke that of the foxin England, from economic causes, viz. the destruction wroughton crops, not on flocks and poultry. The beast in pre-dynastictimes existed in Lower Egypt, but by the end of the OldKingdom seems to have retreated to Upper Ethiopia. Pliny,however, speaking of its ravages at night on the fields indicatesits survival above Sais.'Diodorus Siculus,^ after surmising that if the Hippo weremore proUfic things would go hard with the Egyptian farmer,furnishes the details, but not the locus of a hunt. "It ishunted by many persons together, each being armed withiron darts." With the substitution of copper harpoons foriron darts, the description applies almost verbatim to some ofthe hunting scenes of the Old Kingdom.The Hook.—At the end of the pre-dynastic or beginningof the First Dynastic period the Hook, fashioned in no rudemethod, and wrought of no primitive material, but of copper,makes its appearance.From this it is clear that Egypt [a), can lay no claim tohave invented this method, and (6) had travelled many stageson the long road of piscatorial invention. The completeabsence in the Nile Valley of hooks of bone, flint, or shell whichoccur in so many neohthic centres in other parts of the worldadds confirmatory evidence.^ Cf. the hieroglyphs in Griffith's Hieroglyphs (London, 1898), PI. g,fig. 180, and text, p. 44. The more elaborate form is shown by Paget- Pirie,The Tomb of Ptah-hetep, bound in Quibell's Ramesseum, London, 1898.* Bates, p. 242.' A''. H., XXVIIL 831. Perhaps he derived his information from thenot-trustworthy Theriaca of Nicander, 566 ff.* L 35. He visited Egypt c. 20 b.c.' P. 243. From Newberry's Beni Hasan, there come, curiously enough,only two representations of Hippos and not one of a Hippo hunt. FromHerodotus, IL 71, we gather that, if the beast was elsewhere hunted, atPapremis it was traditionally sacred.