Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

special interest.NETS—GENERAL METHOD 317Apart from that of Zau himself " dressed insporting attire " and spearing fish from a papyrus skiff, theartist in another has let himself go more freely.Not content to show what is happening above the surfaceof the pool, he breaks through all embarrassing congruities inorder to display the crowded scene below, without which hissubject would not have been completely set forth. The watersextend also to the left, where seven fishermen haul into a boata drag-net full of fish, which include, as in the tomb of Aba,eight different species. Hippopotami and crocodiles do not failto appear : evenreeds, is remembered. 1the humble frog, who sits among the waterNetting obtained more widely than its depictments, inproportion to those of Harpooning and AngHng, indicate.Representationsof the latter methods occur nearly always in thedurable tomb-chapels of the rich, who from their ampler leisuremore often ensued sport, while the professional fisherman, likehis Greek and Roman brother, came of the tribe whose badgewas poverty. Then, too, it must be remembered that theNetsmen mainly inhabited the Delta, which from reasons ofhumidity has yielded fewer pictures of life.Practically every kind of Net known to the ancient worldfound employment in Lower Egypt, as the Ust drawn up byJuUus Pollux, by birth himself a Deltan, makes clear. Therepresentations give us many Nets. The hand, the double-hand,the cast (most rarely), the stake, the seine, etc., all find place.Weights of stone, but none of lead (according to Bates), meetour eyes in the monuments. 2Netting needles range from pre-dynastic to Roman times.The first, of a very simple type, are merely flat pieces of bone,pointed at each end, and pierced in the middle. ^ Net-makingand Net-mending scenes are not absent. In one of the latterof naturaUstic turn, shows an old fisherman mendingthe artist,^ N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrawi (1902), Pt. II. PI. V-* p. 259. The reason assigned is not convincing ": No lead weights aredepicted on the monuments, for by the time they were introduced the artistwas devoting himself to mythological and religious scenes." Petrie, Kahun,Qurob, and Hawara, p. 34, however, assigns some weights of lead from Kahunto XVIIIth Dyn.' Cf. Petrie, Abydos (London, 1902), pi. 41,