Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

3i8TACKLEa hand-net, and gripping the end with his toes, while a lad,preparing twine, rubs his spindle on his thigh, iActual specimens ofNet twine prepared from flaxen andother vegetable fibres were discovered at Kahun in balls oftwo-strand and of three-strand string of the Xllth Dynasty.Fragments of Nets " having | to f inch (i-2 to i-g cm.) mesh,the smallest being ^ inch (say 0*3 cm.) square," came to handat the same locality. 2Kahun 5delded also some fragments of later, probablyXVIIIth Dynasty, Nets, with meshes from 0-5 to 1-5 cm. andmade of coarser twine than the earlier examples, ^ whosefineness of mesh talhes with the small size of some of theancient needles.Weels or wicker fisher traps (especially in the Old Kingdom)come down to us either small (about i m. 50 long), simplyconstructed, and capable of manipulation by two men, or verylarge, of more complex fashioning internally, and requiringseveral men to handle. *Whether the Egyptians employed poisons, like most of theMediterranean nations, I have not discovered. As examples,they are impossible of survival ; for depictment of their actualuse not even the boldest Nilotic Cubist would have beenadequate, unless he imitated the Athenian artist by hieroglyphing" These be poisons " !1J. J. Tylor, The Tomb of Paheri (London, 1895), PI- VI., probably XVIIIthDyn.2 Petrie, Kahun, p. 28.^ Ibid., p. 34.* Illustrations of both kinds can be found in Steindorf's Das Grab des Ti,Pis. ex. and CXI.