Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

CHAPTER XXVABSTENTION FROM FISHThe statement, " the Nile contains all sorts and kinds of fish," ^must in an age of scientific enumeration be taken with severalgrains of salt.The total for the whole country, riverine andmarsh, reaches but seventy-one species, of which only two,Mormurops anguillaris and Haplochilus schcellen, are peculiarto Egypt. 2 A score or so find representation in ancient times ;but identification is far from easy, and is in some cases, e.g.the Mullets, only possible generically.In scenes of the return of Hatshepsu's expedition from theland of Punt the drawings of the fishes are so characteristicthat Prof. Doenitz has been enabled to determine their species,and identify them as belonging to the Red Sea. The powersof observation in the artists accompanying the ships demonstratecareful training. But I cannot, since the eyes of theSolea are similar, endorse the eulogism bestowed in the caseof a sole, unless it were a freak, " one eye is drawn largerthan the other, showing a fine observation of Nature " ^!The priests, the King, and the commonalty in some caseseschewed fish.Priestly abstention was by no means uncommon, assome of the temples of Poseidon * demonstrate. In Egyptthe observance was strict, at Askalon the reverse, Plutarch, ^^ Diodorus Siculus, I. 36.* Cf. G. A. Boulenger, Fishes of the Nile (London, 1907), and Pierre Montet,Les Poissons employes dans I'Ecrihire Hieroglyphique. Bulletin de I'lnstitutFran^ais d'Archeolcgie Orientale. Tome XL, 1913.' Egypt, Pt. IL p. 226. Baedeker, Leipsic, 1892.* Antea, p. 201.* De Iside el Osiride, c. 8.319