Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

322 ABSTENTION FROM FISHbrethren,! in whom some writers profess to discern an indigenousand less progressive race.Were the records and art of Buto, for example, a capitalonce ranking in importance and opulence with Thebes, available,another story and another picture might confront us.Owingin the main to humidity, our conceptions are perforce colouredby the traditions of Upper Egypt, and thus at times liable todeception.Is it,for instance, Ukely that the priests and denizens of theDelta, where maritime commerce principally furnished theirprosperity, regarded the sea with the same loathing and dreadthat the riverine priests and writers express ? Can we reallyimagine the priests of Alexandria not eating salt because itwas " Typho's foam," or not speaking to pilots because theydo business on the great waters, or embelUshing their templeswith figures (like those at Sais) of an infant, an old man, ahawk, a fish, and a sea-horse ?The meaning of these figures, according to Plutarch, 2" is plainly this : O ye who are coming into or going out of!the world, God hateth impudence, for by the hawk is intendedGod, by the fish hatred on account of the sea, as has been beforeobserved, and by the sea-horse impudence, the creature beingsaid first to slay his sire, and then force his mother."How and when did the abstention from fish arise ? Was itoriginally a tabu observed by all, kings, priests, nobles, andcommons ? 3 Did the last come gradually to disregard or^ Their brawling in boats and carousing in drink are depicted. Cf. N. de G.Davies, Tombs of El Gebrawi, Pt. II. (London, 1902), PI. V., and Newberry,Beni Hasan, Pt. II., PI. IV., and Davies, Ptahhctep. Pt. II., PI. XIV., and Pt. I.,PI. XXI. In the XXth Dynasty the chastity of their wives was not a strikingcharacteristic.2 Op. cit., XXXII.^ Fish hieroglyphs are regarded by some as general determinatives forwords meaning " shame," " evil," etc. (cf. Plutarch, op. cit., 32), and by othersas merely phonetic determinatives (cf. Montet, op. cit., p. 48). That fish wereregarded as either enemies or emblems of enemies of the gods and of the kingswould seem to be borne out by the ceremony annually performed at Edfu,where the festival calendar contains the following :" Fish are thrown on theground, and all the priests hack and hew them with knives, saying Cut ye'wounds on your bodies, kill ye one another : Ra triumphs over his enemies,Horus of Edfu over all evil ones.' " The text assures us that " the meaningof the ceremony is to achieve the destruction of the enemies of the gods andking." Cf. Erman, Handbook oj Egyptian Religion, trs. by Griffith (London,1907), p. 216.