Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

324 ABSTENTION FROM FISHMiddle Kingdom instances of fish being brought to the ownerof the tomb, and Maspero ^ one of the New Kingdom.Then, again, how about the famous representations of fish,both upon an altar and also on the face of an altar, in Capart'swork ? 2 These basalt statues (he holds) exhibit the Kingmaking offerings of fish ; others regard them merely as theKing marching at the head of the Nile gods, and himself representingthe great river, " the giver of all things good."Donations of fish were frequently made to the temples bythe Kings. Rameses III., for instance (as the Harris Papyrusdiscloses) presented thousands and thousands, labelled " dressed,cut up, and from the canal." ^These gifts were not for thepriests, but (probably) for their employes or the populace.We read (in the Hammamat Stele) of " the officers of theCourt Fishermen " attendant on Rameses IV. Their task,unlike that of a similar corps in the Chinese court whose duty{inter alia)was to manage the arrangements for the Emperor'ssport, principally consisted in securing " a plenty of fish " forthe enormous entourage and servants of the monarch.But the Pharaohs till Cleopatra were, as far as I can gather,personally as free from the sin of fishery,as the net offered tothe Syrian goddess in the epigram of Heliodorus.^The problem as to fish being offered or not to the gods orthe dead may possibly be solved, if we bear in mind thatwhile fish are never mentioned in the longer versions of theoffering texts of the Old Kingdoms, and are not represented inthe pictures of the food provided for the dead before the XllthDynasty, after that date some occasional instances to the contrarydo occur.^ Tombeau de Nakhti (Mem. de la Mission frangaise au Caire, vol. V.fasc. 3., Paris, 1893), Fig. 4, p. 480.* Les Monuments des Hycsos, Bruxelles, 1914. Connected with these andsomewhat confirming Capart appear to be two life-size figures of AmenemhatIII., in one of which the king is seated between two goddesses holding fish.' These offerings (15,500 dressed, 2,200 white fish, etc.) are named underthe heading, " Oblations of the festivals which the King founded for hisFather Amon-Re." But in the summary of the good deeds wrought for thegods by Rameses III. " I founded for them divine offerings of barley, wheat,wine, incense, fruit, cattle and fowl " —observe the complete silence as to fish,because these offerings were to the gods, not to the temples. Cf. Breasted,Ancient Records, IV., paragraphs 237, 243, and 363.* Antea, p. 123.