Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

32386 FISH IN OFFERINGS. AUGURIES, ETC.from the grave (sometimes cited as an instance of necromancy)," the place where was the worm that devoured, and where allwas cloaked in dust." *The Hymn of the Descent of Ishtarinto Hell goes farther :" To the land whence none return, the place of darkness,To the house wherein he who enters is excluded from the light,To the place where dust is their bread and mud their food."The very curious bronze of the Le Clerq collection in Paris,in which ichthyic garments and gods of the under-world,Arallu, occur, must be my excuse for this too lengthy and almostfishless digression on the Babylonian dead. It shows severalfigures, two clad in garments of the form of a fish, with theirscales very visible.Two explanations of the bronze have been offered. Thefirst, hitherto generally accepted, suggests that the figuresare representations of the gods of the under-world, or of thedead waiting on a sick person, together with some demons ofthe under-world and two priests wearing fishlike raiment.My friend Professor Langdon has furnished me with anotherexplanation, more detailed and more interesting.This so-called representation of a scene in the lower worldfrom a bronze talisman has been misunderstood. The obversehas three registers.In the upper register are depicted the sevendevils, all with animal heads, in attitude of ferocious attackupon a human soul. The middle register represents a sick manwho is supposed to be possessed by the seven devils. He liesupon a bed. At his head and feet stand two priests eacharrayed to appear like fish : these are symbolic of Ea, god of thesea and patron of all magic. They clothed themselves in a^ Gilgamesh here learns how infinitely better is the condition of those towhom the rites of burial have been paid, compared with that of those whohave been unburied. K. F. Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian Literature(New York, 1901), 363 ff.'^The Hebrew conception of Sheol coincides in regarding it as " a land whencenone return," Job vii. 9-10 ; as " a place of darkness," Job x. 21-22 ;as a place of " dust," Psalm xxx. 9, and Job xvii. 16.' Priests dressed as fish or with some fish-like raiments often attend theSacred Tree (see Ward, op. cit., Nos. 687, 688, 689). These are held by some tobe genii of the deep. In Ward, No. 690, two fish-men are guarding the Tree ofLife.