Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

390 FISH IN OFFERINGS, AUGURIES, ETC.Arabia (aswitness Mohammed's command against the use ofarrows, " an abomination of Satan's work ")i! more frequentlythan in Babylonia. There it attained but secondary importance.The general method required the shaking or shuffling beforethe image or the sacred place of the deity of a set of arrows.In the temple of Mecca the three important arrows were named.The Commanding, The Forbidding, The Waiting.Hepatoscopy : the liver among the Assyrians, the Jews, 2the Greeks, and the Etruscans, 3 contested with the heart thehonour of being the central organ of life. Its convulsive movements,when taken from the sacrificed victim, gave warnings ofthe future. So sacred was the liver held in Israel, that eatingit was forbidden : it had to be returned to the Giver of Life.^Fish were early utilised for the calendar of the year. Thesigns of the Zodiac showing Pisces, possibly derived fromconnection with the god of water, and Scorpio, possiblyrepresenting one of the Crustacea, date back to c.3000 b.c.^out that it meant originally " I pick up " or " collect " (the arrows of divination)and so both read and declare the will of heaven. See O. Schrader, PrehistoricAntiquities of the Aryan Peoples, trans. F. B. Jevons (London, 1890), p. 279.' Koran, Siir. v. 92.* Proverbs, vii. 23.' See, e.g. C. Thulin, Die Gotter des Martiamts Capella und der Bronzelebervo?t Piacenza, Gieszen, 1906.* Ency. Bibl., p. iiiS.* According to Langdon, Tammnz and Ishtar {op. cit.), p. 47, " Nina, awater deity, was identified at an early date with the constellation, Scorpio ; forthis reason her brother Ningirsu, also a water deity, was identified with oneof the stars of Scorpio."