Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

4o8ROD NOT EMPLOYED—REASONSTo most of us unacquainted with the making of bricks thecruelty of the Pharaonic command, " There shall be no strawgiven you, yet shall ye dehver the tale of bricks," seems toconsist in demanding from the sojourners the same quantityof output without their possessing, as the Egyptian workersdid possess, an essential constituent in the brick-straw.But Petrie points out that straw, so far from being anessential of the mixture, is absent from most ancient andmodern bricks. The complaint arose because finely choppedstraw is very useful for preventing the mud from sticking tothe hand, for dusting over the ground, and for coating eachlump before dropping it in the mould, thus enabling the workto go on quickly and easily. From the strawless Jew, however,was extorted for the same hours a tale of bricks equal to thatof the Eg3rptian enjoying these advantages.In direct opposition to Petrie, Maspero states, and Erman ^agrees, that the ordinary Egyptian brick, both ancient andmodern, is " a mere block of mud, mixed with chopped strawand a httle sand."Other reasons for the Jewish unfamiliarity with the Rod,viz. its merely local use, and their settlement in the NorthEast of Egypt remote from " the River of Egypt," would fullybe met, were it not for Isaiah, with the simple statement thatat present they can neither be proved nor disproved.But the words of Isaiah xix. 8, " The fishers also shalllament, and all they that cast angle into the Nile shall mourn,"surely demonstrate—if we allow that " cast angle " is theproper technical translation, and that the two words cannotmean the mere throwing of a hook with a hand-hne—that theIsraehtes during the 430 years (Exodus xii. 40) of their sojournin Egypt did acquire familiarity with the methods of fishingemployed by their taskmasters.Still, even if we take it as proved that for some reasonAngUng was at the time of the Exodus an unknown art to theJews, why with all the intercourse of the subsequent centuries1 Egyptian Archeology (1902), 3-4. Erman, op. cit., 417. The Englishtranslators state that the bricks were usually unburnt and mixed with shortpieces of straw.