Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

412 ROD NOT EMPLOYED—REASONSeven of a mild understudy to Ashur-bani-pal. i The Biblegives but two—^Esau's brother scarcely ranks as one—huntercharacters: Esau " a cunning hunter," and Nimrod " a mightyhunter before the Lord." Even the latter of these two heroeswas no Israelite, but a king " of Accad," a Sumero-Assyrian,whom some writers identify with Gilgamesh.Such indifference to or aversion from the chase cannoteither at the time of the invasion of Palestine (Exodus xxiii. 29),or subsequently be ascribed to the lack of wild beasts or ofgame, for we read of lions, bears, jackals, foxes, etc., and ofhart, fallow deer, and antelope.Two reasons—neither, to my mind, satisfactory—^have beenadvanced to explain this attitude as regards hunting, a pursuitwhich admittedly has played, both as a necessity and a pastime,an important part in the education and evolution of mankind.The first :the Hebrews, as described in the Old Testament,had already reached the stage of pastoral nomads, when" hunting, which is the subsistence of the ruder wanderer, hascome to be only an extra means of life." 2The second : the Hebrews, hampered perhaps by certainpeculiarities of their religion, or on account of the density ofthe population were not often induced " to revert for amusementto what their ancestors had been compelled to practisefrom necessity." 3Either, or both, of these reasons might have carried weight,had it not been for the existence hard by in Assyria of a people,among whom, although sprung from the Semitic stock, huntingwas a recognised and popular pastime, and this despite apopulation far denser.Nor, again, when we compare the culture of the two nations,can LacepMe's previously quoted dictum that in civilisationthe fisher nation is usually more advanced than the hunter^ It is fair to record that some of the Assyrian monarchs preferred a battlemid safer surroundings, for in representations the head keepers are seenletting the lions, etc., out of cages for their royal master to pot ! Parks(TrapaSeitroi) and districts were strictly preserved by both AssjTian andPersian rulers ; in England for several reigns the penalty for poaching in theNew and other Royal Forests was death.- E B. Tylor, Anthropology (London, 1881), p. 220.' M. G. Watkins, Gleanings from Natural History (London, 1885), ch. 10.