“THE NILE IS EGYPT”
This terse epigram seems foreshadowed by Homer, who calls the river (ὁ)
Αἴγυπτος, and the country (ή) Αἴγυπτος, thus indicating correctly that
Egypt is only the Nile valley.[748]
The all importance of the river to the country meets early and general
recognition. In a hymn[749] it is lauded as “the creator of all things
good”: solemn rituals from the earliest down to Mohammedan times
implored “a good Nile”: temples in its honour existed at Memphis,
Heliopolis, and Nilopolis: at Silsileh ceremonies and sacrifices,[750]
from time immemorial, welcomed its annual rise; magnificent festivals
were universal throughout the land.[751]
To Egypt, river or country, goes out the undying reverence of all
Anglers. Whether Egyptian or the Sumerian civilisation were the
older; which of the two have left the earlier signs of a written
language[752]; whether the Egyptian surpassed the Assyrian empire in
extent or magnificence—about all these points “disquisitions” (in
Walton’s word) have not ceased.
But to Egypt belongs the glory of holding in future and happy thrall
world-wide subjects, who salute, or rather should salute (had previous
writers not been reticent on the point) her (and not Assyria) as the
historical mistress and foundress of the art of Angling.
In my Assyrian and Jewish chapters I stress the remarkable absence,
despite the close and long connections of these nations with the land
of the Nile, of anything graven or written which indicates knowledge of
the Rod. In Egypt two instances of Angling are depicted: the first[753]
probably (to judge by his place on the register) by a servant or
fishing-ghillie as early as _c._ 2000 B.C., the second by a magnate
some 600 years later.[754]
The argument of silence—because a thing is not depicted or mentioned
it therefore never existed—often pushes itself unjustifiably. May
not absence of the Rod be an instance? Had Mesopotamia (it may be
further urged) been endowed with the atmospherical dryness of Egypt
and the consequent preservative qualities of its soil instead of a
widely-spread marsh-engendered humidity, would not scenes of Angling
there probably meet our eyes? Humidity may account for great losses in
Mesopotamia, but its toll in the Delta of Egypt was also heavy. This
large area has yielded, compared with the Upper Kingdom, inappreciable
returns.
But even if the country of the Two Rivers had possessed the same
climatic conditions as the Upper Kingdom, it could never have become to
the same extent the historical storehouse for posterity of the works
and records of ancient Man.
Difference in religious belief, for one thing, precluded. The
Sumerians, the first settlers recognised by history in the plains
of Shinar, conceived (as did their successors the Babylonians and
Assyrians) the next world to be a forbidding place of darkness and dust
beneath the earth, to which all, both good and bad, descended. Hence
burial under the court of a house or the floor of a room, often without
any tomb or coffin, or much equipment for the life beyond the grave,
was sufficient.
In belief and equipment the Egyptians differed _toto orbe_. For them
after death was pre-ordained a life to obtain which the body must be
preserved from destruction; otherwise it hastened to dissolution and
second death, _i.e._ annihilation. To avoid this fate, they resorted to
permanent tombs, embalmment, and mummification.
But as the Double, or _Ka_, of the departed (unlike the Soul, or _Ba_,
which fared forth to follow the gods) never quitted the place where
the mummy rested, daily offerings of food and drink for its sustenance
had to be placed in the chapel chamber of the richer tombs. Sooner or
later came the time when for reasons of expense, or other, the dead
of former generations found themselves neglected, and the _Ka_ was
reduced to seeking his food in the refuse of the town. To obviate such
a desecration, and ensure that the offerings consecrated on the day of
burial might for all time preserve their virtue, the mourners hit upon
the idea of drawing and describing them on the walls of the chapel.
Furthermore to make homelike and familiar his new abode, or the
“Eternal House” (in contrast to which the houses of the living were but
wayside inns) elaborate precautions were taken. We find depicted on
the walls of the chapel the lord of the domain, surrounded by sights
and pursuits familiar to him when alive. “The Master in his tomb,”
writes Maspero, “superintends the preliminary operations necessary to
raise the food by which he is to be nourished in the form of funerary
offerings: scenes and implements of sowing, harvesting, hunting,
fishing meet his eye.”
From these representations of actual life, intended for the comfort
of the dead, we, the living, are enabled not only to reconstruct in
part the manner and social economy of the Ancient Egyptians, but
also to gather, aided by excavated tackle, fairly accurate knowledge
of their various devices for catching fish. And so to the religious
conception which fostered the adornment of the tombs the gratitude of
all fishermen is due, and should be deep.
If the god Hapi, who is represented with the girdle of a fisherman
round his loins, and bearing lotus flowers, fowl, and fish, was hymned
by the people as “the Creator of all things good,” to the Father of
Rivers[755] the Father of History renders tribute for his gift of one
“thing good” which furnished to all, bar kings and priests, a stable
and staple food, fish.
Its economic importance can hardly be over-rated. Testimony as to its
cheapness and abundance is not wanting. Of such is the wail of the
poorer folk that the price of corn might be that of fish.[756] Not
less impressive rings the plaint of wandering Israel—even heaven-sent
manna apparently palls!—“we remember the fish we did eat in Egypt for
naught.” The Egyptians accounted the fish plague, next to the death of
the firstborn, as direst in result.
Confirmatory witnesses are Diodorus Siculus, who notes the great number
and the many varieties of fish found in the Nile,[757] and Ælian, who
neatly and truly characterises the aftermath of the annual inundation
as “a harvest of fish.”[758] Evidence, again, of “a plenty” of fish,
its pursuit, and its copious consumption fronts us in the prehistoric
kitchen-middens and in the bone or horn harpoons of pre-dynastic
graves. Later, the frequent tomb fishing-scenes and some textual
notices attest absence of dearth.
The numerous slate palettes in the pre-dynastic graves furnish Mr.
Bates with further proof, and with a new theory, which seems to me, if
ingenious, too ingenuous and too far-fetched.
The palettes,[759] almost invariably presenting the profile of only
those fishes, birds, or beasts that historic men pursued for food, were
intended (by the aid of colours extracted from the malachite, galena,
etc., crushed upon them) to establish an unpalpable, but, in human
eyes, very serviceable connection between the fisher and his prey.
One method of such connection consists in creating a likeness of the
intended quarry. Such a likeness, by the belief that the _simulacrum_
is actively _en rapport_ with that which it represents, bestows on the
possessor power over the original. “Cases,” Bates correctly adds, “of
this sort are the commonplaces of imitative magic.” Usually a hunting
or fishing amulet which simulates the form of the quarry was worn by
the owner, or attached to his gear.
The palettes themselves played the part of mere paint-stones, but their
supposed resident power might very efficaciously be transferred to its
proprietor by means of _the paint ground upon it_.
“Persons who go in pursuit of the crocodile,” says Pliny, “anoint
themselves with its fat.”[760] In the same way as the crocodile-hunter
thus assimilates himself to his quarry by a direct contagion, so the
owner of the palette could possess himself of the power in the slate
likeness by painting himself with the “medicine” ground upon it.
The validity, or otherwise, of the suggestion must be determined by
expert mythologists. The theory, to my mind, appears too far-fetched,
and breaks down from the introduction of an additional agency.
The fisher wearing an amulet or attaching a charm to his tackle,
and the fat-anointed crocodile hunter both supposedly have direct
connection with his quest.
But Bates’s solution demands four agents at work, the fisher, the
prey, the portrayed profile of the latter, and the palette; from these
the fisher extracts the desired power by decorating himself with the
paint made out of a fifth agency, the galena, etc. Here exists no
direct contagion as with the crocodile hunter, or direct connection
as with the amulet-wearing _piscator_. That such early men as the
pre-dynasties, though possessed of no insignificant a culture, should
reason by causation at a fifth remove, seems lacking in probability,
especially in a matter of primitive semi-religious belief, which is
ever slow, ever resentful of change.
FOOTNOTES:
[747] The illustration is reproduced by the kind permission of Prof.
Flinders Petrie.
The data for this essay had been collected and half of it written, when
I heard of an article on _Ancient Egyptian Fishing_ by Mr. Oric Bates,
in _Harvard African Studies_, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1917. While
somewhat disappointed of not being the first to write in English on the
subject, I was quickly reconciled by the fact that the task had fallen
to an experienced Egyptologist, whose monograph, while making necessary
the recasting of this chapter, bequeathed to me some new, if not always
convincing theories, and much technical and other data, the frequent
use of which I gladly acknowledge.
[748] _Od._, IV. 477, and XVII. 448. In _Th._ 338 of Hesiod, who,
though not a contemporary, flourished shortly after Homer, ὁ Νεῖλος
first appears. The Egyptians called it _Hapi_, but in the vernacular
language _Yetor_, or Ye-or = the River, or _Yaro_ = the great River.
[749] _Papyrus Sallier_, II. On the other hand, another hymn speaks
of the unkindness of the Nile in bringing about the destruction of
fish, but it is the river at its lowest (first half of June) that is
meant. See _Records of the Past, being English translations of ancient
monuments of Egypt and Western Asia_ (ed. S. Birch, vols. I.-XII.
1873-81), IV. 3, and _ibid._, new series (A. H. Sayce), III. 51.
[750] The yearly sacrifice of a virgin at Memphis may be doubted—at
least for the Christian age of Egypt, to which Arab writers wish to
attribute it.
[751] The Νειλῶα are described by Heliodorus, IX. 9.
[752] J. H Breasted, _A History of the Ancient Egyptians_, 1908, p. 47,
declares that the Egyptians discovered true alphabetical _letters_ 2500
years before any other people, and the calendar as early as 4241 B.C.
[753] P. E. Newberry, _Beni Hasan_ (London, 1893), Plate XXIX. Cf.
Lepsius, _Denk. Abt._, 2, Bl. 127; J. G. Wilkinson, _Manners and
Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_ (London, 1878), p. 116, pl. 371.
[754] _Ibid., loc. cit._, pl. 370.
[755] The Nile is the second longest river in the world (Perthes,
_Taschen Atlas_). The Egyptians believed that it sprang from four
sources at the twelfth gate of the nether world, at a place described
in ch. 146 of the _Book of the Dead_, and that it came to light at the
two whirlpools of the first cataract.
[756] Brugsch., _Dict. Supplem._, 1915. Cf. _Stèle de l’an_ VIII. _de
Rameses_ II., by Ahmed Bey Kamal (_Rec. trav._, etc., vol. 30, pp.
216-217). The King, as an instance of how well his workmen are provided
for, cites the fact that special fishermen are allotted to them.
[757] I. 36.
[758] _N. H._, X. 43, ἄμητος ἰχθύων.
[759] _Op. cit._, 204 ff.
[760] _N. H._, XXX. 8.