FISHING METHODS
The relevance to fish and fishing of all the preceding matter, except
the last two sentences, may be challenged: a moment’s consideration,
however, shows that it is apposite.
The object of introducing these historical facts is to demonstrate (1)
the existence of an intercourse between Assyria and Egypt for certainly
fourteen hundred, possibly three thousand, years, (2) to show cause
for our astonishment at the absence of the Rod from all Mesopotamian
representation or records, and at the non-adoption of a weapon which
for centuries found favour with the Egyptians.
In my Jewish chapter I comment at length on the absence of any mention
of or allusion to the Rod in Israelitish literature and on the
unconvincing reasons advanced for this absence. Angling may have been
unsuited to the Semitic temperament, because it yielded less lucrative
returns than the Net.
Even if we grant that the ruling or only passion of this temperament
was for fishing “in plenty,” why, we are driven to ask, did both
nations condescend to fishing with hand-lines, which are not much more
productive than the Rod? If hand-lining was prompted by some instinct
of sport, why was Angling, the higher development of this instinct, not
also reached?
Of the four implements of Fishing, the Spear, the Rod, the Line and
Hook, and the Net, the Assyrians seem to have been acquainted only with
the last two, Line and Hook, and Net.
Examples of the former method occur in _Monuments of Nineveh_ (1st
Series). In Plate 39B, a man sitting on a terrace by a river is
depicted in the act of landing a fish; in Plate 67B, a man is wading
in a river with what seems to be identical with a creel. The first
was excavated, and subsequently re-buried at Nimroud, the latter
(also re-buried) at Kouyunjik. The second picture excites a livelier
interest, for two men well into their fish are shown in the water
astride the inflated skins of a goat—a method of crossing the Tigris as
habitual then as in the present year of our century.[904]
Despite Rawlinson’s sentence, “of early Chaldean (_i.e._ Sumerian)
there are found made of bronze materials chains, nails, and
fish-hooks,”[905] no specimen of a fish-hook, bronze or other, has been
as yet obtained in Mesopotamia. It is impossible thus to determine
whether the hooks were straight like those recorded by Plutarch, bent
like those of the Odyssey, or barbed. Cros, however, claims that Lagash
excavations yielded “copper fish hooks.” _Rev. d’Assyr._, vi. 48.
Representations also fail to help, probably because a hook, plain and
simple, hardly commends itself as a subject for artistic treatment.
Nor does the primitive Assyrian sculptor, however distrustful of the
imagination of the observer, go as far as to depict “by conventional
device” a hook inside the mouth of the fish which is being taken!
In the Assyrian language there is apparently no word for fish-hook.
From the resemblance between the Hebrew word _ḥōaḥ_, which means
both thorn and fish-hook, and the Assyrian word _ḥâḥu_, which, it is
alleged, means thorn, it has been conjectured that in the latter word
we have the Assyrian term for fish-hook. Professor S. Langdon, who in
a letter to me advances this conjecture, goes even farther—“in fact
_ḥâḥu_ is our only direct evidence for the practice of fishing with
hook and line in Assyria.”
Basing himself on a similar Hebraic resemblance, he would make the
Assyrian _ṣinnitān_, “two reins,” come from a supposed _ṣinnitu_, a
possible feminine of _ṣinnu_, which occurs perhaps in the sense of
“thorn,” and carry the same meaning as the Hebrew _ṣên_, which probably
equals “thorn,” while its plural _ṣinnōth_ does stand for “fish-hooks.”
He believes that in the word, _abarshu_, which Esarhaddon employs, “I
snatched him (Abdi-Milkuti, King of Sidon) as a fish from the sea,”
and again, of a chief of the Lebanon range who had rebelled and fled,
“I caught him from the mountains like a bird,” we have evidence of a
technical word for pulling or jerking out a fish with a line held in
the hand, or perhaps attached to a Rod, because “snatch” would hardly
be the appropriate term for the slower action involved in the drawing
in of a net.[906]
Whether in the first simile the suggestion is philologically valid is
a point for Assyrian scholars to determine. The adequate rendering
or explaining of Sumerian words by Assyrian ones is often difficult
and doubtful, for while the latter language is a great help to
understanding the former, the Assyrian, especially the later Assyrian,
equivalent does not entirely correspond to what would be expected from
a literal analysis of the Sumerian word. The second simile, I hold,
alludes to the Net of the fowler, with which the representations show
the Assyrians to have been familiar.
While there may be doubt whether we possess any Assyrian word
signifying hooks, there can be none as to their existence and their
employment.
From the absence of any, even conjectural, word for or representation
of a float, we can only infer that ground bait fishing was the chief,
perhaps the sole, line method in vogue.
I can find no evidence that the Assyrians availed themselves of the
spear, the trident, drugs or poison, but as the first two figure in
Egyptian, Jewish, and Roman records, and appear to be the common
property of all early peoples, the probability is that they were known
and used in the Two Rivers.
The fish of these resembled the fish of the Nile in their alleged
refusal to rise to a fly, but our soldiers have caught on the fly
hundreds of “salmon” of good weight up to 112 lbs. One (hand-lined)
scaled 170 lbs., and one (speared) ran up to 215 lbs. This “salmon” is
a kind of mahseer, the noblest of the carp family,[907] or, according
to Mr. Tate Regan, a barbel, probably the species _Barbus esocinus_
described by Heckel as coming from the Tigris.[908]
The second method was by Netting, which to judge from its repeated
occurrence either as a pursuit or in metaphor was universal, and
prevailed far more extensively than line fishing, especially in
Sumeria. The only Sumerian word, according to Dr. Langdon, for
fishing, _ha-dib_ (one of the oldest words in the world for the act or
occupation), signifies or is akin to a word signifying “to surround,”
_i.e._ with a net, as does the Babylonian term _bâru_. If this be the
case, Netting probably constituted their universal, possibly their only
fishing.
In the eastern division of Assyria proper lie the main tributaries of
the Tigris, such as the Zāb and the Diyālā, rising among the Kurdish
mountains. As Netting was naturally more restricted in this area than
in the Persian Gulf, line fishing possibly obtained more widely here
than in the South.
[Illustration: THE NET OF NINGIRSU (SO-CALLED).
From L. Heuzey, _Restitution matérielle de la stèle des Vautours_, Pl.
1, Fragment E.]
At any rate it is from the Sumerian excavations that we derive a
well-known example of metaphorical Net fishing. This is to be found
in what till lately has been held to be a fine representation[909]
of Ningirsu, the god of the Sumerian Telloh or Babylonian Lagash,
triumphing over his enemies.
The Net full of prisoners symbolises the capture of the enemies of the
city. To indicate the impossibility of escape (Jastrow continues), “a
prisoner who has thrust his head out of one of the meshes is being
beaten back by a weapon in the hands of the god.”[910] King further
elaborates the scene; “The god grasps in his right hand a heavy mace
which he lets fall upon the Net in front of him containing captives,
whose bodies may be seen writhing and struggling like fish in the
broad meshes. On the relief, the cords of the Net are symmetrically
arranged: the rounded corners at the top show it as a Net formed of
ropes and cordage.”[911] But later Sumerian scholars deny that Ningirsu
has anything to do with the Net or even figures in the scene. On the
_Stèle des Vautours_ the person represented is not a god, but a king,
Eannatum, with captured soldiers enclosed in the Net (_Shusgal_). What
is more, the king in the accompanying inscription, not only designates
the Net as that of Enlil, the earth god, but also of Ninharsag, the
mother goddess, of Enki, the water god, of Siu, the moon god, and of
Shamash, the sun god. All the greater gods were supposed to carry nets:
Ningirsu must certainly have possessed one, but neither he or it are
depicted here.
FOOTNOTES:
[904] We sometimes find with an army crossing a river, as delineated
in the sculptures, each soldier with the skin beneath his belly and
paddling with his legs and arms, but retaining in his mouth one of the
legs of the skin, into which he blows as into a bagpipe. The act of
paddling across a big river, like the Euphrates, would of itself need
all his breath; but King points out that the sculptor, in the spirit
of primitive art, which, diffident of its own powers of portrayal or
distrusting the imagination of the beholder, seeks to make its object
clear by conventional devices, wishes to indicate that the skins are
not solid bodies, and can find no better way of showing it than by
making his swimmers continue blowing out the skins.
[905] _Five Great Monarchies_ (London, 1862-67), vol. I. p. 99.
[906] In each case Esarhaddon “cut off his head.” Both heads were sent
to Nineveh for exhibition. Asur-bani-pal was a greater specialist in
heads than his father: the head of any foe whom he particularly hated
or feared, such as Teumann of Elam, was preserved by some method, and
hung conspicuously in the famed gardens of the palace. A sculptured
representation hands down the scene to us. The king reclines on an
elevated couch under an arbour of vines: his favourite queen is seated
on a throne at the foot of the couch: both are raising wine cups to
their lips: many attendants ply the inevitable fly-flappers, while at
a distance musicians are ranged. Birds play and flutter among the palm
and cypress trees; from one dangles Teumann’s head on which the eyes
of the king are gloating. Such is the picture drawn by de Razogin,
_Ancient Assyria_ (London, 1888).
[907] See _The Fishing Gazette_, January 6, 1917.
[908] See _The Field_, March 15, 1919. The fish is said to attain a
weight of over 300 lbs.
[909] See Planche I. of _Restitution de la Stèle des Vautours_, by Leon
Heuzey.
[910] _Civilisation of Babylonia and Assyria_ (Philadelphia, 1915), p.
387.
[911] _A History of Sumer and Akkad_, _op. cit._ (1910), p. 131. The
scene is shown in the Plate which fronts this section.