C64 SUPPLEMENT ON 



justly observes, with a view to humanize the people, that the 

 Egyptian sacred legislature aimed at inspiring them with a 

 horror of the sea, and proscribed the use of fish, while the 

 greatest attention to agriculture was enjoined : for the priest- 

 hood, in order to enforce their doctrines by example, continued 

 to abstain from that kind of food, long after they had conceded 

 it to the other castes, who could not be prevented from the use 

 of an aliment which a great river, and numerous canals and 

 lakes offered in abundance. 



It appears that before the religious institutions of Egypt 

 were in force, fish was eaten raw by the lowest castes, and the 

 practice survived the prohibition ; salted and sun-dried fish 

 being in use even now, in the upper country. The population 

 could not indeed have attained the density ascribed to it by 

 the ancients, even if we allow for considerable exaggeration, 

 without the use of fish to a great extent ; and although the 

 waters of Lake Mceris may not have been able to nourish 

 the enormous supply calculated by Lacepede *, still the Nile 

 and subordinate waters furnished so great a proportion of 

 food, as no doubt contributed materially to the early know- 

 ledge of different species. The mythological doctrines in 

 vogue during the most ancient periods of social institution 

 having adopted a symbolical mode of recording tenets which 

 had reference to the diluvian catastrophe, very generally 

 typified the patriarchs and the ark by emblems, where the 

 fish was always conspicuous. Dagon, Notuis the god-fish 

 who saved Isis; Venus flying from Typhon in the form of a 

 fish ; Vish-nou (Sanscrit) fish pilot ; Nataghi (Tatar) the swim- 

 mer ; Canon of Japan, &c. all refer to diluvian mythi. Also 

 when a particular species of fish more than any other was to 

 represent the ark, bearing the seeds of future reproduction, 



4 Lacepede affirms that Lake Mceris alone might produce more than 

 18,000,000,000 fish, of more than two feet long each. 



