302 "THE NILE IS EGYPT" 



To Egypt, river or country, goes out the undying reverence 

 of all Anglers. Whether Egyptian or the Sumerian civihsation 

 were the older ; which of the two have left the earher signs 

 of a written language i ; 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 AngHng. 



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 2 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.^ 

 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 quahties 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 cHmatic 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. 



^ 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. 



« 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. n6, pi. 371. 



* Ibid., loc cit., pi. 370. 



