320 ABSTENTION FROM FISH 



confirming and amplifying Herodotus, i writes : — " The priests 

 indeed entirely abstain from all sorts : therefore on the 

 ninth day of the first month {Thoth), when all the rest of 

 the Egyptians are obliged by their religion to eat a fried fish 

 before the doors of their houses, they only burn them, not tasting 

 them at all, assigning as their reasons two, the second of which 

 — indeed, the most manifest and obvious — is that fish is neither 

 a dainty, nor even a necessary kind of food." 2 



But by the priests of Atargatis, to whose subjects ichthyo- 

 phagia was under pain of blains, boils, and other dire diseases 

 absolutely forbidden, fish boiled and roasted were daily offered, 

 and by them daily eaten. 3 



The religious ceremony in Thoth may have been merely 

 a later aspect of a taboo once possibly universal among the class 

 from which the priesthood largely drew, or may, perhaps, have 

 been prompted by the desire of obtaining a good fish harvest. 

 Apart from the uneconomic depletion of food entailed by the 

 prescribed eating, the killing of " the children " or possessions 

 of the deity seems hardly the best way to secure fruition of 

 such desire. 



If, however, the feast survived as a relic of Totemism, 

 the ceremony may possibly come within Robertson-Smith's 

 conception of the origin of all religious communion or sacra- 

 ments, i.e. a renewal of the connection between the god of the 

 Totem tribe with his people at a meal, where " the Totem 

 itself is sacrificed at an annual feast, with special and solemn 

 ritual." 4 



In the same way, eating of fish by the priests at Askalon 

 may have originated from the idea of bringing the deity and 

 his servants into closer relationship, and may have been 

 continued to impress their rehgious superiority on the mass of 

 the people, who were forbidden such food, and thus any direct 

 connection with their god. Although the practice was different, 

 the object of both priesthoods — enhancement of their religious 



^ n. 37. 



2 From the Trans, of S. Squire. 



3 Mnaseas, as quoted by Athenaeus, VIII. 37. 



* W. Robertson-Smith, The Religion of the Semites (Edinburgh, 1889), 

 p. 276. 



