322 ABSTENTION FROM FISH 



brethren,! in whom some writers profess to discern an indigenous 

 and less progressive race. 



Were the records and art of Buto, for example, a capital 

 once ranking in importance and opulence with Thebes, available, 

 another story and another picture might confront us. Owing 

 in the main to humidity, our conceptions are perforce coloured 

 by the traditions of Upper Egypt, and thus at times liable to 

 deception. 



Is it, for instance, Ukely that the priests and denizens of the 

 Delta, where maritime commerce principally furnished their 

 prosperity, regarded the sea with the same loathing and dread 

 that the riverine priests and writers express ? Can we really 

 imagine the priests of Alexandria not eating salt because it 

 was " Typho's foam," or not speaking to pilots because they 

 do business on the great waters, or embelUshing their temples 

 with figures (like those at Sais) of an infant, an old man, a 

 hawk, a fish, and a sea-horse ? 



The meaning of these figures, according to Plutarch, 2 

 " is plainly this : O ! ye who are coming into or going out of 

 the world, God hateth impudence, for by the hawk is intended 

 God, by the fish hatred on account of the sea, as has been before 

 observed, and by the sea-horse impudence, the creature being 

 said first to slay his sire, and then force his mother." 



How and when did the abstention from fish arise ? Was it 

 originally a tabu observed by all, kings, priests, nobles, and 

 commons ? 3 Did the last come gradually to disregard or 



^ Their brawling in boats and carousing in drink are depicted. Cf. N. de G. 

 Davies, Tombs of El Gebrawi, Pt. II. (London, 1902), PI. V., and Newberry, 

 Beni Hasan, Pt. II., PI. IV., and Davies, Ptahhctep. Pt. II., PI. XIV., and Pt. I., 

 PI. XXI. In the XXth Dynasty the chastity of their wives was not a striking 

 characteristic. 



2 Op. cit., XXXII. 



^ Fish hieroglyphs are regarded by some as general determinatives for 

 words meaning " shame," " evil," etc. (cf. Plutarch, op. cit., 32), and by others 

 as merely phonetic determinatives (cf. Montet, op. cit., p. 48). That fish were 

 regarded as either enemies or emblems of enemies of the gods and of the kings 

 would seem to be borne out by the ceremony annually performed at Edfu, 

 where the festival calendar contains the following : " Fish are thrown on the 

 ground, and all the priests hack and hew them with knives, saying ' Cut ye 

 wounds on your bodies, kill ye one another : Ra triumphs over his enemies, 

 Horus of Edfu over all evil ones.' " The text assures us that " the meaning 

 of the ceremony is to achieve the destruction of the enemies of the gods and 

 king." Cf. Erman, Handbook oj Egyptian Religion, trs. by Griffith (London, 

 1907), p. 216. 



