FISH AS QUEENS' PIN-MONEY, AND TAXES 335 



a net instead. ^ By day it serves to catch fish, while at night 

 he spreads it over the bed in which he is to rest and creeping 

 in goes to sleep underneath." While struck by the resemblance 

 to Goldsmith's article of furniture, 



" A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day," 

 we are forced once more to " scrat head," and very hard. 

 Imagination reels before the mesh of a Net, capable alike of 

 catching a marketable fish and denying a gnat ! 



Fish intended for immediate use were usually dressed on 

 the boat and quickly dispatched to market ; the rest of the 

 catch was opened ashore, split, salted, and hung to dry in the 

 sun. Pictures 2 of all these operations, and examples of 

 splitting knives, survive. Splitting in the earlier eras, for some 

 reason, ran, not sheer down the back, but always rather to one 

 side or other. 



Promptness of curing in a hot climate like Egypt was all 

 important. Diodorus, indeed, tells us that practically all fish 

 were at once pickled or salted, a statement confirmed by Julius 

 Pollux's mention of the Egyptian tariche, especially that from 

 Canopus, being exported ^ far and wide, certainly to Palestine, 

 whither " the Egyptian fish came in baskets or barrels." * 



Prices of wheat, honey, fish and other wares occur in 

 Spiegelberg's work,^ but no attempt is made by him (as far 

 as I know) to correlate the prices in ancient and modem Egypt. 



I essay the task more as a jeu d' esprit than for any result 

 of economic value, by means of the Mugil capita. This grey 

 mullet has been identified with the ancient 'Ad, a fish which 

 figures frequently in the representations, e.g. in the Tomb of 

 Ti, of Ptah-hotep,6 and of Naqada.^ Its habit of ascending the 



i II. 95- 



^ See Alan H. Gardiner, The Tomb of Amenemhat (London, 1915), PL II, 

 and Petrie, Medum, PI. XII. 



' Onomasticon, VI. 48. A primitive method of curing prevailed in the 

 last century among the Yapoos — •" the fisher then bites out a large piece of 

 the fish's belly, takes out the inside, and hangs the fish on a stick by the fire 

 in his canoe." See Darwin, Voyages of Adventure, etc. (London, 1839), p. 428. 



* Mish., Makhshirin, VI. 3. The Greeks and Copts of the present day, 

 whose enjoined fasts are frequent, rarely split their fish before packing them in 

 large earthen pots. 



^ Rechnungen aus den Zeit Setis, I. 87 ff. 



« Quibell. The Ramesseum (London, 1898), PI. XXXIII. 



' J. de Morgan, Eihnographie Prehistorique (Paris, 1S97), 193. 



