NETS— GENERAL METHOD 317 



special interest. Apart from that of Zau himself " dressed in 

 sporting attire " and spearing fish from a papyrus skiff, the 

 artist in another has let himself go more freely. 



Not content to show what is happening above the surface 

 of the pool, he breaks through all embarrassing congruities in 

 order to display the crowded scene below, without which his 

 subject would not have been completely set forth. The waters 

 extend also to the left, where seven fishermen haul into a boat 

 a drag-net full of fish, which include, as in the tomb of Aba, 

 eight different species. Hippopotami and crocodiles do not fail 

 to appear : even the humble frog, who sits among the water 

 reeds, is remembered. 1 



Netting obtained more widely than its depictments, in 

 proportion to those of Harpooning and Angling, indicate. Repre- 

 sentations of the latter methods occur nearly always in the 

 durable tomb-chapels of the rich, who from their ampler leisure 

 more often ensued sport, while the professional fisherman, like 

 his Greek and Roman brother, came of the tribe whose badge 

 was poverty. Then, too, it must be remembered that the 

 Netsmen mainly inhabited the Delta, which from reasons of 

 humidity has jdelded fewer pictures of life. 



Practically every kind of Net known to the ancient world 

 found employment in Lower Egypt, as the Hst drawn up by 

 Julius Pollux, by birth himself a Deltan, makes clear. The 

 representations give us many Nets. The hand, the double-hand, 

 the cast (most rarely), the stake, the seine, etc., all find place. 

 Weights of stone, but none of lead (according to Bates), meet 

 our eyes in the monuments. 2 



Netting needles range from pre-dynastic to Roman times. 

 The first, of a very simple type, are merely fiat pieces of bone, 

 pointed at each end, and pierced in the middle. 3 Net-making 

 and Net-mending scenes are not absent. In one of the latter 

 the artist, of naturalistic turn, shows an old fisherman mending 



^ N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrawi (1902), Pt. II. PI. V. 



* p. 259. The reason assigned is not convincing: " No lead weights are 

 depicted on the monuments, for by the time they were introduced the artist 

 was devoting himself to mythological and religious scenes." Petrie, Kahun, 

 Gurob, and Hawara, p. 34, however, assigns some weights of lead from Kahun 

 to XVIIIth Dyn. 



' Cf, Petrie, Abydos (London, 1902), pi. 41, 



