POEM OF DESCENT TO HADES 343 



the modes of Angling. "Eo»/(rti', which I should translate 

 tied, has been generally supposed to refer to the angler's line, 

 and considering the composition is poetical, this seems the 

 natural interpretation." 



This coupled with the Introduction to the Papyrus appears 

 to shatter the statement that fishing with the hair of a dead 

 person was practised in ancient Egypt. But although in 

 such a mystic adventure as a Descent to Hades all is possible 

 and all is pardonable, the passage can hardly from its extremely 

 abrupt and casual mention of hair be regarded as heralding in 

 the use of this substance as a quite new adjunct to fishing. 

 It partakes of the nature of a simile. 



If it be true that an ancient simile was intended to throw 

 light from the more familiar on the less familiar, but never to 

 illustrate the moderately familiar by the wholly strange, one 

 might, despite the absence of all reference to such tackle in 

 the representations or in classical writers, possibly argue that 

 lines made of the hair of the dead were known and were used 

 by the Egyptians. The substitution of the hair of a dead 

 person for the hair of a horse may be but a bold and not 

 ineffective attempt to heighten the mysticism of the picture. 



Apart from the pleasant gain which the quest and the 

 running down of this hare in " a mare's nest " (to mix metaphors 

 boldly) entailed, one's only real satisfaction is that the Egyptian 

 angler, notwithstanding his gruesome gut and loathsome bait, 

 caught Nothing ! 



