EGYPT'S INFLUENCE ON PALESTINE 401 



The introduction, however, of the historical facts cannot 

 be branded as irrelevant. They demonstrate a constant 

 association for over two millenniums with Egypt, and the 

 deep influence of Egyptian civilisation and methods of hfe on 

 Jewish policy. 



And yet, notwithstanding such intercourse and such 

 cultural influence, we can nowhere in the literature of the 

 Bible or of the Rabbis discern either a direct mention, or (as 

 I hope to show) an impUed allusion to the use of the Rod, 

 which as a weapon both for market and sport from c. 2000 B.C. 

 found favour in Egypt. ^ 



The same holds true of the Land of the Two Rivers ; in 

 no Assyrian sculpture, on no Assyrian seal, can we detect any 

 deUneation or any suggestion of angUng, although instances 

 of other kinds of fishing occur frequently. 2 



In no book of the Old or of the New Testament can be 

 found any direct mention of the Rod. In the Talmud — a 

 vast work of teaching and discussion — the same silence prevails. 

 The authoritative Talmudische Archdologie (by S. Krauss, 

 1910) gives us fishful places such as Lake Tiberias, and many 

 points of ichthyic or piscatorial interest such as the hook, the 

 line, salted fish, garum, etc., but contains no reference to the 

 Rod. 3 Mr. Breslar, it is true, has recently girded up his 

 loins to establish that in the Bible and the Talmud can be 

 found at any rate the implied use of the Rod, but to a practical 

 angler quite unconvincingly.* 



^ See Plates 370 and 371 in Wilkinson, and antea, p. 314. 



* See antea, pp. 355-9. 



3 In Singer, Jewish Ency., V. p. 404. " Fishing implements such as hook 

 and line, sometimes secured on shore to need no further attention {Shab. i8a), 

 and nets of various constructions " are practically all that are given. 



* After acknowledging {Notes and Queries, Dec. 2, 1916) that there is no 

 mention in either Old or New Testament of a Rod, Mr. Breslar goes on, " Yet 

 there are places such as Job xl. 31 (xh. 7) where the Hebrew words are trans- 

 lated barbed irons and fish spears, and in Job xl. 26 (xli. 2) a thorn. A 

 fishing-rod in the modern sense no one could reasonably demand, though 1 

 opine that in agmoun (Isaiah Iviii. 5), used in that sense in Job xl. 26, we have 

 the nucleus of one." Mr. Breslar is evidently not aware or does not reaUse 

 that fish spears, bidents, etc., were of the earliest weapons of fishing, long 

 anterior to the Rod, and that these are the weapons referred to in Job. A 

 reference to the Jewish Encyclopcsdia edited by Isidore Singer, would have 

 shown him that xilzal dagim in Job xU. 7 was in aU probabihty a harpoon. 

 Then, " that this phrase {Klei tnetxooda) or a similar one is not found in the 

 Bible is merely an accidental omission Uke, I beUeve, that of the name of 



