WHY SOME SACRED P—TOTEMISM 329 



But Robinson, disagreeing with Robertson Smith and Frazer 

 in their conception of Totemism, denies that these fish were 

 totems in any proper sense. Primitive man performs an act 

 of positive sacrifice when he devotes to the religious tribal idea 

 the best fish of the waters, and thenceforth abstains from 

 eating them ; whereas the Egyptians shabbily denied them- 

 selves only the refuse. They made that sacred which they 

 could not eat. All the evidence tends to the suspicion that 

 the gods were put off by the priests with the very worst of the 

 fish. If a species were poisonous or belonged to a class that was 

 unwholesome, it was straightway declared sacred. 1 



Speaking from my own experience and purely on palatal 

 grounds, had I been High Priest I should have banned nearly 

 all Nile fishes for their insipidity and muddiness. Tastes, 

 of course, differ. The Lates is passable, but the Oxyrhynchus 

 attracts no opsophagist devotees, which is probably the fault of 

 " The Creator of all things good " in either the temperature of 

 his water or the character of their food, since a cousin, 0. 

 7normyrus, geographically not far removed, is ranked by 

 epicures as delicious. 2 



The reason assigned by the priests to Plutarch for the 

 abstention from and local veneration of the Oxyrhynchus, 

 Phagrus, and Lepidotus possesses, whatever its truth, the charm 

 of an antiquity reaching back to the dawn of goddom. 



After the slaying of Osiris by Typho, Isis made unwearied 

 search for his body. But she could never recover his private 

 part, for it had been flung into the Nile, and eaten by the 

 Lepidotus, the Phagrus, and the Oxyrhynchus : " fish which of 

 all others, for this reason, the Egyptians have in more especial 

 avoidance. But Isis made its effigies, and so consecrated the 

 phallos, for which the Egyptians to this day observe a festival." 3 



The same author vouches for the veneration of the Oxyrhyn- 

 chus, as shown by the people of the city named after that fish ; 

 " they will not touch any kind of fish that have been taken 

 with an angle, for they are afraid lest perhaps the hook may be 



^ op. cit., p. 37. 



^ The Mormyri, which number some loo species, are peculiar to Africa. 



3 De J side et Osiride, i8. 



