POEM OF DESCENT TO HADES 343 j 



the modes of Angling. "Ehi(Ttv, which I should translate 1 



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 i 



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



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 i 



angler, notwithstanding his gruesome gut and loathsome bait, ! 



caught Nothing ! 



