378 FISH— VIVARIA— FIRST POACHING 



is destined to be that of the modern world." The success of 

 the irrigation works, at Hit and elsewhere, may verify his 

 prediction. ^ 



Vivaria, or fish-dams, known only late in Palestine, were 

 early and generally constructed in Mesopotamia. As adjuncts 

 of Sumerian temples, they can be traced as far back as 2500 B.C. 

 No decent-sized township eventually lacked, or could afford 

 to lack, these piscina with their ever-ready supply of fresh 

 fish. 



The keeper, or fisherman, attached to the temples (accord- 

 ing to Langdon) seems to have been called Essad, a term which 

 subsequently came to mean Tax Gatherer. It is open to doubt 

 whether the latter meaning can, as has been suggested, be 

 derived from or connected with the former on account of his 

 extraction of a toll for fish caught by the public in the stew- 

 ponds of the priests, or of a percentage, in lieu of pay, of the 

 fish caught by him for use in the temples. 



How real was the importance attached to fish, and how 

 recognised its value as a food, can be discerned from early 

 Sumerian documents. The excavations of Telloh furnish an 

 elaborate description of the new temple built by Gudea in 

 honour of Ningirsu. We read that with this god went also 

 other deities, such as his musician, his singer, his cultivator of 

 lands, and his guardian of fishponds. 2 



Then, again, among the officials who were deprived of 

 office by Urukagina, on account of the profits illegally secured 

 by farming out the pubHc revenue, we come across the Inspectors 

 of Fisheries. The drastic reforms and the thorough cleansing 

 of the bureaucracy initiated by this monarch sprang from his 

 desire to improve the condition of his poorer subjects, who for 

 years had suffered from the oppression of the rich or the venality 

 of public functionaries. How general and how numerous 

 vivaria had early become shows in the plaint that " if a poor 

 man built himself a fishpond, his fish was taken ; he received 

 neither payment nor redress." 



1 See General Marshall's Report on Mesopotamian Campaign in The Times, 

 Feb. 21, 1919. 



« History of Sumer and Alihad (London, 1910), p. 268, 



