302 “THE NILE IS EGYPT” 
To Egypt, river or country, goes out the undying reverence 
of all Anglers. Whether Egyptian or the Sumerian civilisation 
were the older; which of the two have left the earlier signs 
of a written language}; whether the Egyptian surpassed the 
Assyrian empire in extent or magnificence—about all these 
points “‘ disquisitions ’’ (in Walton’s word) have not ceased. 
But to Egypt belongs the glory of holding in future and 
happy thrall world-wide subjects, who salute, or rather should 
salute (had previous writers not been reticent on the point) 
her (and not Assyria) as the historical mistress and foundress 
of the art of Angling. 
In my Assyrian and Jewish chapters I stress the remarkable 
absence, despite the close and long connections of these nations 
with the land of the Nile, of anything graven or written which 
indicates knowledge of the Rod. In Egypt two instances of 
Angling are depicted: the first? probably (to judge by his 
place on the register) by a servant or fishing-ghillie as early 
as c, 2000 B.C., the second by a magnate some 600 years later.? 
The argument of silence—because a thing is not depicted 
or mentioned it therefore never existed—often pushes itself 
unjustifiably. May not absence of the Rod be an instance ? 
Had Mesopotamia (it may be further urged) been endowed with 
the atmospherical dryness of Egypt and the consequent 
preservative qualities of its soil instead of a widely-spread 
marsh-engendered humidity, would not scenes of Angling 
there probably meet our eyes? Humidity may account for 
great losses in Mesopotamia, but its toll in the Delta of Egypt 
was also heavy. This large area has yielded, compared with 
the Upper Kingdom, inappreciable returns. 
But even if the country of the Two Rivers had possessed 
the same climatic conditions as the Upper Kingdom, it could 
never have become to the same extent the historical storehouse 
for posterity of the works and records of ancient Man. 
1 J. H Breasted, A History of the Ancient Egyptians, 1908, p. 47, declares 
that the Egyptians discovered true alphabetical /etters 2500 years before any 
other people, and the calendar as early as 4241 B.C. 
2 P, E. Newberry, Beni Hasan (London, 1893), Plate XXIX. Cf. Lepsius, 
Denk. Abt., 2, Bl. 127; J. G. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient 
Egyptians (London, 1878), p. 116, pl. 371. 
3 Tbid., loc. cit., pl. 370. 
