312 TACKLE 
appears to have found employment against Hippo. From the 
stick on whch the hanks of cord were wound, perhaps, came 
its invention.! The most developed form shows merely an 
axle run through holes in the ends of a semi-circular handle. 
The ends of the axle were set in handles, which to some extent 
facilitated the process of winding up.? 
The pursuit of the Hippo originated, like that of the fox 
in England, from economic causes, viz. the destruction wrought 
on crops, not on flocks and poultry. The beast in pre-dynastic 
times existed in Lower Egypt, but by the end of the Old 
Kingdom seems to have retreated to Upper Ethiopia. Pliny, 
however, speaking of its ravages at night on the fields indicates 
its survival above Sais.% 
Diodorus Siculus,* after surmising that if the Hippo were 
more prolific things would go hard with the Egyptian farmer, 
furnishes the details, but not the Jocus of a hunt. “It is 
hunted by many persons together, each being armed with 
iron darts.” With the substitution of copper harpoons for 
iron darts, the description applies almost verbatim to some of 
the hunting scenes of the Old Kingdom.® 
The Hook.—At the end of the pre-dynastic or beginning 
of the First Dynastic period the Hook, fashioned in no rude 
method, and wrought of no primitive material, but of copper, 
makes its appearance. 
From this it is clear that Egypt (a) can lay no claim to 
have invented this method, and (d) had travelled many stages 
on the long road of piscatorial invention. The complete 
absence in the Nile Valley of hooks of bone, flint, or shell which 
occur in so many neolithic centres in other parts of the world 
adds confirmatory evidence. 
1 Cf. the @ hieroglyphs in Griffith’s Hieroglyphs (London, 1898), Pl. 9, 
fig. 180, and text, p. 44. The more elaborate form is shown by Paget-Pirie, 
The Tomb of Ptah-hetep, bound in Quibell’s Ramesseum, London, 1898. 
2 Bates, p. 242. 
3 N. H., XXVIII. 831. Perhaps he derived his information from the 
not-trustworthy Theriaca of Nicander, 566 ff. 
41.35. He visited Egypt c. 20 B.c. 
5 P, 243. From Newberry’s Beni Hasan, there come, curiously enough, 
only two representations of Hippos and not one of a Hippo hunt. From 
Herodotus, II. 71, we gather that, if the beast was elsewhere hunted, at 
Papremis it was traditionally sacred. 
