NETS—GENERAL METHOD 317 
special interest. Apart from that of Zau himself ‘‘ dressed in 
sporting attire’? and spearing fish from a papyrus skiff, the 
artist in another has let himself go more freely. 
Not content to show what is happening above the surface 
of the pool, he breaks through all embarrassing congruities in 
order to display the crowded scene below, without which his 
subject would not have been completely set forth. The waters 
extend also to the left, where seven fishermen haul into a boat 
a drag-net full of fish, which include, as in the tomb of Aba, 
eight different species. Hippopotami and crocodiles do not fail 
to appear: even the humble frog, who sits among the water 
reeds, is remembered.! 
Netting obtained more widely than its depictments, in 
proportion to those of Harpooning and Angling, indicate. Repre- 
sentations of the latter methods occur nearly always in the 
durable tomb-chapels of the rich, who from their ampler leisure 
more often ensued sport, while the professional fisherman, like 
his Greek and Roman brother, came of the tribe whose badge 
was poverty. Then, too, it must be remembered that the 
Netsmen mainly inhabited the Delta, which from reasons of 
humidity has yielded fewer pictures of life. 
Practically every kind of Net known to the ancient world 
found employment in Lower Egypt, as the list drawn up by 
Julius Pollux, by birth himself a Deltan, makes clear. The 
representations give usmany Nets. The hand, the double-hand, 
the cast (most rarely), the stake, the seine, etc., all find place. 
Weights of stone, but none of lead (according to Bates), meet 
our eyes in the monuments.? 
Netting needles range from pre-dynastic to Roman times. 
The first, of a very simple type, are merely flat pieces of bone, 
pointed at each end, and pierced in the middle. Net-making 
and Net-mending scenes are not absent. In one of the latter 
the artist, of naturalistic turn, shows an old fisherman mending 
1 N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of Deir el Gebrawi (1902), Pt. II. Pl. V. 
2p. 259. The reason assigned is not convincing: ‘‘ No lead weights are 
depicted on the monuments, for by the time they were introduced the artist 
was devoting himself to mythological and religious scenes.” Petrie, Kahun, 
Gurob, and Hawara, p. 34, however, assigns some weights of lead from Kahun 
to XVIIIth Dyn. 
8 Cf. Petrie, Abydos (London, 1902), pl. 41, 
