CHAPTER XXV 
ABSTENTION FROM FISH 
THE statement, “‘ the Nile contains all sorts and kinds of fish,’’} 
must in an age of scientific enumeration be taken with several 
grains of salt. The total for the whole country, riverine and 
marsh, reaches but seventy-one species, of which only two, 
Mormurops anguillaris and Haplochilus schellert, are peculiar 
to Egypt.2 A score or so find representation in ancient times ; 
but identification is far from easy, and is in some cases, ¢.g. 
the Mullets, only possible generically. 
In scenes of the return of Hatshepsu’s expedition from the 
land of Punt the drawings of the fishes are so characteristic 
that Prof. Doenitz has been enabled to determine their species, 
and identify them as belonging to the Red Sea. The powers 
of observation in the artists accompanying the ships demon- 
strate careful training. But I cannot, since the eyes of the 
Solea are similar, endorse the eulogism bestowed in the case 
of a sole, unless it were a freak, ‘‘ one eye is drawn larger 
than the other, showing a fine observation of Nature!” 3 
The priests, the King, and the commonalty in some cases 
eschewed fish. 
Priestly abstention was by no means uncommon, as 
some of the temples of Poseidon+ demonstrate. In Egypt 
the observance was strict, at Askalon the reverse. Plutarch,® 
1 Diodorus Siculus, I. 36. 
? Cf. G. A. Boulenger, Fishes of the Nile (London, 1907), and Pierre Montet, 
Les Poissons employés dans l’Ecriture Hievoglyphique. Bulletin de 1’Institut 
Frangais d’Archéologie Orientale. Tome XI., 1913. 
5 Egypt, Pt. Il. p. 226. Bedeker, Leipsic, 1892. 
4 Antea, p. 201. 
5 De Iside et Osiride, c. 8. 
319 
