320 ABSTENTION FROM FISH 
confirming and amplifying Herodotus,! writes :—‘‘ The priests 
indeed entirely abstain from all sorts: therefore on the 
ninth day of the first month (Thoth), when all the rest of 
the Egyptians are obliged by their religion to eat a fried fish 
before the doors of their houses, they only burn them, not tasting 
them at all, assigning as their reasons two, the second of which 
—indeed, the most manifest and obvious—is that fish is neither 
a dainty, nor even a necessary kind of food.” 2 
But by the priests of Atargatis, to whose subjects ichthyo- 
phagia was under pain of blains, boils, and other dire diseases 
absolutely forbidden, fish boiled and roasted were daily offered, 
and by them daily eaten.3 
The religious ceremony in Thoth may have been merely 
a later aspect of a taboo once possibly universal among the class 
from which the priesthood largely drew, or may, perhaps, have 
been prompted by the desire of obtaining a good fish harvest. 
Apart from the uneconomic depletion of food entailed by the 
prescribed eating, the killing of ‘‘ the children ’’ or possessions 
of the deity seems hardly the best way to secure fruition of 
such desire. 
If, however, the feast survived as a relic of Totemism, 
the ceremony may possibly come within Robertson-Smith’s 
conception of the origin of all religious communion or sacra- 
ments, 7.e. a renewal of the connection between the god of the 
Totem tribe with his people at a meal, where ‘‘ the Totem 
itself is sacrificed at an annual feast, with special and solemn 
ritual.”’ 4 
In the same way, eating of fish by the priests at Askalon 
may have originated from the idea of bringing the deity and 
his servants into closer relationship, and may have been 
continued to impress their religious superiority on the mass of 
the people, who were forbidden such food, and thus any direct 
connection with their god. Although the practice was different, 
the object of both priesthoods—enhancement of their religious 
211. 
2 From the Trans. of S. Squire. 
3 Mnaseas, as quoted by Athenzus, VIII. 3 
4° W. Robertson-Smith, The Religion of ihe Semites (Edinburgh, 1889), 
p. 276. 
