322 ABSTENTION FROM FISH 
brethren,! in whom some writers profess to discern an indigenous 
and less progressive race. 
Were the records and art of Buto, for example, a capital 
once ranking in importance and opulence with Thebes, available, 
another story and another picture might confront us. Owing 
in the main to humidity, our conceptions are perforce coloured 
by the traditions of Upper Egypt, and thus at times liable to 
deception. 
Is it, for instance, likely that the priests and denizens of the 
Delta, where maritime commerce principally furnished their 
prosperity, regarded the sea with the same loathing and dread 
that the riverine priests and writers express? Can we really 
imagine the priests of Alexandria not eating salt because it 
was “‘ Typho’s foam,” or not speaking to pilots because they 
do business on the great waters, or embellishing their temples 
with figures (like those at Sais) of an infant, an old man, a 
hawk, a fish, and a sea-horse ? 
The meaning of these figures, according to Plutarch,? 
“is plainly this: O! ye who are coming into or going out of 
the world, God hateth impudence, for by the hawk is intended 
God, by the fish hatred on account of the sea, as has been before 
observed, and by the sea-horse impudence, the creature being 
said first to slay his sire, and then force his mother.” 
How and when did the abstention from fish arise? Was it 
originally a tabu observed by all, kings, priests, nobles, and 
commons? ? Did the last come gradually to disregard or 
1 Their brawling in boats and carousing in drink are depicted. Cf. N.deG. 
Davies, Tombs of El Gebrawi, Pt. II. (London, 1902), Pl. V., and Newberry, 
Beni Hasan, Pt. II., Pl. IV., and Davies, Ptahhetep, Pt. I1., Pl. XIV., and Pt. 1., 
Pl. XXI. Inthe XXth Dynasty the chastity of their wives was not a striking 
characteristic. 
2 Op. cit., XXXII. 
3 Fish hieroglyphs are regarded by some as general determinatives for 
words meaning ‘‘ shame,” ‘‘ evil,’”’ etc. (cf. Plutarch, op. cit., 32), and by others 
as merely phonetic determinatives (cf. Montet, op. cit., p. 48). That fish were 
regarded as either enemies or emblems of enemies of the gods and of the kings 
would seem to be borne out by the ceremony annually performed at Edfu, 
where the festival calendar contains the following: ‘‘ Fish are thrown on the 
ground, and all the priests hack and hew them with knives, saying ‘Cut ye 
wounds on your bodies, kill ye one another: Ra triumphs over his enemies, 
Horus of Edfu over all evil ones.’’’ The text assures us that ‘“‘ the meaning 
of the ceremony is to achieve the destruction of the enemies of the gods and 
king.” Cf. Erman, Handbook of Egyptian Religion, trs. by Griffith (London, 
1907), p. 216. 
