334 FISHERIES—PRICE OF FISH—SPAWNING 
of these fisheries formed the dowries or allowances for the 
scents, etc.,! of the Queens. 
Later on they also received as appanage the revenues of 
Anthylla famous for its wines, so they fared not badly for pin 
money. Herodotus? informs us that the town “is assigned 
expressly to the wife of the ruler of Egypt to keep her in shoes. 
Such has been the custom ever since Egypt fell under Persian 
tule,’ an origin not improbable from Plato’s statement that 
one district was allotted for toilette purposes to the Persian 
Queens and called ‘‘The Queen’s Girdle.”’ 
(B) The taxes (or revenues) obtained in the Ptolemaic times, 
ixOunpa, were probably a Government monopoly. They were 
divided into (a) a tax on fishermen of one quarter of the value of 
the fish caught (rerdprn adéwv), (0) the profits of sale of fish 
at prices higher than those paid for them direct to the fisherman. 
In the Roman period we find réAoc ixOunpac Spupdv, or 
a rent from marshes deep enough at the time of the inundation 
to contain fish and shallow enough at other times to grow 
papyri and marsh plants. Leases for fishing and selling papyri, 
etc., brought good returns. But these returns must be dis- 
tinguished from other revenues derived from the industry, 
e.g. the fisheries of Lake Mceris, and from a tax paid by the 
fishermen, both of which seem to correspond with the Ptolemaic 
“fourth part.’’ On the other hand the ¢époc, no doubt, was 
a tax paid by fishermen for the right of fishing, or for the use 
of boats in waters owned by the temples.3 
The Net, in the marsh country, was not only the most 
lucrative ‘engine of encirclement,” but also a double duty 
paid. In other parts the inhabitants passed their nights upon 
lofty towers to escape the gnats, but in the marsh land (Hero- 
dotus continues), “where are no towers, each man possesses 
1 Diodorus Siculus, I. 52. Twenty-two different kinds of fish existed in 
the royal fish ponds of Meeris. Keller, op. cit., 330. 
2 TI. 98. 
5 See Grenfell and Hunt, Tebtunis Papyri, II. 180-1, and I. 49-50. Also 
Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka, I. 137 ff. The craft employed were usually 
primitive rafts or canoes made of papyrus canes bound together with cords 
of the same plant. Theophrastus, Hist. Plantarum, IV. 8, 2, alludes to them. 
Pliny, N. H., VII. 57, speaks of Nile boats made of papyrus, rushes and reeds, 
while Lucan, IV. 136, refers to them in 
*'Conseritur bibula Memphitis cymba papyro.” 
