POEM OF DESCENT TO HADES 343 
the modes of Angling. “Edney, which I should translate 
tied, has been generally supposed to refer to the angler’s line, 
and considering the composition is poetical, this seems the 
natural interpretation.” 
This coupled with the Introduction to the Papyrus appears 
to shatter the statement that fishing with the hair of a dead 
person was practised in ancient Egypt. But although in 
such a mystic adventure as a Descent to Hades all is possible 
and all is pardonable, the passage can hardly from its extremely 
abrupt and casual mention of hair be regarded as heralding in 
the use of this substance as a quite new adjunct to fishing. 
It partakes of the nature of a simile. 
If it be true that an ancient simile was intended to throw 
light from the more familiar on the less familiar, but never to 
illustrate the moderately familiar by the wholly strange, one 
might, despite the absence of all reference to such tackle in 
the representations or in classical writers, possibly argue that 
lines made of the hair of the dead were known and were used 
by the Egyptians. The substitution of the hair of a dead 
person for the hair of a horse may be but a bold and not 
ineffective attempt to heighten the mysticism of the picture. 
Apart from the pleasant gain which the quest and the 
running down of this hare in “ a mare’s nest ”’ (to mix metaphors 
boldly) entailed, one’s only real satisfaction is that the Egyptian 
angler, notwithstanding his gruesome gut and loathsome bait, 
caught NOTHING ! 
