378 FISH—VIVARIA—FIRST POACHING 
is destined to be that of the modern world.’’ The success of 
the irrigation works, at Hit and elsewhere, may verify his 
prediction.} 
Vivaria, or fish-dams, known only late in Palestine, were 
early and generally constructed in Mesopotamia. As adjuncts 
of Sumerian temples, they can be traced as far back as 2500 B.c. 
No decent-sized township eventually lacked, or could afford 
to lack, these piscine with their ever-ready supply of fresh 
fish. 
The keeper, or fisherman, attached to the temples (accord- 
ing to Langdon) seems to have been called Essad, a term which 
subsequently came to mean Tax Gatherer. It is open to doubt 
whether the latter meaning can, as has been suggested, be 
derived from or connected with the former on account of his 
extraction of a toll for fish caught by the public in the stew- 
ponds of the priests, or of a percentage, in lieu of pay, of the 
fish caught by him for use in the temples. 
How real was the importance attached to fish, and how 
recognised its value as a food, can be discerned from early 
Sumerian documents. The excavations of Telloh furnish an 
elaborate description of the new temple built by Gudea in 
honour of Ningirsu. We read that with this god went also 
other deities, such as his musician, his singer, his cultivator of 
lands, and his guardian of fishponds.? 
Then, again, among the officials who were deprived of 
office by Urukagina, on account of the profits illegally secured 
by farming out the public revenue, we come across the Inspectors 
of Fisheries. The drastic reforms and the thorough cleansing 
of the bureaucracy initiated by this monarch sprang from his 
desire to improve the condition of his poorer subjects, who for 
years had suffered from the oppression of the rich or the venality 
of public functionaries. How general and how numerous 
vivaria had early become shows in the plaint that “if a poor 
man built himself a fishpond, his fish was taken; he received 
neither payment nor redress.” 
1 See General Marshall’s Report on Mesopotamian Campaign in The Times, 
Feb. 21, 1919. 
3 History of Sumer and Akkad (London, 1910), p. 268, 
