390 FISH IN OFFERINGS, AUGURIES, ETC. 
Arabia (as witness Mohammed’s command against the use of 
arrows, “‘an abomination of Satan’s work !’’)! more frequently 
than in Babylonia. There it attained but secondary importance. 
The general method required the shaking or shuffling before 
the image or the sacred place of the deity of a set of arrows. 
In the temple of Mecca the three important arrows were named, 
The Commanding, The Forbidding, The Waiting. 
Hepatoscopy: the liver among the Assyrians, the Jews,? 
the Greeks, and the Etruscans,? contested with the heart the 
honour of being the central organ of life. Its convulsive move- 
ments, when taken from the sacrificed victim, gave warnings of 
the future. So sacred was the liver held in Israel, that eating 
it was forbidden : it had to be returned to the Giver of Life.4 
Fish were early utilised for the calendar of the year. The 
signs of the Zodiac showing Pisces, possibly derived from 
connection with the god of water, and Scorpio, possibly 
representing one of the Crustacea, date back to c. 3000 B.c.5 
out that it meant originally ‘‘ I pick up ” or “ collect ’’ (the arrows of divination) 
and so both read and declare the will of heaven. See O. Schrader, Prehistoric 
Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, trans. F. B. Jevons (London, 1890), p. 279. 
1 Koran, Sur. v. 92. 
2 Proverbs, vii. 23. 
3 See, e.g. C. Thulin, Die Géttey des Martianus Capella und der Bronselebey 
von Piacenza, Gieszen, 1906. 
4 Ency. Bibl., p. 1118. 
5 According to Langdon, Tammuz and Ishtar (op. cit.), p. 47, ‘‘ Nina, a 
water deity, was identified at an early date with the constellation, Scorpio; for 
this reason her brother Ningirsu, also a water deity, was identified with one 
of the stars of Scorpio.” 
