Assyrian Fishing

Chapter XXX. No Rod, Although Close Intercourse with Egypt

There is no delineation or suggestion of the Rod, or of Angling on any sculpture or any seal, Sumerian, Babylonian, or Assyrian.

The omission does not preclude the existence or use of the Rod. If it did exist, and were used, we are surprised that there should not survive amongst the thousands of things mentioned and the many pursuits represented a single indication of it. Our wonder, indeed, grows stronger when we call to mind that the Assyrians:

(a) Were a people much given to sport of all kinds:

(b) Were keenly addicted to the eating of fish, which was not, as in Israel or Egypt, half-banned by a prophet, or whole-barred to a priesthood by custom, totemistic or other:

(c) Did attach very real importance to the maintenance of an ample supply of fish. Their dams and vivaria, the adjuncts of every important temple or every self-respecting township, and their enforcement of Fish Regulations, attest the economic value:

(d) Do mention and do represent other kinds of fishing, e.g. with the hand-line and the net. The latter, for both fowling and fishing, often finds place in their, and Israelitish, metaphors. Examples occur in the story of the defeat of Marduk and Tiāmat, “They (the enemies) were cast into the net,” and in the prayer of Eannatum to the god Enki that, if the citizens of Umma in future break the recent treaty, he will destroy them in his net. But in the legend of the taking of Zu, the stealer of the destiny-tablets, the net of the Sun-god is certainly a fowling one:

(e) Did possess near at hand, and had not to import (as the Romans from Africa) ample material for the Rod in reeds, which were abundant near Babylon and were utilised in the construction of furniture, light boats, and fences. In the lists of private property these reeds—employed for household not angling purposes—figure not infrequently:

(f) Were for hundreds of years closely associated in intercourse and trade with the Egyptians, whose use of the Rod can be carried back to about the XIIth Dynasty, c. 2000, or, according to Petrie’s chronology, c. 3500 b.c.

Before discussing the date of the first contact or connection between the two countries, it is advisable shortly to distinguish between the three peoples whom I group under the term Assyrians, and roughly apportion the periods of the four thousand odd years of Assyrian history during which each was predominant.

The first, the Sumerians, occupied before—perhaps long before—the close of the fourth millennium the land on the lower plain of the Tigris and Euphrates and on the sea coast, as it then was. They possessed an advanced civilisation, with an organised government, many large cities, and considerable agricultural and industrial development.

Whence their emigration, to what family, Mongol or other, they belong, is not clear. It is settled they were not Semites, like the Babylonians and Assyrians. Their language (preserved in liturgies, etc., down even to the time of the Persian conquest) and their writing, adopted by the Babylonians and Assyrians, which runs, unlike the Hebrew, from left to right, disprove Sumerian descent from Shem.

It is impossible at present to fix a definite period for their immigration. The dates assigned vary from 7000 to 4000 b.c. The statement, however, that “Aryans, Turanians, Semites were all in a nomadic condition, when the early Sumerian settlers in Lower Babylonia betook themselves to agriculture, builded great cities, and established a stable government,” seems hardly exaggerated, even though it postulates a very ancient era.

The second, the Semitic Babylonians, starting possibly from South Arabia by way of the Syrian coast, reached the lower part of the Tigris and Euphrates about 3800 b.c. It was not, however, until some thousand years afterwards, that they effected a conquest of the Sumerians.

Like other defeated peoples, such as the Canaanites with the Jews, the Irish with the English, “Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores,” they grafted their policy on that of their victors, and perpetuated many of their racial characteristics and customs, as well as their religion. “The Semitic invaders seem to have been completely converted. In fact Babylonian religion has scarcely anything characteristically Semitic in it.”

The third, the Assyrians proper, an offshoot from Babylonia, are found (before 2300 b.c.) pushing their way north along the Tigris, on whose western bank they founded their first city and earliest capital—Asur. Wars between them and Babylonia mark the history of centuries. Their definite suzerainty over that country was only established by Tiglath-Pileser III., c. 730 b.c.

Passing now to the dates of the connection between this Empire and Egypt, the first assigned is:

(a) Early dynastic, say about 4400 b.c., which would probably correspond to the early Sumerian periods. Some authorities indeed hold that Egypt was invaded by Babylonians, or was culturally permeated by the “proto-Babylonians,” or Sumerians. Of invasion we possess no proof, or even strong suggestion; of cultural permeation, to which Hommel, in especial, attributes the whole primeval culture of Egypt, some elements and some signs are possibly noticeable, but even these are Semitic, not Sumerian, while their total compares insignificantly with those of native origin.

Of these signs, the use by the Egyptians of the cylinder seal, of which the Royal tombs of the first Dynasty afford examples, stands out as the most important. As this characterised Sumer and Babylonia at all times, while it fell into disuse in the country of the Pharaohs, the seal was inferred to be an original product of Sumer, whence it reached Egypt in late pre-dynastic or early dynastic times.

But (as King continues) “Recent research—such as Naville’s at Abydos, and Reisner’s at Naga-ed-Dêr—leaves small room for the theory that early Egyptian culture was subjected to any strong foreign influence in early dynastic times; thus the theory of the invasion by Semitic tribes must be given up.” Maspero maintains that as far back as the IVth or Vth Dynasties there were overland relations between Egypt and Chaldea.

(b) Petrie places the beginning of the invasion of Egypt by the Semites about 3400 b.c. When referring to a painting of one of these Princes of the Desert named Absha coming into Egypt, he writes that “though 1000 years before Abram” (whom he himself dates about 2100 b.c.) “he was one of the same race: it is therefore invaluable as an historical type of the great Semitic invasion.” Evidence from Egyptian sources seems to show that before and after the conquest by the Hyksos, Semitic invasions occurred after the VIth Dynasty and again c. 2250 b.c.

Petrie, on the strength of the cylinder of Khendy and the tablet of Khenzerm—two Babylonians “who rose to the throne of Egypt”—concludes that an invasion from Syro-Mesopotamia took place in the XIVth Dynasty, say 2800 b.c.

(c) It is not, however, till the XVIIIth Dynasty, c. 1400 b.c., that we reach firm ground for fixing the first point of direct historical contact between Babylonia and Egypt.

Authority for this dating is found in the famous tablets brought to light in 1887 at Tel-el-Amarna, which include letters from the rulers of Babylonia and Assyria to Amenhotep III. and his son Akhenaton. Apart from the historical value of their presumptive indication of an earlier intercourse, the discovery discloses three points of great interest.

First, the fact that these were written in Babylonian shows that this language had already become the lingua franca of the civilised world. Second, a more human personal note, the probability from the red dots (still visible) made by some Egyptian with a reed for the purpose of marking the divisions of the foreign words, that the acquisition of this lingua franca was advisable, perhaps necessary, to qualification for a clerkship or an embassy. Third, that Babylonian literature had found its way among the nations which used its language.

Of this we have conclusive evidence in two documents. The first concerns the goddess Ereshkigal, the other transmits the legend of Adapa.

From the Bekten stele we deduce a close intercourse between the two countries about the XIXth Dynasty, for we read of Rameses II. being in Mesopotamia “according to his wont, year by year,” and receiving tributes and presents from the chiefs of the countries round about.

The connection between Assyria (proper) and Egypt rests on ample evidence. Fish, or “beasts of the sea,” passed as presents, perhaps as trade. On the Broken Column of Tiglath-Pileser I. (Cylinder IV. 29-30) we read, “And a great beast of the River, a great beast of the Sea, the king of Musrê” (probably Egypt) “sent (unto him).”

The Select Papyri (pl. 75, 1, 7) tell of certain fish being brought, perhaps as a staple of trade, from the Puharuta or Euphrates to Egypt, and (in pl. 96, 1, 7) of another fish or fishy substance called Rura, being imported from the land of the great waters, Mesopotamia.

Chapter XXXI. Fishing Methods

The relevance to fish and fishing of all the preceding matter, except the last two sentences, may be challenged: a moment’s consideration, however, shows that it is apposite.

The object of introducing these historical facts is to demonstrate (1) the existence of an intercourse between Assyria and Egypt for certainly fourteen hundred, possibly three thousand, years, (2) to show cause for our astonishment at the absence of the Rod from all Mesopotamian representation or records, and at the non-adoption of a weapon which for centuries found favour with the Egyptians.

In my Jewish chapter I comment at length on the absence of any mention of or allusion to the Rod in Israelitish literature and on the unconvincing reasons advanced for this absence. Angling may have been unsuited to the Semitic temperament, because it yielded less lucrative returns than the Net.

Even if we grant that the ruling or only passion of this temperament was for fishing “in plenty,” why, we are driven to ask, did both nations condescend to fishing with hand-lines, which are not much more productive than the Rod? If hand-lining was prompted by some instinct of sport, why was Angling, the higher development of this instinct, not also reached?

Of the four implements of Fishing, the Spear, the Rod, the Line and Hook, and the Net, the Assyrians seem to have been acquainted only with the last two, Line and Hook, and Net.

Examples of the former method occur in Monuments of Nineveh (1st Series). In Plate 39B, a man sitting on a terrace by a river is depicted in the act of landing a fish; in Plate 67B, a man is wading in a river with what seems to be identical with a creel. The first was excavated, and subsequently re-buried at Nimroud, the latter (also re-buried) at Kouyunjik. The second picture excites a livelier interest, for two men well into their fish are shown in the water astride the inflated skins of a goat—a method of crossing the Tigris as habitual then as in the present year of our century.

Despite Rawlinson’s sentence, “of early Chaldean (i.e. Sumerian) there are found made of bronze materials chains, nails, and fish-hooks,” no specimen of a fish-hook, bronze or other, has been as yet obtained in Mesopotamia. It is impossible thus to determine whether the hooks were straight like those recorded by Plutarch, bent like those of the Odyssey, or barbed. Cros, however, claims that Lagash excavations yielded “copper fish hooks.” Rev. d’Assyr., vi. 48.

Representations also fail to help, probably because a hook, plain and simple, hardly commends itself as a subject for artistic treatment. Nor does the primitive Assyrian sculptor, however distrustful of the imagination of the observer, go as far as to depict “by conventional device” a hook inside the mouth of the fish which is being taken!

In the Assyrian language there is apparently no word for fish-hook. From the resemblance between the Hebrew word ḥōaḥ, which means both thorn and fish-hook, and the Assyrian word ḥâḥu, which, it is alleged, means thorn, it has been conjectured that in the latter word we have the Assyrian term for fish-hook. Professor S. Langdon, who in a letter to me advances this conjecture, goes even farther—“in fact ḥâḥu is our only direct evidence for the practice of fishing with hook and line in Assyria.”

Basing himself on a similar Hebraic resemblance, he would make the Assyrian ṣinnitān, “two reins,” come from a supposed ṣinnitu, a possible feminine of ṣinnu, which occurs perhaps in the sense of “thorn,” and carry the same meaning as the Hebrew ṣên, which probably equals “thorn,” while its plural ṣinnōth does stand for “fish-hooks.”

He believes that in the word, abarshu, which Esarhaddon employs, “I snatched him (Abdi-Milkuti, King of Sidon) as a fish from the sea,” and again, of a chief of the Lebanon range who had rebelled and fled, “I caught him from the mountains like a bird,” we have evidence of a technical word for pulling or jerking out a fish with a line held in the hand, or perhaps attached to a Rod, because “snatch” would hardly be the appropriate term for the slower action involved in the drawing in of a net.

Whether in the first simile the suggestion is philologically valid is a point for Assyrian scholars to determine. The adequate rendering or explaining of Sumerian words by Assyrian ones is often difficult and doubtful, for while the latter language is a great help to understanding the former, the Assyrian, especially the later Assyrian, equivalent does not entirely correspond to what would be expected from a literal analysis of the Sumerian word. The second simile, I hold, alludes to the Net of the fowler, with which the representations show the Assyrians to have been familiar.

While there may be doubt whether we possess any Assyrian word signifying hooks, there can be none as to their existence and their employment.

From the absence of any, even conjectural, word for or representation of a float, we can only infer that ground bait fishing was the chief, perhaps the sole, line method in vogue.

I can find no evidence that the Assyrians availed themselves of the spear, the trident, drugs or poison, but as the first two figure in Egyptian, Jewish, and Roman records, and appear to be the common property of all early peoples, the probability is that they were known and used in the Two Rivers.

The fish of these resembled the fish of the Nile in their alleged refusal to rise to a fly, but our soldiers have caught on the fly hundreds of “salmon” of good weight up to 112 lbs. One (hand-lined) scaled 170 lbs., and one (speared) ran up to 215 lbs. This “salmon” is a kind of mahseer, the noblest of the carp family, or, according to Mr. Tate Regan, a barbel, probably the species Barbus esocinus described by Heckel as coming from the Tigris.

The second method was by Netting, which to judge from its repeated occurrence either as a pursuit or in metaphor was universal, and prevailed far more extensively than line fishing, especially in Sumeria. The only Sumerian word, according to Dr. Langdon, for fishing, ha-dib (one of the oldest words in the world for the act or occupation), signifies or is akin to a word signifying “to surround,” i.e. with a net, as does the Babylonian term bâru. If this be the case, Netting probably constituted their universal, possibly their only fishing.

In the eastern division of Assyria proper lie the main tributaries of the Tigris, such as the Zāb and the Diyālā, rising among the Kurdish mountains. As Netting was naturally more restricted in this area than in the Persian Gulf, line fishing possibly obtained more widely here than in the South.

At any rate it is from the Sumerian excavations that we derive a well-known example of metaphorical Net fishing. This is to be found in what till lately has been held to be a fine representation of Ningirsu, the god of the Sumerian Telloh or Babylonian Lagash, triumphing over his enemies.

The Net full of prisoners symbolises the capture of the enemies of the city. To indicate the impossibility of escape (Jastrow continues), “a prisoner who has thrust his head out of one of the meshes is being beaten back by a weapon in the hands of the god.” King further elaborates the scene; “The god grasps in his right hand a heavy mace which he lets fall upon the Net in front of him containing captives, whose bodies may be seen writhing and struggling like fish in the broad meshes. On the relief, the cords of the Net are symmetrically arranged: the rounded corners at the top show it as a Net formed of ropes and cordage.” But later Sumerian scholars deny that Ningirsu has anything to do with the Net or even figures in the scene. On the Stèle des Vautours the person represented is not a god, but a king, Eannatum, with captured soldiers enclosed in the Net (Shusgal). What is more, the king in the accompanying inscription, not only designates the Net as that of Enlil, the earth god, but also of Ninharsag, the mother goddess, of Enki, the water god, of Siu, the moon god, and of Shamash, the sun god. All the greater gods were supposed to carry nets: Ningirsu must certainly have possessed one, but neither he or it are depicted here.

Chapter XXXII. The Earliest Recorded Contract of Fishing

One of the very earliest—the earliest as far as I have found—recorded contract concerning fishing occurs in the second year of Darius II., 422 b.c. It runs thus:—

“Ribat son of Bel-Eriba the slave of Enlil-nadin-shumi spoke of his own free will to Enlil-nadin-shumi son of Murashu in the following manner: ‘The fishpond between the village Ahshanu and the farm of Bel-abu-uzur in the field of the master of the merchants and the fishpond in the field of the Prefect and the fishpond by the village of Bit-Natun-El, give me for yearly payment. Each year I will give one half talent of pure silver, and from the day on which the fishponds are given to me for fishing, daily will I supply fish for thy table.’ And then Enlil-nadin-shumi heard him, and he gave him fishponds for a yearly tribute of half a talent of silver.

Signed in the presence of two judges, before six witnesses, and a scribe.”

The Tablet is impressed with five seals.

The next recorded fishing contract deals with netting in Babylonian waters. It is dated the 25th day of Elul in the fifth year of Darius II., or 419 b.c. B. Meissner’s translation of the document may be rendered as follows:—

“Makimni-anni the son of Bel-ab-usur, Bi’-iliya the son of ... & Ishiya, Natin the son of Tabshalam, and Zadabyama the son of Khinni-Bel, of their own free will spoke as follows to Ribat, the son of Bel-eriba, the servant of Rimut-Ninurta: ‘Give five nets and we will deliver to you five hundred fish of good quality (tuḳḳunu) by the 15th day of the month Tishri in the 5th year!’ Then Ribat hearkened unto them and gave them five nets. On the 15th of Tisri they shall deliver the five hundred fish of good quality. If they do not deliver the five hundred fish of good quality on the appointed day for their delivery, then on the 20th day of Tishri shall they deliver a thousand fish. Each one goes bail for the other in respect of making up the number of the fish. For the five hundred fish, Bel-ibni, the son of Apla, also goes bail.”

The parties to the contract are Ribat, the steward of the rich Babylonian banker Rimut-Ninurta, and five Aramaic fishermen. In consideration of Ribat’s furnishing five nets, they bind themselves to deliver by the 15th of Tishri (about September), i.e. within twenty days from the making of the contract, five hundred fish. On failure to do so, the time is extended by five days, but the number of the fish is then increased to one thousand. Each of the five fishermen “goes bail” for delivery of five hundred, or if need be, of a thousand fish, but an outsider, Bel-ibni, son of Apla, cautiously limits his bail or guarantee to the first figure.

These documents possess many points of interest.

(A) They are not only the very earliest, but I suggest the only extant fishing contracts (proper) prior to the third century a.d. In Egypt, during the Ptolemaic period, fishermen, it is true, had to pay to the Government a quarter of the value of their catch (τεττάρτη ἁλιέων), but this seems to have been a regular tax. Later on we find fishermen paying to the priests of Lake Moeris a φόρος (not to be confounded with ἰχθυηρὰ δρυμῶν, or state tax) which presumably included the purchase of the right to fish, as well as the hire of boats. But this was in the nature of a royalty or rent, was a continuous obligation, and proportioned to the catch, whereas in our second document the time is limited, and the payment fixed, not proportioned.

(B) The second contract demonstrates that the custom of additional guarantors is no mere modern institution.

(C) It also tends to show that the system, previously known as employed by Babylonian landlords, of letting their farms to tenants for a fixed proportion of the crops, extended occasionally to their waters as well.

Chapter XXXIII. Fish-Gods—Dagon

I find no trace in Assyria of Ichthyolatry, or of certain fish being accounted sacred, or forbidden as food. The nearest approach to abstention occurs in the warning that on the 9th day of Iyyar to partake of fish was almost certain to bring on an attack of sickness, just as in Syria ichthyophagy was held to entail ulcers and wasting diseases.

Despite the Dagon or Oannes traditions, I am not convinced that in the crowded pantheon of Babylon or Assyria there can be found a fish-god proper, or god of fishing, i.e. a deity similar to those of Greece and Rome with a temple and established priesthood, to whom fishermen made prayer and offerings either for boons received or favours to come.

If the word, fish-god, is limited strictly to those images, half-man, half-fish, which are to be found on seal Cylinders, or sculptured or depicted in the outer halls or walls of some deity’s temple, there is certainly—even if the images at Nineveh were importations from the Mediterranean coast and not indigenous—considerable proof of their existence. But if the word connotes the attributes of a special temple, a priesthood, and sacrifices, such as we find in connection with the Philistinian Dagon at Ashdod, I suggest there is no proof whatever. The fact seems to be that in early Sumeria the fish-god or man-fish was a symbol of Ea, the god of water, and probably derived from Aquarius.

The Assyrian colonists carried north with them the pantheon of the Babylonians, composed in part of the local deities of Sumeria, and in part of their own translated from their original habitat; but from the start they modified the hierarchy and changed materially the individual attributes of the gods.

Thus we find that mighty Assyrian hunter, Tiglath-Pileser I., in his record of the beasts he had taken, e.g. four elephants caught alive, or had slain in the desert, which included “four wild oxen mighty and terrible, ten elephants, one hundred and twenty lions on foot, and eight hundred speared from his chariot,” ascribing his success to the help of the gods Ninurta and Nergal.

These gods were closely associated with battle and sport, but to both other characteristics were attributed at various epochs of their godhood. It has been suggested that the evolution of the fish-god Dagon from the Babylonian deity Dagān followed on such lines, but sufficient data for an identification of the two do not survive.

From the sculptures discovered at Kouyunjik and at Nimroud (now in the British Museum), and from an Assyrian cylinder, Layard is able, although all three vary somewhat in details, to describe this so-called fish-god, be it Oannes or Dagon, as “combining the human shape with that of the fish. The head of the fish formed a mitre above that of the man, whilst its scaly limbs, back, and fan-like tail fell as a cloak behind, leaving the human limbs and feet exposed.” But in identifying this mythic form with Oannes, he terms it merely “the sacred man-fish,”not deity.

There were to be seen in the temple of Belus, according to Berosus, sculptured representations of men with two wings, or two faces, with the legs and horns of goats, or the hoofs of horses; also bulls with the heads of men, and horses with the heads of dogs.

I venture to suggest that the mystic fish-form of Dagon or Oannes is of the same nature and in the same category as the man with the legs and horns of goats, or with the hoofs of horses: but these mythic goat or horse forms were not elevated into goat-gods or horse-gods. The idea of the deification of the fish-forms, whether that of a man issuing from a fish or of a man whose upper half was human but lower piscine, may, perhaps, have sprung from the undoubted worship by the Philistines at Ashdod and elsewhere of the god called Dagon, and partly to the original description of him in the A.V., but now corrected in the R.V.

Dagon, it will be remembered (I Samuel v. 4), after being confronted with the ark of the Lord in the morning, was found fallen: “the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands lay cut upon the threshold, only the fishy part (A.V.) or stump (R.V.) of Dagon was left unto him.” From this passage Milton undoubtedly drew his conception of—

“Dagon his name; sea-monster, upward man And downward fish.”

It is possible that the theory of his having from his navel down the form of a fish, and from his navel up the form of a man—a theory which is unknown to the Targum, Josephus, or the Talmud, and perhaps is as late as the twelfth century a.d. —merely transfers by the help of etymology the description given by Lucian of the goddess Derceto, worshipped on the same coast-line by the Syrians, who were more partial to fish deities than the Assyrians.

This Dagon has been mistakenly connected with Odacon, the last of the five sea-monsters who arose from the Erythræan Sea. His body (according to Berosus) was like that of a fish, but under the head of the fish was that of a man, to whose tail were added women’s feet, whose voice was human, and whose language was articulate. During the day he instructed the Sumerians in letters and in all arts and sciences, more especially in the building of temples, but at night he plunged again into the sea.

Authorities disagree whether Dagon derives his name from the Hebrew Dāg, signifying fish, or dāgān, sheaf or agriculture. Sanchouniathon early held, as do most modern writers, the latter view. Reichardt errs in his conjecture that the representation in De Sarzec (p. 189) shows the deity holding in his hand ears of corn, instead of what really is a palm branch of the conventional type.

Cylinder seals depict river gods, some with streams rising from their shoulders, or flowing from their laps, or from vases in their laps, and containing fish, and others half men and half fish. Mythological beings with fish head-dress occur not only on seals but on the Ninevite reliefs, etc., where it has been suggested that they do represent Dagan.

The delineation of fish on vases, etc., and of a fish in a stream of water on a small fragment from Telloh, are of early Sumerian art. The representation of Gilgamesh carrying fish dates from at least 2800 b.c., or some thirteen hundred years previous to the Phylokapi Vase (the most ancient Greek representation of men similarly engaged) and so furnishes a comparison, and from the differences in delineation of face, arms, and eyes a contrast of singular interest.

Chapter XXXIV. The Legends of Adapa, and of the Flood

Ea (originally the primal deity of the Sumerian city of Eridu and eventually the god of the waters on and beneath the Earth) formed with Anu, the god of Heaven, and Enlil, the god of the Earth, from the earliest period the great triad at the head of the Babylonian pantheon. The representation of Ea took the form of a sea-monster with a body of a big fish, full of stars, and claws for the base of his feet.

Ea is ordinarily known from the pretty legend woven round his mortal son Adapa, and the command in obedience to which Adapa firmly but unconsciously made refusal of the gift of immortality.

The latter, to supply his father’s household, went a-fishing in the sea one day—fish food was evidently not the “abomination” to the Sumerian that it was to the Egyptian gods—but suddenly Shūtu the South Wind came on to blow, upset his sailing boat, and ducked him under the water, or, as Adapa puts it, “made me descend to the house of my lord,” i.e. Ea, god of the Sea. In anger Adapa caught the South Wind and broke her wings. But for this assault he was haled to appear in heaven before Anu, who had noticed, or had learnt through his messenger, that the South Wind had ceased, according to the earlier or Eridean account, to blow for seven days.

Before setting out Adapa was bidden by Ea to put on garments of mourning to propitiate the two gods, Tammuz and Gishzida, guarding the portals of heaven, but was warned not to touch at any hazard what he purposely misnamed the “Bread of Death,” or the “Water of Death,” which would be offered unto him. He could, however, accept the garment and the oil when likewise presented.

At the interview the guardian gods interceded so successfully with Anu that his wrath waned; he granted a pardon, and decided that as Adapa had seen the interior of heaven, he should be added to the company of the gods.

He therefore commanded that the “Bread of Life” and the “Water of Life” should be brought forth; but Adapa would neither eat nor drink of them, although he put on the proffered garment and anointed himself with the poured-out oil. And Anu, when he saw that Adapa had not partaken of the “Bread of Life,” or of the “Water of Life,” asked him, saying, “Come, Adapa, why dost thou neither eat nor drink?” And Adapa answered that he had refused to eat or drink, because Ea his lord had so commanded him.

Whereon comes the conclusion of the whole matter, and the loss of immortality in the last words of Anu, “And now thou canst not live!”

Ea was regarded not only as the god of the sea, but of wisdom, somewhat perhaps on the lines of myths common to Greece, India, and elsewhere, which tell us that always by the way of the sea came civilisation. The great civilisations of the world have in fact been developed round the shores of the great seas—the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic.

The Assyrian legends credit Ea for the most part with good-will and beneficent acts towards mankind.

Prominent among these stands out his revelation, by means of a dream, to Utnapishti of the all-destroying flood, which the gods, wroth at the sins of mankind, had ordained, and his command forthwith to build a ship, whose size and shape, etc., are given with much precision, e.g. it was coated inside and out with bitumen and divided into cells. On this Utnapishti and his family and servants embarked, after bringing on board all the gold and silver they could collect, and “seeds of life of all kinds,” and beasts, both domestic and wild.

The Sumerian original of the Babylonian Deluge story, which has now been recovered, corresponds with the main features of the later version.

In both a flood is sent to destroy mankind, but in the first the intention of the gods is revealed in time to a pious Sumerian, possibly a priest king, Ziudsuddu, the Sumerian equivalent of the abbreviated Semitic name Utnapishti. He escapes from the flood in a great boat, which floats away on the waters. When the storm after seven days has abated and the sun at last struggled out, Ziudsuddu makes a thanksgiving sacrifice of an ox and a sheep. We find him in the end reconciled with the great gods, who, as in the Babylonian version, give him immortality.

From the incompleteness of the text it is impossible to determine whether in the Sumerian version the episode of the birds occurs; the probability is that it did not. As is but natural, the earlier story is simpler and more primitive in style than the Babylonian.

In the Gilgamesh account of the Flood, which in general resembles the story as given by Berosus, the absence of the raven, in the Bible the return of the dove with an olive leaf in her mouth, proclaims the abating of the waters, while the Algonkins allot the rôle, on the failure of the raven, to the muskrat. But, in the Indian legend it is a fish, not a god, which not only conveys to Manu the beneficent warning of the coming deluge but also saves him eventually by drawing his ship to a northern mountain.

Chapter XXXV. Fish—Vivaria—The First Instance of Poaching

We find in two important sources of our knowledge of Assyria (proper) references to beasts or fishes of the sea and of the river.

The first occurs in The Broken Column of Tiglath-Pileser I., in whose reign Assyria attained to high prosperity. This king, the first of that country to leave behind a detailed record of his achievements, was, as we have seen, a mighty hunter. After recounting his many military campaigns he adds in Column IV. a list of the beasts and fish which he had taken in his hunting expeditions. The text runs:—

1. The gods Ninurta and Nergal, who loved his priesthood, (the task) of hunting in the field,

2. Entrusted unto him, and in ships of the land of Arvad

3. he sailed, and he slew a mighty dolphin in the sea.

Then follows a catalogue raisonné of his famous Zoo, in which were collected the elephants, lions, mountain-goats, stags, dromedaries, which he captured himself or obtained (antedating Hagenbeck) “through merchants whom he had sent out,” and other numerous “wild beasts and fowl of the Heaven that fly, the work of his hands, their names together with (the number of) the beasts which my did not record ... have I recorded.” In addition to these, of which “he caused their herds to bring forth young,” we find—

29. “A great pagûtu, a crocodile, a hippopotamus (?), and beasts of the Great Sea,

30. the king of Musrê sent unto him and caused the people of his land to behold.”

We cannot determine what one of the subjects of this gift, “a great pagûtu,“ exactly was. Tum-su-hu may possibly be the equivalent of the Egyptian emsah, Arabic timsâh, i.e. a crocodile. If so, Musrê must indicate Egypt.

The Annals of Aṣur-Nasirpal form our second document of knowledge. The walls of his palace, lined with sculptures in relief, represent his exploits in the field of battle and in the chase. Details are most carefully and elaborately carved; the designs mark the acme of Assyrian art.

In Column III. he records

“Some men I took alive and impaled them on stakes over against their cities.

At that time I marched into the district of Lebanon, and unto the Great Sea.

In the Great Sea I washed my weapons and I made offering unto the gods.

The tribute of the kings of the sea from the lands of the men of Tyre and Sidon and Arvad, which lieth in the midst of the sea, silver and gold and a great pagûtu and a small pagûtu and ivory and a dolphin, a creature of the sea, I received as tribute from them, and they embraced my feet.”

This “washing,” or as it has otherwise been rendered “dipping,” of a weapon in the sea is not to be taken, as it sometimes is, in a sense suggesting fishing by a harpoon or spear, or as typical of victory, but rather as a symbolical act of homage and propitiation to the unknown deities of the deep.

A later Assyrian king, Asurbanipal, no doubt from the value which the test of use in his many hunting expeditions afforded, regarded the dog from a point of view very different from that apparently taken by some of his subjects.

To judge by an old Assyrian prayer, “From the dog, the snake, and the scorpion, and whatever is baneful may Merodach preserve us,” the general feeling was that of fear.

But five clay models preserve for us representations of some of the king’s favourite hounds, with their names inscribed upon them. The appropriateness of their names betrays their master’s familiarity with canine traits, as we detect from Chaser of the Wicked, Conqueror of the Foe, Biter of his Enemy, Mighty in his help, He crossed the road and did his bidding!

At Harrān (according to al-Nadim), dogs were considered sacred and had offerings made unto them, a statement which is strengthened by the divine title at Harrān of My Lord with the Dogs, which seemingly points to Marduk and his four dogs, the name of one of which, Iltebu, “the Howler,” is as characteristic to-day as it was five thousand years ago.

In the Bible it is curious to note the low position of the dog. It is rarely spoken of with approval. Possibly the existence and proclivities of the numerous packs of pariah dogs account for the fact. Tobit seems the only person who makes his dog his companion, and then only when on journeys.

Over two hundred kinds of fish are enumerated in the catalogue of Asurbanipal’s library at Nineveh: the attachment of the fish determinative constitutes our authority. No writer, even Dr. Boulenger, has classified or identified the fishes of Assyrian representations as thoroughly as Montet and others have those of the hieroglyphs.

The task would seem more formidable, for two reasons: first, the short time that cuneiform as compared with hieroglyph writing has been deciphered, and the wider study which Egyptian excavation has attracted; and second, the Assyrian artist treated his subjects more generally and more conventionally than his confrères in Egypt. Although in the sea and river scenes fish and shells are introduced, scarcely any distinctions mark particular ichthyic species. Contrast with this the representations of the return of Hatasu’s expedition from the land of Punt or Arabia. Here the artists depict the fishes so characteristically that Doenitz has identified them as belonging to the Red Sea, and even determined the species of each.

We can recognise in the rivers, crabs, sometimes with a fish caught in their claws, eels (or water-snakes), and small turtles. When the sculptor wished to indicate the sea, he made these fish larger, and to emphasise his point added others, which are only inhabitants of salt water, e.g. the star-fish.

Within the last five years identification of Mesopotamian fish has been carried further by Dr. Harri Holma of Helsingfors, and by Professor Langdon.

From the latter I take the following list:—

“1. The buradu, of the skate and ray type. This flat fish is the most common of all species in Southern Babylonia from the earliest historical period. The Sumerians knew it as the _suḥuru_ fish, and speak of it as ‘bearded,’ referring to a kind of skate fish with long hairs about the mouth. They mention also the ‘goat-skate,’ and the ‘lower lipped skate.’ Dr. Holma’s statement (p. 96) that the _suḥuru_ cannot be the skate, turbot, or plaice, because these have no beards, has been contraverted, since fish of the skate type often have long feelers at the mouth resembling a beard.

“2. The kuppû, said to be the rhombus maximus.

“3. The šênu, in Greek σάνδαλον, in Latin solea, in English ‘sole.’ S̆ênu means ‘sandal’ in Babylonian.

“4. Sêlibu, or ‘fox fish,’ perhaps so-called from its slyness; probably Alopecias vulpes.

“5. The kalbu, ‘dog-fish,’ said to be the Greek καρχαρίας κύων.

“6. The piazu, ‘pig-fish,’ Galeus canis, ‘sea sow,’

“7. The puḥadu, ‘lamb fish,’ perhaps Pelecus cultratus.

“8. The balgu, a fish well known in all periods, and said to be the same as the widely spread Mongolian balyq, the ordinary word for fish in Turkish; in some parts the sword fish, in others the ‘bull head.’

“9. The qarshu, probably the ‘shark,’ or a fish of prey of the Persian Gulf.

“10. The gallabu, ‘barber,’ not yet identified.

“11. The simunu, ‘swallow fish,’ by some identified with the ‘flying fish.’

“12. The zingur, supposed to be the ‘sturgeon.’”

Other fish names, especially Sumerian, remained unidentified till (in May, 1918), Langdon translated the only hymn (yet published) to Ninâ, the Fish Goddess, and spouse of Tammuz. Among its twelve fish we get the ‘electric fish’ (query the νάρκη), the ‘nun fish,’ the ‘fire fish of the sea,’ and the ‘swallow fish.’ The touching lines bewailing the death of Tammuz are, alas! imperfect.

Fish abounded in the Two Rivers. Euphrates fish were so plentiful that they could be caught simply in one’s hand, apparently without any “tickling.” The coast folk could not cope with their catches. Wicker traps, automatically opened and shut by the tides, yielded their “harvest of ocean.”

Sluice gates were far commoner in Assyria than in Palestine. The numerous rivers, and scientific system of irrigation which from earliest ages threaded Sumeria and later on Western Assyria, account for the frequency.

According to Sir W. Willcocks, “The granary of the ancient 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 piscinæ with their ever-ready supply of fresh fish.

The keeper, or fisherman, attached to the temples (according 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.”

A document of the twenty-first century brings to light further evidence of the economic importance of fish and of the rights of fishing, and what to us modern fishermen is of intenser interest—the first case on record of Poaching!

This occurred in the reign of Samsu-iluna, the successor to the great Hammurabi. The latter’s Code of laws of 287 sections was considered on its discovery some twenty years ago to be a Digest of Babylonian decisions, but the recent finding of a clay tablet, clearly the prototype of the Code, proves its Sumerian origin.

It not only illuminates vividly the social and economic conditions of Babylon, but established for generations the status, the rights, the duties flowing from contracts or arising from injury.

Its scope is curiously wide. It includes, for instance, provisions to meet such rare cases as injuries which resulted in the miscarriage of women. The similarity of enactment in these cases and in divorces demonstrates inter alia how marked was the Code’s influence on the Mosaic legislation some seven centuries later.

Every one of Hammurabi’s subjects could by its help acquire a clearer conception of his individual property. The letter or rescript of Samsu-iluna shows that rights of fishing were acknowledged and enforceable.

The Rescript runs:—

“Unto Sin-idinnam, Kar-Sippar, and the Judges of Sippar say, Thus saith Samsu-iluna. They have reported (unto me) that the ships of the fishermen go down unto the district of Rabīm and to the district of Shakanīm and catch fish. I am therefore sending (unto thee) an official of the Palace Gate. When he shall reach thee, the ships of the fishermen which are in the district of Shakanīm (shalt thou ...) and thou shalt not again send the ships of the fishermen down into the district of Rabīm or the district of Shakanīm.”

This letter confirms what had previously been only surmised, viz. that the inhabitants of certain districts had enjoyed the exclusive right of fishing in their home waters. “It has already been inferred,” King continues, “that the duty of repairing the banks of rivers and canals, and of clearing the waterways, fell upon the owners of property along the banks, and it was no doubt as a compensation for this enforced service (or corvée) that the fishing in these waters was preserved.”

Mesopotamia and Armenia did not lack in fish of unusual, even fatal, properties. Thus of certain fishes near Babylon Ælian tells us on the authority of Theophrastus, when the irrigation streams were without water, they remained in any small hole which was moist or held a little water, and were able to find a living in the herbage which grew in the dry channels, etc. Pliny (IX. 83) gives a somewhat similar story but a more detailed description of these fish, which “have heads like sea-frogs, the remaining parts like gudgeons, but the gills like other fish.” Emerging from their water holes, they travel on land for food, moving along with their fins, aided by a rapid movement of their tail. If pursued, they retreat to their holes and make a stand.

He notices too the stay-at-homeness of the fish in the Tigris and of those in the lake Arethusa. Though the river flows in and out of the lake, the denizens of the one are never to be found in the other. We discern the reason for such estranged relations in his previous sentence, “the waters of the lake support all weighty substances and exhale nitrous vapours.” Ktesias mentions a spring in Armenia, the fishes of which are quite black and, if eaten, prove instantly fatal.

The only spring of sweet-smelling water “in toto orbe,” Chabura, lies in Mesopotamia. The reason (according to legend) for its possessing this unique property was because in it the Queen of Heaven, Juno, or presumably her Babylonian counterpart, was wont to bathe. But Pliny fails to indicate whether the unique scent was an effort of Nature to supply a bath meet for the Queen of Heaven, or was merely a by-product of her lavation. Possibly the fish of Chabura (like the thyme fish) exhaled a “most sweet scent,” and so effected “the sweet smelling.” But probably to preserve their power, “they will come to feed from men’s hands.”

I have adduced sufficient proof that fish were plentiful in Mesopotamia. Additional testimony has needlessly been sought in Professor Sayce’s now fairly accepted suggestion that the ideogram for Nineveh implies the House of the Waters or of Fish.

Another explanation of Nineveh as The Lady of the Waters deduces from Ninâ (said to be a daughter of Ea and a fish goddess) lengthening into Nineveh. But the term The Lady, i.e. The Lady par excellence, in Assyrian especially applies to Bêlit the spouse of Asur, who became generally identified with Ishtar of Nineveh.

If The Lady of the Waters translate correctly the ideogram of Nineveh, the term may have sprung from a temple to this reputed Fish Goddess standing in that city. But even if the existence of such a temple can be inferred, its original site probably lay in Sumerian Lagash, not in Nineveh.

Chapter XXXVI. Fish in Offerings, Auguries, Etc.

The Sumerian records leave no possibility of doubt as to offerings of fish being made to the deities, not exclusively or specially to a deity of fish. They show Eannatum in early days offering at Telloh certain fish to various gods to secure their aid that the treaty which he had just concluded with the city of Umma might be maintained for all time unbroken.

Similar offerings present themselves all through the history of Assyria. Numerous tablets detailing the nature of the enjoined offerings include fish, and as numerous receipts by the temples acknowledge offerings of fish. In the course of time votive offerings in ivory and bronze, etc., according to King, took the place of actual fish.

The striking resemblance of the institution of the Scape-Goat in Palestine to the ancient Mashhulduppu or Babylonian Scape-Goat, both in object and high ceremonial ritual, is noted in my Jewish chapter. But we cannot for one moment assume that sacrifices and oblations in Assyria evolved from perhaps the earliest primitive, i.e. human, sacrifice, or followed the same lines as those of Israel or of Rome. In the first nation human sacrifice probably prevailed in the earlier times to a wide extent, and in the second (as Varro indicates) “Populus pro se ignem animalia mittit,” and even “pisciculum pro animis humanis” became a not unusual and cheaper alternative.

On the other hand, we possess, in historic and prehistoric Assyria, no trustworthy evidence of human sacrifice. Sayce, it is true, in 1875 published two texts, which, as he translated, demonstrated that human sacrifice did prevail. These, refuted by Ball, are not accepted as even a proper translation of the passage, much less a proof of the practice.

Jastrow has recently returned to the charge. He suggests that, “His eldest son shall he burn at the Khamm of Adad,” and other passages, establish that at one time children were offered in sacrifice, very much on the same lines as the later Judæan immolation of their children to Moloch, as when King Ahaz (2 Kings xvi. 3) “made his son to pass through the fire” in the Tophet just outside the gates of Jerusalem. But Jastrow finds even less favour now than Sayce did forty years ago.

Campbell Thompson, after remarking that the existence of human sacrifice among either the Babylonian or Assyrian is not easy of satisfactory proof, concludes, “The fact is that human sacrifice goes out in proportion as civilisation comes in, and probably by the time men are ready to commit their religious ritual to writing, human sacrifice has ceased to be a regular and periodic rite: as the Assyrians were the highest civilised of all the Semites before our era, so in all probability fewest traces of this custom exist in their records.”

A semi-religious practice, not dissimilar in object to that of the Scape-Goat, can be discerned, if not as a vehicle for carrying away all the sins of the people, yet as a method of ridding the individual by the agency of some beast or fish of the affliction which lay upon him.

In one of the so-called Penitential Psalms or incantations, which the tablets from the library of Asur-bani-pal bequeath us, the prayerful desire to be free of suffering finds utterance in:—

“Let me cast off my evil that the birds may fly up to Heaven with it, That the fish may carry off my affliction.”

This whole passage ought, however, to be regarded not as a Penitential Psalm so much as “a ceremony for cleansing a man from tabu, when he wishes to see something in a dream. It finds close connection with the Levitical charm, originating from sympathetic magic, e.g. for cleansing the leper or leprous house,” i.e. by the two doves, as in Leviticus xiv. 4.

Langdon asserts that in the Sumero-Babylonian religion each individual in normal conditions was guided by a divine spirit or god (cf. the δαὶμων of Socrates and the genius of the Romans). When a man was possessed by the powers of evil he was estranged from his personal god, because some demon had attacked or driven out the protecting deity from his body. In this ancient period there seems to be no moral element whatever in the case. If a man became tabu (which the eating of fish in other countries than Assyria would involve), or possessed by some dangerous unclean power, which made him unholy and filled him with bodily or mental distress, this state came about solely because at some unguarded moment a demon had expelled the indwelling god.

The demon had to be exorcised by some method of atonement, of which the most important element was in Sumerian magic water, in Hebrew blood. “In view of the great influence which Babylonian magic appears to have exerted upon the Hebrew rituals, it is curious it did not succeed in banishing this gross Semitic practice. Blood of animals does not occur as a cleansing element in Babylonia,” an omission due apparently to the culture of the Sumerians “not permitting such crude ideas, and to their teaching those Semites with whom they came in contact a cleaner form of magic.”

In addition to the demons or spirits described above we find others, which could and, unless the proper rites were paid to the dead, did affect the living. The greatest misfortune which could befall a man was to be deprived of proper burial. His shade, ran the common belief, could not reach Arallū, but wandered disconsolately about the earth. When driven by pangs of hunger it perforce ate the offal or leavings of the street. As the Egyptians, to ensure the continued existence of the dead and his ka, provided sepulchral offerings (the depictments of which included fish), so did the Babylonians, not only for a similar but also for the additional purpose of preserving themselves from torments.

To leave a body unburied was not unattended with danger to the living. The shade of the dead man might bewitch any person it met and cause him grievous sickness. The wandering shade of a man was called ekimmu, i.e. spectre. Only sorcerers possessed the power of casting a spell whereby the ekimmu might be made to harass a man. On the other hand, the spectre sometimes settled on a man of its own accord, in the hope that its victim would be driven to give it burial to free himself from its clutches.

The Babylonian conception of the condition of the dead was an utterly joyless one. Arallū, or the House of the Dead, was dark and gloomy. Its dwellers never beheld the light of the sun, but sat in unchanging gloom. The Babylonians possessed no hope of a joyous life beyond the grave, nor did they imagine a paradise in which the deceased would live a life similar to that on earth.

The nature of the under-world can be gathered from the description given to Gilgamesh by the spirit of Enkidu risen from the grave (sometimes cited as an instance of necromancy), “the place where was the worm that devoured, and where all was cloaked in dust.” The Hymn of the Descent of Ishtar into Hell goes farther:

“To the land whence none return, the place of darkness, To the house wherein he who enters is excluded from the light, To the place where dust is their bread and mud their food.”

The very curious bronze of the Le Clerq collection in Paris, in which ichthyic garments and gods of the under-world, Arallū, occur, must be my excuse for this too lengthy and almost fishless digression on the Babylonian dead. It shows several figures, two clad in garments of the form of a fish, with their scales very visible.

Two explanations of the bronze have been offered. The first, hitherto generally accepted, suggests that the figures are representations of the gods of the under-world, or of the dead waiting on a sick person, together with some demons of the under-world and two priests wearing fishlike raiment.

My friend Professor Langdon has furnished me with another explanation, more detailed and more interesting.

This so-called representation of a scene in the lower world from a bronze talisman has been misunderstood. The obverse has three registers. In the upper register are depicted the seven devils, all with animal heads, in attitude of ferocious attack upon a human soul. The middle register represents a sick man who is supposed to be possessed by the seven devils. He lies upon a bed. At his head and feet stand two priests each arrayed to appear like fish: these are symbolic of Ea, god of the sea and patron of all magic. They clothed themselves in a fishlike robe to signify that they derived their divinations and incantations from the sacred water, of which Ea was the god.

In the lower register are drawings of cult utensils, such as holy water bowls, censers, etc., and of the fever demon Labartu, who has been driven from the body of the man and is in flight by boat. The reverse of this bronze has in deep relief one of the seven devils who is in the act of peering over the upper edge of the bronze, and gazing upon the scene of atonement and magical healing below.

The cuneiform texts prescribe that fumigation, either for cleansing a person or exorcising a demon, may be performed by the wizard, with or without a censer, a bowl, or lighted torch.

Apart from its permeation of Israel in legislation as indicated in connection with Hammurabi’s Code, the influence of Assyria stands out in other ways clearly. The semi-similarity of treatment of the Deluge has already been noticed, while the rendering in the stories of Sargon and Moses of a widespread legend differs only in such points of detail as the substitution of the Nile or (according to Arabic tradition) of a fish-pond for the Euphrates, and of the irrigator Akki as the discoverer of the chest of reeds for Pharaoh’s daughter.

“My lowly mother conceived me, in secret she brought me forth: She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she closed my door: She cast me into the river, which rose not over me: The river bore me up, unto Akki the irrigator it carried me.

And for ... four years I ruled the kingdom.”

The assertion that the Old Testament is fairly saturated with Babylonian culture and folklore, and that even in the days of the New Testament we have not passed beyond the sphere of its impression hardly overshoots the mark, when the similarity of these and other instances is borne in mind.

The earliest point of contact between Babylon and Palestine is recorded in Genesis xiv. 1, which makes Abraham the contemporary of “Amraphel King of Shinar,” who most probably can now be identified with Hammurabi in the light of the recent discoveries of Kugler.

The first connection of Israel with Assyria proper occurs in the reign of Shalmaneser II., in whose Monolith Inscription figures, as one of the allies of Benhadad I. of Damascus, the name of Ahâbbu Sir’lai, generally identified with Ahab, King of Israel.

Fish are discovered playing a part in auguries and divinations very similar to their rôle in Rome. Augury in both nations was regarded with deep veneration. It reached in Assyria a very high plane. It was practised as a recognised science by a large and organised body of the priesthood under the direct control and patronage of the King.

All strange occurrences in heaven or earth were referred to the seers. Almost every event of common life was believed by the pious Babylonian to require prophetic decision whether it boded well or ill.

Among the reforms undertaken by Urukagina was that of the college of the diviners, for he tells us that “he, who hitherto received one shekel for his work, took money no more.”

In the letters of Hammurabi these diviners were recognised as a regular Guild. Knowledge of the tablets of recorded answers, which, suiting the individual circumstances of each interrogator, had for generations been stored in the library, enabled them to render an interpretation of practically all events. Their forecasts had resort not only to astrology, but to other means, such as the observations of the movements of fish, of the flight of birds, and of the entrails and livers of sheep and other sacrificial animals, all of which were the subject of minute inspection.

The Babylonians in seeking to determine the future watched carefully the movements, etc., of fish. Although the greater part of the known divination tablets regarding fish omens are in a sad state of preservation, the following will serve as an example: “If fish in a river keep in a school and steadily face up stream, in that place will be peaceful habitation,” a deliverance hardly fraught with comfort at times of flood or drought!

Then again the passage (in Ezekiel xxi. 21-22), “The King of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he shook the arrows to and fro, he consulted the teraphim, he looked in the liver,” etc., is of great interest, as evidence that the Babylonians employed both Belomancy or divination by arrows, and Hepatoscopy or inspection of the liver.

Belomancy was practised by other nations, notably in 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 movements, 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.

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.

Chapter XXXVII. The Fight Between Marduk and Tiāmat

Following my usual course of ending the chapter on each nation with a legend or story, in which fish or ichthyic monsters figure as direct or indirect agents of some important event, I subjoin the only myth in Assyrian literature which comes within this category, viz. the famous fight between Marduk and Tiāmat, the monstrous creature of the deep.

Tiāmat, with her consort Apsū, had revolted against the gods and brought into being a brood of monsters to destroy them. So formidable seemed her forces that all appeals by Anshar, the leader of the gods, to Anu, and then to Ea, were made in vain. No god would “face the music,” till Marduk was prevailed upon to become their champion. Nor does this grand refusal seem unnatural, when we read of Tiāmat’s dimensions.

“Fifty Kasbu, or more correctly Biru (i.e. 300 miles), was her length, one Kasbu (six miles) was her breadth, half a rod was her mouth;” and the rest of her body of proportionate bulk! Nor again is it unnatural that at—

“The lashing of the water with her tail, All the Gods in heaven were afraid.”

How pigmy in comparison with Tiāmat appears the decadent sea-dragon mentioned by Ignatius, on whose gut, 120 feet long, in the library of Constantinople were written in letters of gold the Iliad and the Odyssey!

Allied with Tiāmat in her fight were—

“Spawned sea-serpents, Sharp of teeth and cruel of fang.”

“With poison instead of blood she has filled their bodies, And mighty tempests, and the fishman, and the ram, They bear merciless weapons without fear of the fight.”

Beowulf in his famous battle with the Dragon stands out as nobler and braver than Marduk, inasmuch as he, a man, to free his country from the Dragon’s toll of death and ravage, of his own volition seeks out the monster. He “attacks alone, for being altogether fearless he scorned to take an army against the foe,” whereas Marduk—the god—was compelled to the duel, since he was unable to enlist a single god. Beowulf “counted not the worm’s warring for aught,” whereas Marduk among his preparations,

“Made a net to enclose the inward parts of Tiāmat And the four winds he set so that nothing of her might escape.”

The protagonists (literally protagonists, for behind Marduk cowered the shrinking gods, and behind Tiāmat her spouse and her spawned monsters) on meeting consume time, quite in the grand Homeric manner, by launching taunts and reproaches at each other.

Eventually Marduk, after spreading out his net to catch her, seems to have anticipated the gassing tactics of the Huns by many millenniums, and owing to the absence of a mask with even greater success, for—

“The evil wind, that was behind, he let loose in her face, As Tiāmat opened her mouth to its full extent. He drove in the evil wind, while she had not yet shut her lips. The terrible winds filled her belly, And her courage was taken from her and her mouth she opened wide. His spear he seized, and broke through her belly, He severed her inward parts, he pierced her heart.”

Then for a while Marduk rested but, arising,

“He split her body up like a flat fish into two halves. One half of her he set in place as a covering for the heavens. He fixed a bolt, he stationed watchmen, And bade them not to let her waters come forth.”

Finally to their hero and saviour the gods accord a triumphant welcome, and

“Presents and gifts they brought unto him.”

JEWISH FISHING