DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49270#0291
204
O. Bates
hinders them in their calling, this temporary suspension of the industry does not appreciably
lessen the economic importance of the Egyptian fisheries, especially as in the Delta and
the Fayum they are never seriously interrupted.
In the remote days when man first dwelt in the Nile valley, we may with reason-
able certainty suppose, he shared with the wild beasts and birds the countless fish which
every year the falling river left stranded in its shallows, or cut off in its pools and back-
waters. The consumption of fish thus inaugurated never markedly abated, as far as
can be judged from the available evidence, in later times. Fish bones are regularly found
in the prehistoric Egyptian kitchen middens3; and the numerous pisciform slate palettes,
the fish-shaped pottery vases,4 and the occurrence in predynastic graves of bone or horn
harpoons, all indicate that long before the consolidation of the country under Menes
fishing was a well established pursuit. In this connection the slate palettes appear to
have a special significance which demands attention.
As is well known, these objects are found in great numbers in graves of the early and
middle predynastic periods. By the beginning of historic times they lost that variety
of form which distinguished them at an early date (S. D. 35-50), and they moreover became
of much rarer occurrence. Although they continued in use in Nubia, where simple forms
made of hard stones were employed for a considerable period, the latest example from
Egypt belongs to the III Dynasty.5
The purpose of the palettes is, up to a certain point, perfectly clear; they served as
tablets on which to grind malachite, ocher, galena, etc.— mineral colors which were crushed
on the slates by means of round or ovoid flint pebbles. As to the use to which the colors,
when ground, were put, archaeologists are so far agreed as very generally to admit that
they were employed in body painting or face painting — a theory rendered probable
a priori by the cultural state of the predynastic people, and substantiated by good evi-
dence of a more particular sort. Beyond this point uncertainty reigns. It has been
suggested that the powdered malachite served, as in parts of modern South Central Africa,
as a surgical dusting; that the colors were used as an eye paint to deaden the glare of the
sun; or that they were employed merely for purposes of personal decoration. None of
these suggestions, however, accounts for the peculiar forms of the palettes themselves.
3 J. de Morgan, Recherches sur les origines de 1’Egypte [2], p. 87.
4 These pisciform vases are common in predynastic times between S. D. 40 and 50. In the protodynastic period
and the Old Kingdom they are not known, but in the Middle Kingdom they reappear, and continue down into the
Late Period. The fish usually represented is apparently the Lates niloticus. It is noteworthy that the animal vases
of the Hyksos period “are mostly in the form of fish, and are invariably made of the black pottery with pricked designs
characteristic of that people”; M. A. Murray ‘Figure-vases in Egypt’ (Brit. Sch. of Arch, in Egypt, Histor. studies,
London, 1911) p. 41 sq.
5 G. A. Reisner, The Archaeological Survey of Nubia, vol. 1, p. 330 sq.
O. Bates
hinders them in their calling, this temporary suspension of the industry does not appreciably
lessen the economic importance of the Egyptian fisheries, especially as in the Delta and
the Fayum they are never seriously interrupted.
In the remote days when man first dwelt in the Nile valley, we may with reason-
able certainty suppose, he shared with the wild beasts and birds the countless fish which
every year the falling river left stranded in its shallows, or cut off in its pools and back-
waters. The consumption of fish thus inaugurated never markedly abated, as far as
can be judged from the available evidence, in later times. Fish bones are regularly found
in the prehistoric Egyptian kitchen middens3; and the numerous pisciform slate palettes,
the fish-shaped pottery vases,4 and the occurrence in predynastic graves of bone or horn
harpoons, all indicate that long before the consolidation of the country under Menes
fishing was a well established pursuit. In this connection the slate palettes appear to
have a special significance which demands attention.
As is well known, these objects are found in great numbers in graves of the early and
middle predynastic periods. By the beginning of historic times they lost that variety
of form which distinguished them at an early date (S. D. 35-50), and they moreover became
of much rarer occurrence. Although they continued in use in Nubia, where simple forms
made of hard stones were employed for a considerable period, the latest example from
Egypt belongs to the III Dynasty.5
The purpose of the palettes is, up to a certain point, perfectly clear; they served as
tablets on which to grind malachite, ocher, galena, etc.— mineral colors which were crushed
on the slates by means of round or ovoid flint pebbles. As to the use to which the colors,
when ground, were put, archaeologists are so far agreed as very generally to admit that
they were employed in body painting or face painting — a theory rendered probable
a priori by the cultural state of the predynastic people, and substantiated by good evi-
dence of a more particular sort. Beyond this point uncertainty reigns. It has been
suggested that the powdered malachite served, as in parts of modern South Central Africa,
as a surgical dusting; that the colors were used as an eye paint to deaden the glare of the
sun; or that they were employed merely for purposes of personal decoration. None of
these suggestions, however, accounts for the peculiar forms of the palettes themselves.
3 J. de Morgan, Recherches sur les origines de 1’Egypte [2], p. 87.
4 These pisciform vases are common in predynastic times between S. D. 40 and 50. In the protodynastic period
and the Old Kingdom they are not known, but in the Middle Kingdom they reappear, and continue down into the
Late Period. The fish usually represented is apparently the Lates niloticus. It is noteworthy that the animal vases
of the Hyksos period “are mostly in the form of fish, and are invariably made of the black pottery with pricked designs
characteristic of that people”; M. A. Murray ‘Figure-vases in Egypt’ (Brit. Sch. of Arch, in Egypt, Histor. studies,
London, 1911) p. 41 sq.
5 G. A. Reisner, The Archaeological Survey of Nubia, vol. 1, p. 330 sq.