DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49270#0337
250
0. Bates
happens that in time such baskets are developed into true weels with funnel-shaped mouths
designed to facilitate the entrance, while they prevent the escape, of fish. The employ-
ment of baskets as hand scoops is also a practice which has in all probability occasionally
contributed to the development of the wicker fish trap.187
The tomb paintings of the Old Kingdom picture the use of two types of fish pots.
The first was small, and of very simple construction (figs. 129, 132, 148); the second,
which is less commonly represented than the first, was a large affair of such size that sev-
eral men were needed to manipulate it (figs. 130, 131). Traps of the smaller sort were
about 1 m. 50 long: this, at least, I judge to have been the case by the position in which
one specimen is being held (fig. 132).
The greatest diameter, which occurred not at the mouth of the basket but near its
middle, appears to have been about a third of the length: i. e., about half a meter. At
frequent intervals throughout their length traps of this class were bound around with
rope (cf. fig. 132), while the small opening at the end was sometimes tied around with a
stouter cord for binding (fig. 129). Near the rear end of the pot, around its narrowest
part, ran a cord by means of which the end could be closed while the trap was being used.
This detail can be discerned by a careful scrutiny of the right hand pot in fig. 132, and it
also accounts for the transverse lashings in the two right hand pots, shown as having been
just set, in fig. 148. Usually this important feature has been omitted by the artist, but
in the scene last cited the man setting one of the weels on the left is represented as tying
up the neck of the pot with a short cord. In order to remove the fish from the pots it
was of course necessary to untie this cord, after which the contents of the trap could be
dropped through the bottom into a basket (figs. 132, 148).188
Small traps were probably weighted inside and set on the bottom in shallow water, for
they are not represented as being fitted with floats. In fig. 129 a weel is being set in a small
canal, and the intention of fhe artist in representing two pots facing right and two facing
left in fig. 148 may have been to show how the fisherman set his pots in a small canal so
187 “The Teso women catch fish in baskets of elliptical shape, rather deep, and curving in towards the top edge;
with these they sweep along the water of shallow swamps and rivers, or the margin of lakes, and make good hauls of
small fish in the manner of a shrimping net”; A. L. Kitching, On the backwaters of the Nile, London, 1912, p. 213,
Cf. Loat, op. cit., fig. 27, p. xlviii, for a similar usage among the Shilluks and Dinkas at Kaka, some 70 miles north of
Fashoda.
188 The basket, or rather bag, commonly used by the fisherman appears to have been made of rushes and cords,
and to have resembled in shape the ‘string satchels’ familiar to many modern school children. See figs. 23, 128,
130, 131, 148, 212, 228, 231; cf. E. Naville, op. cit., pl. 28, fig. 1, and text, p. 18 (a bare mention), for a good example
of a string bag resembling that of the fisher folk. The fisherman’s bag had beckets worked in each of the two top
corners, and, often, a short tail left at each of the two bottom ones. The bottom corners were sometimes strength-
ened; cf. von Bissing, op. cit., pl. 28, figs. 124—128. V. Scheil has mistaken (in a N. K. market scene) one of these
bags which a fisherman is emptying into a woman’s basket, for a piece of cloth; V. Scheil, Le tombeau d’Apoui (Mem.
... .de la mission archeol. frang. du Caire, vol. 5, fasc. 4, Paris, 1894), p. 610, and pl. 2, top. A fish basket of differ-
ent shape from those cited is shown in fig. 32.
0. Bates
happens that in time such baskets are developed into true weels with funnel-shaped mouths
designed to facilitate the entrance, while they prevent the escape, of fish. The employ-
ment of baskets as hand scoops is also a practice which has in all probability occasionally
contributed to the development of the wicker fish trap.187
The tomb paintings of the Old Kingdom picture the use of two types of fish pots.
The first was small, and of very simple construction (figs. 129, 132, 148); the second,
which is less commonly represented than the first, was a large affair of such size that sev-
eral men were needed to manipulate it (figs. 130, 131). Traps of the smaller sort were
about 1 m. 50 long: this, at least, I judge to have been the case by the position in which
one specimen is being held (fig. 132).
The greatest diameter, which occurred not at the mouth of the basket but near its
middle, appears to have been about a third of the length: i. e., about half a meter. At
frequent intervals throughout their length traps of this class were bound around with
rope (cf. fig. 132), while the small opening at the end was sometimes tied around with a
stouter cord for binding (fig. 129). Near the rear end of the pot, around its narrowest
part, ran a cord by means of which the end could be closed while the trap was being used.
This detail can be discerned by a careful scrutiny of the right hand pot in fig. 132, and it
also accounts for the transverse lashings in the two right hand pots, shown as having been
just set, in fig. 148. Usually this important feature has been omitted by the artist, but
in the scene last cited the man setting one of the weels on the left is represented as tying
up the neck of the pot with a short cord. In order to remove the fish from the pots it
was of course necessary to untie this cord, after which the contents of the trap could be
dropped through the bottom into a basket (figs. 132, 148).188
Small traps were probably weighted inside and set on the bottom in shallow water, for
they are not represented as being fitted with floats. In fig. 129 a weel is being set in a small
canal, and the intention of fhe artist in representing two pots facing right and two facing
left in fig. 148 may have been to show how the fisherman set his pots in a small canal so
187 “The Teso women catch fish in baskets of elliptical shape, rather deep, and curving in towards the top edge;
with these they sweep along the water of shallow swamps and rivers, or the margin of lakes, and make good hauls of
small fish in the manner of a shrimping net”; A. L. Kitching, On the backwaters of the Nile, London, 1912, p. 213,
Cf. Loat, op. cit., fig. 27, p. xlviii, for a similar usage among the Shilluks and Dinkas at Kaka, some 70 miles north of
Fashoda.
188 The basket, or rather bag, commonly used by the fisherman appears to have been made of rushes and cords,
and to have resembled in shape the ‘string satchels’ familiar to many modern school children. See figs. 23, 128,
130, 131, 148, 212, 228, 231; cf. E. Naville, op. cit., pl. 28, fig. 1, and text, p. 18 (a bare mention), for a good example
of a string bag resembling that of the fisher folk. The fisherman’s bag had beckets worked in each of the two top
corners, and, often, a short tail left at each of the two bottom ones. The bottom corners were sometimes strength-
ened; cf. von Bissing, op. cit., pl. 28, figs. 124—128. V. Scheil has mistaken (in a N. K. market scene) one of these
bags which a fisherman is emptying into a woman’s basket, for a piece of cloth; V. Scheil, Le tombeau d’Apoui (Mem.
... .de la mission archeol. frang. du Caire, vol. 5, fasc. 4, Paris, 1894), p. 610, and pl. 2, top. A fish basket of differ-
ent shape from those cited is shown in fig. 32.