Fish and Fishing in Ancient Egypt

The River Nile is the source of Egypt’s productive fisheries and agricultural fertility today as it was in ancient times. Before the construction of the Aswan Dam the Nile was a seasonally flooded river plain with rich fertile soils deposited annually creating a slightly convex profile and riverside levees with lower areas stretching further from the river that were irrigated. This seasonal inundation determined the agricultural cycle of the plain and also provided a seasonal habitat for fish which were easily accessible in shallow flood waters. Using a combination of skeletal remains from excavations and the depiction of fish and fishing activities in art and objects, this facsimile edition of the 1989 volume examines the exploitation of fish from prehistoric times through to the end of the New Kingdom. The authors consider the range of fish caught and eaten and consumption taboos; they describe fishing tackle and evidence for manufacture and use before presenting an illustrated catalogue of the species of fish of ancient Egypt, their breeding habits, distribution of skeletal remains, depictions in art in a variety of media (painting, sculpture, relief and portable objects) and their culinary uses. The volume concludes with an illustrated appendix of examples of skeletal elements of the Nile fish most frequently recovered in excavation. AUTHORS: At the time of the original publication, Douglas J. Brewer was Director of the Spurlock Museum of Culture and Natural History and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois. Renée Friedman is a senior research associate at the Griffith Institute, University of Oxford. She was educated at the University of California, Berkeley. She specialises in pre-Dynastic ceramics and is best known for directing excavations at Hierakonpolis