Hunting, fishing and animals in ancient Egypt

The ancient Egyptian culture is full of rich traditions and practices that up to the present day we continue to learn more about.

According to the narratives of the poorly preserved The Pleasures of Fishing and Fowling and The Sporting King which were edited by Ricardo Caminos.

Ancient Egyptians capitalized from the large flocks of birds and hunted them either for food, offerings to the dead and gods.

Bird hunting through fowling with sticks was considered to be a sport practiced by royalty in ancient Egypt.

A more efficient and effective technique practiced by ancient Egyptians to fowl birds was clap net, however it required teamwork, skilled fowlers, someone to coordinate and oversee, a clap net and sometimes a decoy bird which was usually a grey heron to attract the prey.

Originally, in prehistoric and early times, spearfishing only served to provide food, and then it evolved into a recreation for the upper class.

Unlike spear fishing, angling was not practiced as a sport but it was an important means of obtaining food.

From the 1st Dynasty onward, some pictures have been found with scenes in which the king hunts alone, as the hippopotamus became the symbol of chaos and evil.

The king then traveled north to Faiyum accompanied by his army and ordered the soldiers to observe the wild bulls and confine them with fences and ditches.

The earliest pictures of lion hunting came from late prehistoric or early historic times and in the beginning it was not intended to be as a sport, but to rid the country of a plague, which was threatening people.

[5] Later, pictures emerged of the king taking hold of the lion to stab it to death as was displayed in Ramesses III's temple at Medinet Habu.

[3] In prehistoric times, elephants were despised and initially driven out by Egyptians because of their consumption of the crops and damaging the agriculture.