Priestly abstention was by no means uncommon, as some of the temples of Poseidon[805] demonstrate. In Egypt the observance was strict, at Askalon the reverse. Plutarch,[806] confirming and amplifying Herodotus,[807] writes:—“The priests indeed entirely abstain from all sorts: therefore on the ninth day of the first month (_Thoth_), when all the rest of the Egyptians are obliged by their religion to eat a fried fish before the doors of their houses, they only burn them, not tasting them at all, assigning as their reasons two, the second of which—indeed, the most manifest and obvious—is that fish is neither a dainty, nor even a necessary kind of food.”[808] But by the priests of Atargatis, to whose subjects ichthyophagia was under pain of blains, boils, and other dire diseases absolutely forbidden, fish boiled and roasted were daily offered, and by them daily eaten.[809] The religious ceremony in Thoth may have been merely a later aspect of a taboo once possibly universal among the class from which the priesthood largely drew, or may, perhaps, have been prompted by the desire of obtaining a good fish harvest. Apart from the uneconomic depletion of food entailed by the prescribed eating, the killing of “the children” or possessions of the deity seems hardly the best way to secure fruition of such desire. If, however, the feast survived as a relic of Totemism, the ceremony may possibly come within Robertson-Smith’s conception of the origin of all religious communion or sacraments, _i.e._ a renewal of the connection between the god of the Totem tribe with his people at a meal, where “the Totem itself is sacrificed at an annual feast, with special and solemn ritual.”[810] In the same way, eating of fish by the priests at Askalon may have originated from the idea of bringing the deity and his servants into closer relationship, and may have been continued to impress their religious superiority on the mass of the people, who were forbidden such food, and thus any direct connection with their god. Although the practice was different, the object of both priesthoods—enhancement of their religious prestige—was identical. Where the people abstained, they ate; where the people ate, they abstained. The Kings as High Priests seem, down to Ptolemaic times, to have eschewed fish absolutely. The _Stele_ of Piankhi, at any rate, indicates their practice _c._ 700 B.C. To this Nubian conqueror of Egypt came the petty Kings of the Delta to offer submission; but “they, whose legs from fear were as the legs of women, entered not into the King’s house, because they were unclean and eaters of fish, which is an abomination for the Court: but King Namlot, he entered, because he was pure, and ate not fish.”[811]