In the Assyrian language there is apparently no word for fish-hook. From the resemblance between the Hebrew word _ḥōaḥ_, which means both thorn and fish-hook, and the Assyrian word _ḥâḥu_, which, it is alleged, means thorn, it has been conjectured that in the latter word we have the Assyrian term for fish-hook. Professor S. Langdon, who in a letter to me advances this conjecture, goes even farther—“in fact _ḥâḥu_ is our only direct evidence for the practice of fishing with hook and line in Assyria.” Basing himself on a similar Hebraic resemblance, he would make the Assyrian _ṣinnitān_, “two reins,” come from a supposed _ṣinnitu_, a possible feminine of _ṣinnu_, which occurs perhaps in the sense of “thorn,” and carry the same meaning as the Hebrew _ṣên_, which probably equals “thorn,” while its plural _ṣinnōth_ does stand for “fish-hooks.” He believes that in the word, _abarshu_, which Esarhaddon employs, “I snatched him (Abdi-Milkuti, King of Sidon) as a fish from the sea,” and again, of a chief of the Lebanon range who had rebelled and fled, “I caught him from the mountains like a bird,” we have evidence of a technical word for pulling or jerking out a fish with a line held in the hand, or perhaps attached to a Rod, because “snatch” would hardly be the appropriate term for the slower action involved in the drawing in of a net.[906] Whether in the first simile the suggestion is philologically valid is a point for Assyrian scholars to determine. The adequate rendering or explaining of Sumerian words by Assyrian ones is often difficult and doubtful, for while the latter language is a great help to understanding the former, the Assyrian, especially the later Assyrian, equivalent does not entirely correspond to what would be expected from a literal analysis of the Sumerian word. The second simile, I hold, alludes to the Net of the fowler, with which the representations show the Assyrians to have been familiar. While there may be doubt whether we possess any Assyrian word signifying hooks, there can be none as to their existence and their employment. From the absence of any, even conjectural, word for or representation of a float, we can only infer that ground bait fishing was the chief, perhaps the sole, line method in vogue. I can find no evidence that the Assyrians availed themselves of the spear, the trident, drugs or poison, but as the first two figure in Egyptian, Jewish, and Roman records, and appear to be the common property of all early peoples, the probability is that they were known and used in the Two Rivers.