Ichthyophagi

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Ichthyophagi (Gr. Ἰχθυοφάγοι and Latin Ichthyophagi, for "Fish-Eaters"), the name given by ancient geographers to several coast-dwelling peoples in different parts of the world and ethnically unrelated.

  • Nearchus mentions such a race as inhabiting the barren shores of the Gwadar and Pasni districts in Makrān, Balochistan, Pakistan. During the homeward march of Alexander the Great, his admiral, Nearchus led a fleet in Arabian Sea along the Makrān coast and recorded that the area was dry and mountainous, inhabited by the Ichthyophagoi or Fish-Eaters - a Greek rendering of the ancient Persian Mahi khoran, which has become the modern word Makran [1].
  • Pausanias locates them on the western coast of the Red Sea
  • Ptolemy speaks of fish-eaters on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, in the Persian Gulf, on the west coast of Africa and on the coast of the Far East near the harbour of Cattigara
  • while Pliny relates the existence of such tribes on the islands in the Persian Gulf
  • Herodotus (book i. c. 200) mentions three tribes of the Babylonians who were solely fish-eaters, and in book iii. c. 19 refers to Ichthyophagi in Egypt.

The existence of such tribes was confirmed by Sir Richard F Burton (El-Medinah, p. 144).

See also: Troglodyti

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  • This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
  • R. Bloch, «Ichthyophagoi», in Der Neue Pauly. Altertum. Stuttgart-Weimar, Verlag J. B. Metzler, vol. 5, 1998, p. 883.
  • O. Longo, «Un viaggio fra i mangiatori di pesci (dal Periplo di Nearco)», Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia Patavina di Scienze Lettere ed Arti, Memorie della Classe di Scienze morali Lettere ed Arti, XCVIII, parte III, 1986, p. 153-57.
  • O. Longo, «I mangiatori di pesce: regime alimentare e quadro culturale», Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici, 18, 1987, p. 9-56.
  • O. Nalesini, «Roman and Chinese Perception of a “Marginal” Coastal Population: Ptolemy’s Far Eastern Ichthyophágoi», in The Prehistory of Asia and Oceania, Edited by G. Afanas’ev, S. Cleuziou, J. R. Lukacs and M. Tosi, Forlì, ABACO, 1996, p. 197-204.
  • O. Nalesini, La cultura materiale delle popolazioni costiere del Makran all'epoca di Alessandro Magno (The Material Culture of the Coastal Populations of Makran at the Time of Alexander the Great), Napoli 2004 [2].
  • J. Tkač, «Ichthyophagoi», in Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, neue Bearbeitung von G. Wissowa, Stuttgart, IX, 1916, coll. 2524-31.
  • H. Treidler,«Ichthyophagen», in Der Kleine Pauly, München, Beck’sche Verlag, vol. II, 1979, coll. 1333-34.
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