Chapter III.

THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE.[235]

It may seem ungallant to discuss the birth of Aphrodite as part of the

story of the evolution of the dragon. But the other chapters of this

book, in which frequent references have been made to the early history

of the Great Mother, have revealed how vital a part she played in the

development of the dragon. The earliest real dragon was Tiamat, one of

the forms assumed by the Great Mother; and an even earlier prototype was

the lioness (Sekhet) manifestation of Hathor.

Thus it becomes necessary to enquire more fully (than has been done in

the other chapters) into the circumstances of the Great Mother's birth

and development, and to investigate certain aspects of her ontogeny to

which only scant attention has been paid in the preceding pages.

Several reasons have led me to select Aphrodite from the vast legion of

Great Mothers for special consideration. In spite of her high

specialization in certain directions the Greek goddess of love retains

in greater measure than any of her sisters some of the most primitive

associations of her original parent. Like vestigial structures in

biology, these traits afford invaluable evidence, not only of

Aphrodite's own ancestry and early history, but also of that of the

whole family of goddesses of which she is only a specialized type. For

Aphrodite's connexion with shells is a survival of the circumstances

which called into existence the first Great Mother and made her not only

the Creator of mankind and the universe, but also the parent of all

deities, as she was historically the first to be created by human

inventiveness. In this lecture I propose to deal with the more general

aspects of the evolution of all these daughters of the Great Mother:

but I have used Aphrodite's name in the title because her

shell-associations can be demonstrated more clearly and definitely than

those of any of her sisters.

In the past a vast array of learning has been brought to bear upon the

problems of Aphrodite's origin; but this effort has, for the most part,

been characterized by a narrowness of vision and a lack of adequate

appreciation of the more vital factors in her embryological history. In

the search for the deep human motives that found specific expression in

the great goddess of love, too little attention has been paid to

primitive man's psychology, and his persistent striving for an elixir of

life to avert the risk of death, to renew youth and secure a continuance

of existence after death. On the other hand, the possibility of

obtaining any real explanation has been dashed aside by most scholars,

who have been content simply to juggle with certain stereotyped

catchphrases and baseless assumptions, simply because the traditions of

classical scholarship have made these devices the pawns in a rather

aimless game.

It is unnecessary to cite specific illustrations in support of this

statement. Reference to any of the standard works on classical

archæology, such as Roscher's "Lexikon," will testify to the truth of my

accusation. In her "Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion" Miss

Jane Harrison devotes a chapter (VI) to "The Making of a Goddess," and

discusses "The Birth of Aphrodite". But she strictly observes the

traditions of the classical method; and assumes that the meaning of the

myth of Aphrodite's birth from the sea--the germs of which are at least

fifty centuries old--can be decided by the omission of any

representation of the sea in the decoration of a pot made in the fifth

century B.C.!

But apart from this general criticism, the lack of resourcefulness and

open mindedness, certain more specific factors have deflected classical

scholars from the true path. In the search for the ancestry of

Aphrodite, they have concentrated their attention too exclusively upon

the Mediterranean area and Western Asia, and so ignored the most ancient

of the historic Great Mothers, the African Hathor, with whom (as Sir

Arthur Evans[236] clearly demonstrated more than fifteen years ago) the

Cypriote goddess has much closer affinities than with any of her

Asiatic sisters. Yet no scholar, either on the Greek or Egyptian side,

has seriously attempted to follow up this clue and really investigate

the nature of the connexions between Aphrodite and Hathor, and the

history of the development of their respective specializations of

functions.[237]

But some explanation must be given for my temerity in venturing to

invade the intensively cultivated domains of Aphrodite "with a mind

undebauched by classical learning". I have already explained how the

study of Libations and Dragons brought me face to face with the problems

of the Great Mother's attributes. At that stage of the enquiry two

circumstances directed my attention specifically to Aphrodite. Mr.

Wilfrid Jackson was collecting the data relating to the cultural uses of

shells, which he has since incorporated in a book.[238] As the results

of his search accumulated, the fact soon emerged that the original

Great Mother was nothing more than a cowry-shell used as a life-giving

amulet; and that Aphrodite's shell-associations were a survival of the

earliest phase in the Great Mother's history. At this psychological

moment Dr. Rendel Harris[239] claimed that Aphrodite was a

personification of the mandrake. But the magical attributes of the

mandrake, which he claimed to have been responsible for converting the

amulet into a goddess, were identical with those which Jackson's

investigations had previously led me to regard as the reasons for

deriving Aphrodite from the cowry. The mandrake was clearly a surrogate

of the shell or vice versa.[240] The problem to be solved was to decide

which amulet was responsible for suggesting the process of life-giving.

The goddess Aphrodite was closely related to Cyprus; the mandrake was a

magical plant there; and the cowry is so intimately associated with the

island as to be called _Cypræa_. So far as is known, however, the

shell-amulet is vastly more ancient than the magical reputation of the

plant. Moreover, we know why the cowry was regarded as feminine and

accredited with life-giving attributes. There are no such reasons for

assigning life-giving powers or the female sex to the mandrake. The

claim that its magical properties are due to the fancied resemblance of

its root to a human being is wholly untenable.[241] The roots of many

plants are at least as manlike; and, even if this character was the

exclusive property of the mandrake, how does it help to explain the

remarkable repetory of quite arbitrary and fantastic properties and the

female sex assigned to the plant? Sir James Frazer's claim[242] that

"such beliefs and practices illustrate the primitive tendency to

personify nature" is a gratuitous and quite irrelevant assumption, which

offers no explanation whatsoever of the specific and arbitrary nature of

the form assumed by the personification. But when we investigate the

historical development of the peculiar attributes of the cowry-shell,

and appreciate why and how they were acquired, any doubt as to the

source from which the mandrake obtained its "magic" is removed; and

with it the fallacy of Sir James Frazer's wholly unwarranted claims is

also exposed.

If we ignore Sir James Frazer's naïve speculations we can make use of

the compilations of evidence which he makes with such remarkable

assiduity. But it is more profitable to turn to the study of the

remarkable lectures which Dr. Rendel Harris has been delivering in this

room[243] during the last few years. Our genial friend has been

cultivating his garden on the slopes of Olympus,[244] and has been

plucking the rich fruits of his ripe scholarship and nimble wit. At the

same time, with rougher implements and cruder methods, I have been

burrowing in the depths of the earth, trying to recover information

concerning the habits and thoughts of mankind many centuries before

Dionysus and Apollo, and Artemis and Aphrodite, were dreamt of.

In the course of these subterranean gropings no one was more surprised

than I was to discover that I was getting entangled in the roots of the

same plants whose golden fruit Dr. Rendel Harris was gathering from his

Olympian heights. But the contrast in our respective points of view was

perhaps responsible for the different appearance the growths assumed.

To drop the metaphor, while he was searching for the origins of the

deities a few centuries before the Christian era began, I was finding

their more or less larval forms flourishing more than twenty centuries

before the commencement of his story. For the gods and goddesses of his

narrative were only the thinly disguised representatives of much more

ancient deities decked out in the sumptuous habiliments of Greek

culture.

In his lecture on Aphrodite, Dr. Rendel Harris claimed that the goddess

was a personification of the mandrake; and I think he made out a good

prima facie case in support of his thesis. But other scholars have set

forth equally valid reasons for associating Aphrodite with the argonaut,

the octopus, the purpura, and a variety of other shells, both univalves

and bivalves.[245]

The goddess has also been regarded as a personification of water, the

ocean, or its foam.[246] Then again she is closely linked with pigs,

cows, lions, deer, goats, rams, dolphins, and a host of other creatures,

not forgetting the dove, the swallow, the partridge, the sparling, the

goose, and the swan.[247]

The mandrake theory does not explain, or give adequate recognition to,

any of these facts. Nor does Dr. Rendel Harris suggest why it is so

dangerous an operation to dig up the mandrake which he identifies with

the goddess, or why it is essential to secure the assistance of a

dog[248] in the process. The explanation of this fantastic fable gives

an important clue to Aphrodite's antecedents.

[235: An elaboration of a lecture delivered at the John Rylands Library,

on 14 November, 1917.]

[236: "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 52. Compare also A. E. W.

Budge, "The Gods of the Egyptians," Vol. I, p. 435.]

[237: With a strange disregard of Sir Arthur Evans's "Mycenæan Tree and

Pillar Cult," Mr. H. R. Hall makes the following remarks in his "Ægean

Archæology" (p. 150): "The origin of the goddess Aphrodite has long been

taken for granted. It has been regarded as a settled fact that she was

Semitic, and came to Greece from Phoenicia or Cyprus. But the new

discoveries have thrown this, like other received ideas, into the

melting-pot, for the Minoans undoubtedly worshipped an Aphrodite. We see

her, naked and with her doves, on gold plaques from one of the Mycenæan

shaft-graves (Schuchhardt, _Schliemann_, Figs. 180, 181), which must be

as old as the First Late Minoan period (_c._ 1600-1500 B.C.), and--not

rising from the foam, but sailing over it--in a boat, naked, on the lost

gold ring from Mochlos. It is evident now that she was not only a

Canaanitish-Syrian goddess, but was common to all the people of the

Levant. She is Aphrodite-Paphia in Cyprus, Ashtaroth-Astarte in Canaan,

Atargatis in Syria, Derketo in Philistria, Hathor in Egypt; what the

Minoans called her we do not know, unless she was Britomartis. She must

take her place by the side of Rhea-Diktynna in the Minoan pantheon."

It is not without interest to note that on the Mochlos ring the goddess

is sailing in a papyrus float of Egyptian type, like the moon-goddess in

her crescent moon.

The association of this early representative of Aphrodite with doves is

of special interest in view of Highnard's attempt ("Le Mythe de Venus,"

_Annales du Musée Guimet_, T. 1, 1880, p. 23) to derive the name of "la

déesse à la colombe" from the Chaldean and Phoenician _phrit_ or _phrut_

meaning "a dove".

Mr. Hall might have extended his list of homologues to Mesopotamia,

Iran, and India, to Europe and Further Asia, to America, and, in fact,

every part of the world that harbours goddesses.]

[238: "Shells as Evidence of the Migration of Early Culture."]

[239: "The Ascent of Olympus."]

[240: A striking confirmation of the fact that the mandrake is really a

surrogate of the cowry is afforded by the practice in modern Greece of

using the mandrake carried in a leather bag in the same way (and for the

same magical purpose as a love philtre) as the Baganda of East Africa

use the cowry (in a leather bag) at the present time.]

[241: Old Gerade was frank enough to admit that he "never could perceive

shape of man or woman" (quoted by Rendel Harris, _op. cit._, p. 110).]

[242: "Jacob and the Mandrakes," _Proceedings of the British Academy_,

Vol. VIII, p. 22.]

[243: The John Rylands Library.]

[244: "The Ascent of Olympus."]

[245: See the memoirs by Tümpel, Jahn, Houssay, and Jackson, to which

reference is made elsewhere in these pages.]

[246: The well-known circumstantial story told in Hesiod's theogony.]

[247: See the article "Aphrodite" in Roscher's "Lexikon".]

[248: Sir James Frazer's claim that the incident of the ass in a late

Jewish story of Jacob and the mandrakes (_op. cit._, p. 20) "helps us to

understand the function of the dog," is quite unsupported. The learned

guardian of the Golden Bough does not explain _how_ it helps us to

understand.]

The Search for the Elixir of Life. Blood as Life.

In delving into the remotely distant history of our species we cannot

fail to be impressed with the persistence with which, throughout the

whole of his career, man (of the species _sapiens_) has been

seeking[249] for an elixir of life, to give added "vitality" to the dead

(whose existence was not consciously regarded as ended), to prolong the

days of active life to the living, to restore youth, and to protect his

own life from all assaults, not merely of time, but also of

circumstance. In other words, the elixir he sought was something that

would bring "good luck" in all the events of his life and its

continuation. Most of the amulets, even of modern times, the lucky

trinkets, the averters of the "Evil Eye," the practices and devices for

securing good luck in love and sport, in curing bodily ills or mental

distress, in attaining material prosperity, or a continuation of

existence after death, are survivals of this ancient and persistent

striving after those objects which our earliest forefathers called

collectively the "givers of life".

From statements in the earliest literature[250] that has come down to us

from antiquity, no less than from the views that still prevail among

the relatively more primitive peoples of the present day, it is clear

that originally man did not consciously formulate a belief in

immortality.

It was rather the result of a defect of thinking, or as the modern

psychologist would express it, an instinctive repression of the

unpleasant idea that death would come to him personally, that primitive

man refused to contemplate or to entertain the possibility of life

coming to an end. So intense was his instinctive love of life and dread

of such physical damage as would destroy his body that man unconsciously

avoided thinking of the chance of his own death: hence his belief in the

continuance of life cannot be regarded as the outcome of an active

process of constructive thought.

This may seem altogether paradoxical and incredible.

How, it may be asked, can man be said to repress the idea of death, if

he instinctively refused to admit its possibility? How did he escape the

inevitable process of applying to himself the analogy he might have been

supposed to make from other men's experience and recognize that he

must die?

Man appreciated the fact that he could kill an animal or another man by

inflicting certain physical injuries on him. But at first he seems to

have believed that if he could avoid such direct assaults upon himself,

his life would flow on unchecked. When death does occur and the

onlookers recognize the reality, it is still the practice among certain

relatively primitive people to search for the man who has inflicted

death on his fellow.

It would, of course, be absurd to pretend that any people could fail to

recognize the reality of death in the great majority of cases. The mere

fact of burial is an indication of this. But the point of difference

between the views of these early men and ourselves, was the tacit

assumption on the part of the former, that in spite of the obvious

changes in his body (which made inhumation or some other procedure

necessary) the deceased was still continuing an existence not unlike

that which he enjoyed previously, only somewhat duller, less eventful

and more precarious. He still needed food and drink, as he did before,

and all the paraphernalia of his mortal life, but he was dependent upon

his relatives for the maintenance of his existence.

Such views were difficult of acceptance by a thoughtful people, once

they appreciated the fact of the disintegration of the corpse in the

grave; and in course of time it was regarded as essential for continued

existence that the body should be preserved. The idea developed, that so

long as the body of the deceased was preserved and there were restored

to it all the elements of vitality which it had lost at death, the

continuance of existence was theoretically possible and worthy of

acceptance as an article of faith.

Let us consider for a moment what were considered to be elements of

vitality by the earliest members of our species.[251]

From the remotest times man seems to have been aware of the fact that he

could kill animals or his fellow men by means of certain physical

injuries. He associated these results with the effusion of blood. The

loss of blood could cause unconsciousness and death. Blood, therefore,

must be the vehicle of consciousness and life, the material whose escape

from the body could bring life to an end.[252]

The first pictures painted by man, with which we are at present

acquainted, are found upon the walls and roofs of certain caves in

Southern France and Spain. They were the work of the earliest known

representatives of our own species, _Homo sapiens_, in the phase of

culture now distinguished by the name "Aurignacian".

The animals man was in the habit of hunting for food are depicted.[253]

In some of them arrows are shown implanted in the animal's flank near

the region of the heart; and in others the heart itself is represented.

This implies that at this distant time in the history of our species, it

was already realized how vital a spot in the animal's anatomy the heart

was. But even long before man began to speculate about the functions of

the heart, he must have learned to associate the loss of blood on the

part of man or animals with death, and to regard the pouring out of

blood as the escape of its vitality. Many factors must have contributed

to the new advance in physiology which made the heart the centre or the

chief habitation of vitality, volition, feeling, and knowledge.

Not merely the empirical fact, acquired by experience in hunting, of the

peculiarly vulnerable nature of the heart, but perhaps also the

knowledge that the heart contained life-giving blood, helped in

developing the ideas about its functions as the bestower of life and

consciousness.

The palpitation of the heart after severe exertion or under the

influence of intense emotion would impress the early physiologist with

the relationship of the heart to the feelings, and afford confirmation

of his earlier ideas of its functions.

But whatever the explanation, it is known from the folk-lore of even the

most unsophisticated peoples that the heart was originally regarded as

the seat of life, feeling, volition, and knowledge, and that the blood

was the life-stream. The Aurignacian pictures in the caves of Western

Europe suggest that these beliefs were extremely ancient.

The evidence at our disposal seems to indicate that not only were such

ideas of physiology current in Aurignacian times, but also certain

cultural applications of them had been inaugurated even then. The

remarkable method of blood-letting by chopping off part of a finger

seems to have been practised even in Aurignacian times.[254]

If it is legitimate to attempt to guess at the meaning these early

people attached to so singular a procedure, we may be guided by the

ideas associated with this act in outlying corners of the world at the

present time. On these grounds we may surmise that the motive underlying

this, and other later methods of blood-letting, such as circumcision,

piercing the ears, lips, and tongue, gashing the limbs and body, et

cetera, was the offering of the life-giving fluid.

Once it was recognized that the state of unconsciousness or death was

due to the loss of blood it was a not illogical or irrational procedure

to imagine that offerings of blood might restore consciousness and life

to the dead.[255] If the blood was seriously believed to be the vehicle

of feeling and knowledge, the exchange of blood or the offering of blood

to the community was a reasonable method for initiating anyone into the

wider knowledge of and sympathy with his fellow-men.

Blood-letting, therefore, played a part in a great variety of

ceremonies, of burial and of initiation, and also those of a

therapeutic[256] and, later, of a religious significance.

But from Aurignacian times onwards, it seems to have been admitted that

substitutes for blood might be endowed with a similar potency.

The extensive use of red ochre or other red materials for packing around

the bodies of the dead was presumably inspired by the idea that

materials simulating blood-stained earth, were endowed with the same

life-giving properties as actual blood poured out upon the ground in

similar vitalizing ceremonies.

As the shedding of blood produced unconsciousness, the offering of blood

or red ochre was, therefore, a logical and practical means of restoring

consciousness and reinforcing the element of vitality which was

diminished or lost in the corpse.

The common statement that primitive man was a fantastically irrational

child is based upon a fallacy. He was probably as well endowed mentally

as his modern successors; and was as logical and rational as they are;

but many of his premises were wrong, and he hadn't the necessary body of

accumulated wisdom to help him to correct his false assumptions.

If primitive man regarded the dead as still existing, but with a reduced

vitality, it was a not irrational procedure on the part of the people of

the Reindeer Epoch in Europe to pack the dead in red ochre (which they

regarded as a surrogate of the life-giving fluid) to make good the lack

of vitality in the corpse.

If blood was the vehicle of consciousness and knowledge, the exchange of

blood was clearly a logical procedure for establishing communion of

thought and feeling and so enabling an initiate to assimilate the

traditions of his people.

If red carnelian was a surrogate of blood the wearing of bracelets or

necklaces of this life-giving material was a proper means of warding off

danger to life and of securing good luck.

If red paint or the colour red brought these magical results, it was

clearly justifiable to resort to its use.

All these procedures are logical. It is only the premises that were

erroneous.

The persistence of such customs in Ancient Egypt makes it possible for

us to obtain literary evidence to support the inferences drawn from

archæological data of a more remote age. For instance, the red jasper

amulet sometimes called the "girdle-tie of Isis," was supposed to

represent the blood of the goddess and was applied to the mummy "to

stimulate the functions of his blood";[257] or perhaps it would be more

accurate to say that it was intended to add to the vital substance which

was so obviously lacking in the corpse.

[249: In response to the prompting of the most fundamental of all

instincts, that of the preservation of life.]

[250: See Alan Gardiner, _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. IV,

Parts II-III, April-July, 1917, p. 205. Compare also the Babylonian

story of Gilgamesh.]

[251: Some of these have been discussed in Chapter 1 ("Incense and

Libations") and will not be further considered here.]

[252: "The life which is the blood thereof" (Gen. ix. 4).]

[253: See, for example, Sollas, "Ancient Hunters," 2nd Edition, 1915,

pp. 326 (fig. 163), 333 (fig. 171), and 36 (fig. 189).]

[254: Sollas, _op. cit._, pp. 347 _et seq._]

[255: The "redeeming blood," [Greek: Pharmakon athanasias].]

[256: The practice of blood-letting for therapeutic purposes was

probably first suggested by a confused rationalization. The act of

blood-letting was a means of healing; and the victim himself supplied

the vitalizing fluid!]

[257: Davies and Gardiner, "The Tomb of Amenemhet," p. 112.]

The Cowry as a Giver of Life.

Blood and its substitutes, however, were not the only materials that had

acquired a reputation for vitalizing qualities in the Reindeer Epoch.

For there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that shells also were

regarded, even in that remote time, as life-giving amulets.

If the loss of blood was at first the only recognized cause of death,

the act of birth was clearly the only process of life-giving. The portal

by which a child entered the world was regarded, therefore, not only as

the channel of birth, but also as the actual giver of life.[258] The

large Red Sea cowry-shell, which closely simulates this "giver of life,"

then came to be endowed by popular imagination with the same powers.

Hence the shell was used in the same way as red ochre or carnelian: it

was placed in the grave to confer vitality on the dead, and worn on

bracelets and necklaces to secure good luck by using the "giver of life"

to avert the risk of danger to life. Thus the general life-giving

properties of blood, blood substitutes, and shells, came to be

assimilated the one with the other.[259]

At first it was probably its more general power of averting death or

giving vitality to the dead that played the more obtrusive part in the

magical use of the shell. But the circumstances which led to the

development of the shell's symbolism naturally and inevitably conferred

upon the cowry special power over women. It was the surrogate of the

life-giving organ. It became an amulet to increase the fertility of

women and to help them in childbirth. It was, therefore, worn by girls

suspended from a girdle, so as to be as near as possible to the organ it

was supposed to simulate and whose potency it was believed to be able to

reinforce and intensify. Just as bracelets and necklaces of carnelian

were used to confer on either sex the vitalizing virtues of blood, which

it was supposed to simulate, so also cowries, or imitations of them made

of metal or stone, were worn as bracelets, necklaces, or hair-ornaments,

to confer health and good luck in both sexes. But these ideas received a

much further extension.

As the giver of life, the cowry came to have attributed to it by some

people definite powers of creation. It was not merely an amulet to

increase fertility: it was itself the actual parent of mankind, the

creator of all living things; and the next step was to give these

maternal functions material expression, and personify the cowry as an

actual woman in the form of a statuette with the distinctly feminine

characters grossly exaggerated;[260] and in the domain of belief to

create the image of a Great Mother, who was the parent of the universe.

[Illustration: Fig. 18 (a) The Archaic Egyptian slate palette of Narmer

showing, perhaps, the earliest design of Hathor (at the upper corners of

the palette) as a woman with cow's horns and ears (compare Flinders

Petrie, "The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty," Part I, 1900, Plate

XXVII, Fig. 71). The pharaoh is wearing a belt from which are suspended

four cow-headed Hathor figures in place of the cowry-amulets of more

primitive peoples. This affords corroboration of the view that Hathor

assumed the functions originally attributed to the cowry-shell.

(b) The king's _sporran_, where Hathor-heads (H) take the place of the

cowries of the primitive girdle.]

[Illustration: Fig. 19.--The front of Stela B (famous for the realistic

representations of the Indian elephant at its upper corners), one of the

ancient Maya monuments at Copan, Central America (after Maudslay's

photograph and diagram).

The girdle of the chief figure is decorated both with shells (_Oliva_ or

_Conus_) and amulets representing human faces corresponding to the

Hathor-heads on the Narmer palette (Fig. 18).]

Thus gradually there developed out of the cowry-amulet the conception of

a creator, the giver of life, health, and good luck. This Great Mother,

at first with only vaguely defined traits, was probably the first deity

that the wit of man devised to console him with her watchful care over

his welfare in this life and to give him assurance as to his fate in

the future.

At this stage I should like to emphasize the fact that these beliefs had

taken shape long before any definite ideas had been formulated as to the

physiology of animal reproduction and before agriculture was practised.

Man had not yet come to appreciate the importance of vegetable

fertility, nor had he yet begun to frame theories of the fertilizing

powers of water, or give specific expression to them by creating the god

Osiris in his own image.

Nor had he begun to take anything more than the most casual interest in

the sun, the moon, and the stars. He had not yet devised a sky-world nor

created a heaven. When, for reasons that I have already discussed,[261]

the theory of the fertilizing and the animating power of water was

formulated, the beliefs concerning this element were assimilated with

those which many ages previously had grown up in explanation of the

potency of blood and shells. In addition to fertilizing the earth, water

could also animate the dead. The rivers and the seas were in fact a vast

reservoir of this animating substance. The powers of the cowry, as a

product of the sea, were rationalized into an expression of the great

creative force of the water.

A bowl of water became the symbol of the fruitfulness of woman. Such

symbolism implied that woman, or her uterus, was a receptacle into which

the seminal fluid was poured and from which a new being emerged in a

flood of amniotic fluid.

The burial of shells with the dead is an extremely ancient practice, for

cowries have been found upon human skeletons of the so-called "Upper

Palæolithic Age" of Southern Europe.

At Laugerie-Basse (Dordogne) Mediterranean cowries were found arranged

in pairs upon the body; two pairs on the forehead, one near each arm,

four in the region of the thighs and knees, and two upon each foot.

Others were found in the Mentone caves, and are peculiarly important,

because, upon the same stratum as the skeleton with which they were

associated, was found part of a _Cassis rufa_, a shell whose habitat

does not extend any nearer than the Indian Ocean.[262]

[Illustration: Fig. 20.--Diagrams illustrating the form of cowry-belts

worn in (a) East Africa and (b) Oceania respectively.

(c) Ancient Indian girdle (from the figure of Sirima Devata on the

Bharat Tope), consisting of strings of pearls and precious stones, and

what seem to be (fourth row from the top) models of cowries.

(d) The Copan girdle (from Fig. 19) in which both shells and heads of

deities are represented. The two objects suspended from the belt between

the heads recall Hathor's sistra.]

These facts are very important. In the first place they reveal the great

antiquity of the practice of burying shells with the dead, presumably

for the purpose of "life-giving". Secondly, they suggest the possibility

that their magical value as givers of life may be more ancient than

their specific use as intensifiers of the fertility of women. Thirdly,

the association of these practices with the use of the shell _Cassis

rufa_ indicates a very early cultural contact between the people living

upon the North-Western shores of the Mediterranean in the Reindeer Age

and the dwellers on the coasts of the Indian Ocean; and the

probability that these special uses of shells by the former were

inspired by the latter.

This hint assumes a special significance when we first get a clear view

of the more fully-developed shell-cults of the Eastern Mediterranean

many centuries later.[263] For then we find definite indications that

the cultural uses of shells were obviously borrowed from the Erythræan

area.

Long before the shell-amulet became personified as a woman the

Mediterranean people had definitely adopted the belief in the cowry's

ability to give life and birth.

[258: As it is still called in the Semitic languages. In the Egyptian

Pyramid Texts there is a reference to a new being formed "by the vulva

of Tefnut" (Breasted).]

[259: Many customs and beliefs of primitive peoples suggest that this

correlation of the attributes of blood and shells went much deeper than

the similarity of their use in burial ceremonies and for making

necklaces and bracelets. The fact that the monthly effusion of blood in

women ceased during pregnancy seems to have given rise to the theory,

that the new life of the child was actually formed from the blood thus

retained. The beliefs that grew up in explanation of the placenta form

part of the system of interpretation of these phenomena: for the

placenta was regarded as a mass of clotted blood (intimately related to

the child which was supposed to be derived from part of the same

material) which harboured certain elements of the child's mentality

(because blood was the substance of consciousness).]

[260: See S. Reinach, "Les Déesses Nues dans l'Art Oriental et dans

l'Art Grec," _Revue Archéol._, T. XXVI, 1895, p. 367. Compare also the

figurines of the so-called Upper Palæolithic Period in Europe.]

[261: Chapter I.]

[262: The literature relating to these important discoveries has been

summarized by Wilfrid Jackson in his "Shells as Evidence of the

Migrations of Early Culture," pp. 135-7.]

[263: Cowries were obtained in Neolithic sites at Hissarlik and Spain

(Siret, _op. cit._, p. 18).]

The Origin of Clothing.

The cowry and its surrogates were supposed to be potent to confer

fertility on maidens; and it became the practice for growing girls to

wear a girdle on which to suspend the shells as near as possible to the

organ their magic was supposed to stimulate. Among many peoples[264]

this girdle was discarded as soon as the girls reached maturity.

This practice probably represents the beginning of the history of

clothing; but it had other far-reaching effects in the domain of belief.

It has often been claimed that the feeling of modesty was not the reason

for the invention of clothing, but that the clothes begat modesty.[265]

This doctrine contains a certain element of truth, but is by no means

the whole explanation. For true modesty is displayed by people who have

never worn clothes.

Before mankind could appreciate the psychological fact that the wearing

of clothing might add to an individual's allurement and enhance her

sexual attractiveness, some other circumstances must have been

responsible for suggesting the experiments out of which this empirical

knowledge emerged. The use of a girdle (a) as a protection against

danger to life, and (b) as a means of conferring fecundity on

girls[266] provided the circumstances which enabled men to discover that

the sexual attractiveness of maidens, which in a state of nature was

originally associated with modesty and coyness, was profoundly

intensified by the artifices of clothing and adornment.

Among people (such as those of East Africa and Southern Arabia) in which

it was customary for unmarried girls to adorn themselves with a girdle,

it is easy to understand how the meaning of the practice underwent a

change, and developed into a device for enhancing their charms and

stimulating the imaginations of their suitors.

Out of such experience developed the idea of the magical girdle as an

allurement and a love-provoking charm or philtre. Thus Aphrodite's

girdle acquired the reputation of being able to _compel_ love. When

Ishtar removed her girdle in the under-world reproduction ceased in the

world. The Teutonic Brunhild's great strength lay in her girdle. In fact

magic virtues were conferred upon most goddesses in every part of the

world by means of a cestus of some sort.[267] But the outstanding

feature of Aphrodite's character as a goddess of love is intimately

bound up with these conceptions which developed from the wearing of a

girdle of cowries.

[Illustration: Fig. 4.--Two representations of Astarte (Qetesh).

(a) The mother-goddess standing upon a lioness (which is her Sekhet

form): she is wearing her girdle, and upon her head is the moon and the

cow's horns, conventionalized so as to simulate the crescent moon. Her

hair is represented in the conventional form which is sometimes used as

Hathor's symbol. In her hands are the serpent and the lotus, which again

are merely forms of the goddess herself.

(b) Another picture of Astarte (from Roscher's "Lexikon") holding the

papyrus sceptre which at times is regarded as an animate form of the

mother-goddess herself and as such a thunder weapon.]

In the Biblical narrative, after Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden

fruit, "the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were

naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons,"

or, as the Revised Version expresses it, "girdles". The girdle of

fig-leaves, however, was originally a surrogate of the girdle of

cowries: it was an amulet to give fertility. The consciousness of

nakedness was part of the knowledge acquired as _the result_ of the

wearing of such girdles (and the clothing into which they developed),

and was not originally the motive that impelled our remote ancestors to

clothe themselves.

The use of fig-leaves for the girdle in Palestine is an interesting

connecting link between the employment of the cowry and the mandrake for

similar purposes in the neighbourhood of the Red Sea and in Cyprus and

Syria respectively (_vide infra_).

In Greece and Italy, the sweet basil has a reputation for magical

properties analogous to those of the cowry. Maidens collect the plant

and wear bunches of it upon their body or upon their girdles; while

married women fix basil upon their heads.[268] It is believed that the

odour of the plant will attract admirers: hence in Italy it is called

_Bacia-nicola_. "Kiss me, Nicholas".[269]

In Crete it is a sign of mourning presumably because its life-prolonging

attributes, as a means of conferring continued existence to the dead,

have been so rationalized in explanation of its use at funerals.

On New Year's day in Athens boys carry a boat and people remark, "St.

Basil is come from Cæsarea".

[264: See Jackson, _op. cit._, pp. 139 _et seq._]

[265: For a discussion of this subject see the chapter on "The

Psychology of Modesty and Clothing," in William I. Thomas's "Sex and

Society," Chicago, 1907; also S. Reinach, "Cults, Myths, and Religions,"

p. 177; and Paton, "The Pharmakoi and the Story of the Fall," _Revue

Archéol._, Serie IV. T. IX, 1907, p. 51.]

[266: It is important to remember that shell-girdles were used by both

sexes for general life-giving and luck-bringing purposes, in the

funerary ritual of both sexes, in animating the dead or statues of the

dead, to attain success in hunting, fishing, and head-hunting, as well

as in games. Thus men also at times wore shells upon their belts or

aprons, and upon their implements and fishing nets, and adorned their

trophies of war and the chase with them. Such customs are found in all

the continents of the Old World and also in America, as, for example, in

the girdles of _Conus_- and _Oliva_-shells worn by the figures

sculptured upon the Copan stelæ. See, for example, Maudslay's pictures

of stele N, Plate 82 (Biologia Centrali-Americana; Archæology) _inter

alia_. But they were much more widely used by women, not merely by

maidens, but also by brides and married women, to heighten their

fertility and cure sterility, and by pregnant women to ensure safe

delivery in childbirth. It was their wider employment by women that

gives these shells their peculiar cultural significance.]

[267: Witness the importance of the girdle in early Indian and American

sculptures: in the literature of Egypt, Babylonia, Western Europe, and

the Mediterranean area. For important Indian analogies and Egyptian

parallels see Moret, "Mystères Égyptiens," p. 91, especially note 3. The

magic girdle assumed a great variety of forms as the number of

surrogates of the cowry increased. The mugwort (Artemisia) of Artemis

was worn in the girdle on St. John's Eve (Rendel Harris, _op. cit._, p.

91): the people of Zante use vervain in the same way; the people of

France (Creuse et Corrères) rye-stalks; Eve's fig-leaves; in Vedic India

the initiate wore the "cincture of Munga's herbs"; and Kali had her

girdle of hands. Breasted, ("Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p.

29) says: "In the oldest fragments we hear of Isis the great, who

_fastened on the girdle_ in Khemmis, when she brought her [censer] and

burned incense before her son Horus."]

[268: This distinction between the significance of the amulet when worn

on the girdle and on the head (in the hair), or as a necklace or

bracelet, is very widespread. On the girdle it _usually_ has the

significance of stimulating the individual's fertility: worn elsewhere

it was intended to ward off danger to life, _i.e._ to give good luck. An

interesting surrogate of Hathor's distinctive emblem is the necklace of

golden apples worn by a priestess of Apollo (Rendel Harris, _op. cit._,

p. 42).]

[269: De Gubernatis, "Mythologie des Plantes," Vol. II, p. 35.]

Pearls.

During the chequered history of the Great Mother the attributes of the

original shell-amulet from which the goddess was sprung were also

changing and being elaborated to fit into a more complex scheme. The

magical properties of the cowry came to be acquired by other Red Sea

shells, such as _Pterocera_, the pearl oyster, conch shells, and others.

Each of these became intimately associated with the moon.[270] The

pearls found in the oysters were supposed to be little moons, drops of

the moon-substance (or dew) which fell from the sky into the gaping

oyster. Hence pearls acquired the reputation of "shining by night," like

the moon from which they were believed to have come: and every surrogate

of the Great Mother, whether plant, animal, mineral or mythical

instrument, came to be endowed with the power of "shining by night". But

pearls were also regarded as the quintessence of the shell's life-giving

properties, which were considered to be all the more potent because they

were sky-given emanations of the moon-goddess herself. Hence pearls

acquired the reputation of being the "givers of life" _par excellence_,

an idea which found literal expression in the ancient Persian word

_margan_ (from _mar_, "giver" and _gan_, "life"). This word has been

borrowed in all the Turanian languages (ranging from Hungary to

Kamskatckha), but also in the non-Turanian speech of Western Asia,

thence through Greek and Latin (_margarita_) to European languages.[271]

The same life-giving attributes were also acquired by the other

pearl-bearing shells; and at some subsequent period, when it was

discovered that some of these shells could be used as trumpets, the

sound produced was also believed to be life-giving or the voice of the

great Giver of Life. The blast of the trumpet was also supposed to be

able to animate the deity and restore his consciousness, so that he

could attend to the appeals of supplicants. In other words the noise

woke up the god from his sleep. Hence the shell-trumpet attained an

important significance in early religious ceremonials for the ritual

purpose of summoning the deity, especially in Crete and India, and

ultimately in widely distant parts of the world.[272] Long before these

shells are known to have been used as trumpets, they were employed like

the other Red Sea shells as "givers of life" to the dead in Egypt. Their

use as trumpets was secondary.

And when it was discovered that purple dye could be obtained from

certain of the trumpet-shells, the colouring-matter acquired the same

life-giving powers as had already been conferred upon the trumpet and

the pearls: thus it became regarded as a divine substance and as the

exclusive property of gods and kings.

Long before, the colour red had acquired magic potency as a surrogate of

life-giving blood; and this colour-symbolism undoubtedly helped in the

development of the similar beliefs concerning purple.

[270: For the details see Jackson, _op. cit._, pp. 57-69. Both the

shells and the moon were identified with the Great Mother. Hence they

were homologized the one with the other.]

[271: Dr. Mingana has given me the following note: "It is very probable

that the Græco-Latin _margarita_, the Aramæo-Syriac _margarita_, the

Arabic _margan_, and the Turanian _margan_ are derived from the Persian

_mar-gân_, meaning both 'pearl' and 'life,' or etymologically 'giver,

owner, or possessor, of life'. The word _gan_, in Zend _yan_, is

thoroughly Persian and is undoubtedly the original form of this

expression."]

[272: See Chapter II of Jackson's book, _op. cit._]

Sharks and Dragons.

When the life-giving attributes of water were confused with the same

properties with which shells had independently been credited long

before, the shell's reputation was rationalized as an expression of the

vital powers of the ocean in which the mollusc was born. But the same

explanation was also extended to include fishes, and other denizens of

the water, as manifestations of similar divine powers. In the lecture on

"Dragons and Rain Gods" I referred to the identification of Ea, the

Babylonian Osiris, with a fish (p. 105). When the value of the pearl as

the giver of life impelled men to incur any risks to obtain so precious

an amulet, the chief dangers that threatened pearl-fishers were due to

sharks. These came to be regarded as demons guarding the treasure-houses

at the bottom of the sea. Out of these crude materials the imaginations

of the early pearl-fishers created the picture of wonderful submarine

palaces of Nâga kings in which vast wealth, not merely of pearls, but

also of gold, precious stones, and beautiful maidens (all of them

"givers of life," _vide infra_, p. 224), were placed under the

protection of shark-dragons.[273] The conception of the pearl (which is

a surrogate of the life-giving Great Mother) guarded by dragons is

linked by many bonds of affinity with early Erythræan and Mediterranean

beliefs. The more usual form of the story, both in Southern Arabian

legend and in Minoan and Mycenæan art, represents the Mother Goddess

incarnate in a sacred tree or pillar with its protecting dragons in the

form of serpents or lions, or a variety of dragon-surrogates, either

real animals, such as deer or cattle, or composite monsters (Fig.

26).[274]

There are reasons for believing that these stories were first invented

somewhere on the shores of the Erythræan Sea, probably in Southern

Arabia. The animation of the incense-tree by the Great Mother, for the

reasons which I have already expounded,[275] formed the link of her

identification with the pearl, which probably acquired its magical

reputation in the same region.

"In the Persian myth, the white Haoma is a divine tree, growing in the

lake Vourukasha: the fish Khar-mâhi circles protectingly around it and

defends it against the toad Ahriman. It gives eternal life, children to

women, husbands to girls, and horses to men. In the Minôkhired the tree

is called 'the preparer of the corpse'" (Spiegel, "Eran. Altertumskunde,"

II, 115--quoted by Jung, "Psychology of the Unconscious," p. 532). The

idea of guarding the divine tree[276] by dragons was probably the result

of the transference to that particular surrogate of the Great Mother of

the shark-stories which originated from the experiences of the seekers

after pearls, her other representatives.

There are many other bits of corroborative evidence to suggest that

these shell-cults and the legends derived from them were actually

transmitted from the Red Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean. Nor is it

surprising that this should have happened, when it is recalled that

Egyptian sailors were trafficking in both seas long before the Pyramid

Age, and no doubt carried the beliefs and the legends of one region to

the other. I have already referred to the adoption in the Mediterranean

area of the idea of the dragon-protectors of the tree- and pillar-forms

of the Great Mother, and suggested that this was merely a garbled

version of the pearl-fisher's experience of the dangers of attacks by

sharks. But the same legends also reached the Levant in a less modified

form, and then underwent another kind of transformation (and confusion

with the tree-version) in Cyprus or Syria.

As the shark would be a not wholly appropriate actor in the

Mediterranean, its rôle is taken by its smaller Selachian relative, the

dog-fish. In the notes on Pliny's Natural History, Dr. Bostock and Mr.

H. T. Riley[277] refer to the habits of dog-fishes ("Canes marini"), and

quote from Procopius ("De Bell. Pers." B. I, c. 4) the following

"wonderful story in relation to this subject": "Sea-dogs are wonderful

admirers of the pearl-fish, and follow them out to sea.... A certain

fisherman, having watched for the moment when the shell-fish was

deprived of the attention of its attendant sea-dog, ... seized the

shell-fish and made for the shore. The sea-dog, however, was soon aware

of the theft, and making straight for the fisherman, seized him. Finding

himself thus caught, he made a last effort, and threw the pearl-fish on

shore, immediately on which he was torn to pieces by its

protector."[278]

Though the written record of this story is relatively modern the

incident thus described probably goes back to much more ancient times.

It is only a very slightly modified version of an ancient narrative of a

shark's attack upon a pearl-diver.

For reasons which I shall discuss in the following pages, the rôle of

the cowry and pearl as representatives of the Great Mother was in the

Levant assumed by the mandrake, just as we have already seen the

Southern Arabian conception of her as a tree adopted in Mycenæan lands.

Having replaced the sea-shell by a land plant it became necessary, in

adapting the legend, to substitute for the "sea-dog" some land animal.

Not unnaturally it became a dog. Thus the story of the dangers incurred

in the process of digging up a mandrake assumed the well-known

form.[279] The attempt to dig up the mandrake was said to be fraught

with great danger. The traditional means of circumventing these risks

has been described by many writers, ancient and modern, and preserved in

the folk-lore of most European and western Asiatic countries. The story

as told by Josephus is as follows: "They dig a trench round it till the

hidden part of the root is very small, then they tie a dog to it, and

when the dog tries hard to follow him that tied him, this root is easily

plucked up, but the dog dies immediately, as it were, instead of the man

that would take the plant away."[280] Thus the dog takes the place of

the dog-fish when the mandrake becomes the pearl's surrogate. The only

discrepancy between the two stories is the point to which Josephus calls

specific attention. For instead of the dog killing the thief, as the

shark (dog-fish) kills the stealer of pearls, the dog becomes the victim

as a substitute for the man. As Josephus remarks, "the dog dies

immediately, as it were, instead of the man that would take the plant

away". This distortion of the story is true to the traditions of

legend-making. The dog-incident is so twisted as to be transformed into

a device for plucking the dangerous plant without risk.

It is quite possible that earlier associations of the dog with the Great

Mother may have played some part in this transference of meaning, if

only by creating confusion which made such rationalization necessary. I

refer to the part played by Anubis in helping Isis to collect the

fragments of Osiris; and the rôle played by Anubis, and his Greek

_avatar_ Cerberus, in the world of the dead. Whether the association of

the dog-star Sirius with Hathor had anything to do with the confusion is

uncertain.[281]

There was an intimate association of the dog with the goddess of the

under-world (Hecate) and the ritual of rebirth of the dead.[282] Perhaps

the development of the story of the underworld-goddess Aphrodite's dog

and the mandrake may have been helped by this survival of the

association of Isis with Anubis, even if there is not a more definite

causal relationship between the dog-incidents in the various legends.

The divine dog Anubis is frequently represented in connexion with the

ritual of rebirth,[283] where it is shown upon a standard in association

with the placenta. The hieroglyphic sign for the Egyptian word _mes_,

"to give birth," consists of the skins of three dogs (or jackals, or

foxes). The three-headed dog Cerberus that guarded the portal of Hades

may possibly be a distorted survival of this ancient symbolism of the

three-fold dog-skin as the graphic sign for the act of emergence from

the portal of birth. Elsewhere (p. 223) in this lecture I have referred

to Charon's _obolus_ as a surrogate of the life-giving pearl or cowry

placed in the mouth of the dead to provide "vital substance". Rohde[284]

regards Charon as the second Cerberus, corresponding to the Egyptian

dog-faced god Anubis: just as Charon received his _obolus_, so in Attic

custom the dead were provided with [Greek: melitoutia] the object of

which is usually said to be to pacify the dog of hell.

What seems to link all these fantastic beliefs and customs with the

story of the dog and the mandrake is the fact that they are closely

bound up with the conception of the dog as the guardian of hidden

treasure.

The mandrake story may have arisen out of a mingling of these two

streams of legend--the shark (dog-fish) protecting the treasures at the

bottom of the sea, and the ancient Egyptian beliefs concerning the

dog-headed god who presides at the embalmer's operations and

superintends the process of rebirth.

The dog of the story is a representative of the dragon guarding the

goddess in the form of the mandrake, just as the lions over the gate at

Mycenæ heraldically support her pillar-form, or the serpents in Southern

Arabia protect her as an incense tree. Dog, Lion, and Serpent in these

legends are all representatives of the goddess herself, i.e. merely her

own _avatars_ (Fig. 26).

At one time I imagined that the rôle of Anubis as a god of embalming and

the restorer of the dead was merely an ingenuous device on the part of

the early Egyptians to console themselves for the depredations of

jackals in their cemeteries. For if the jackal were converted into a

life-giving god it would be a comforting thought to believe that the

dead man, even though devoured, was "in the bosom of his god" and

thereby had attained a rebirth in the hereafter. In ancient Persia

corpses were thrown out for the dogs to devour. There was also the

custom of leading a dog to the bed of a dying man who presented him with

food, just as Cerberus was given honey-cakes by Hercules in his journey

to hell. But I have not been able to obtain any corroboration of this

supposition. It is a remarkable coincidence that the Great Mother has

been identified with the necrophilic vulture as Mut; and it has been

claimed by some writers[285] that, just as the jackal was regarded as a

symbol of rebirth in Egypt and the dead were exposed for dogs to devour

in Persia, so the vulture's corpse-devouring habits may have been

primarily responsible for suggesting its identification with the Great

Mother and for the motive behind the Indian practice of leaving the

corpses of the dead for the vultures to dispose of.[286] It is not

uncommon to find, even in English cathedrals, recumbent statues of

bishops with dogs as footstools. Petronius ("Sat.," c. 71) makes the

following statement: "valde te rogo, ut secundum pedes statuae meae

catellam pingas--ut mihi contingat tuo beneficio post mortem

vivere".[287] The belief in the dog's service as a guide to the dead

ranges from Western Europe to Peru.

To return to the story of the dog and the mandrake: no doubt the demand

will be made for further evidence that the mandrake actually assumed the

rôle of the pearl in these stories. If the remarkable repertory of

magical properties assigned to the mandrake[288] be compared with those

which developed in connexion with the cowry and the pearl,[289] it will

be found that the two series are identical. The mandrake also is the

giver of life, of fertility to women, of safety in childbirth; and like

the cowry and the pearl it exerts these magical influences only if it be

worn in contact with the wearer's skin.[290] But the most definite

indication of the mandrake's homology with the pearl is provided by the

legend that "it shines by night". Some scholars,[291] both ancient and

modern, have attempted to rationalize this tradition by interpreting it

as a reference to the glow-worms that settle on the plant! But it is

only one of many attributes borrowed by the mandrake from the pearl,

which was credited with this remarkable reputation only when early

scientists conceived the hypothesis that the gem was a bit of moon

substance.

As the memory of the real history of these beliefs grew dim, confusion

was rapidly introduced into the stories. I have already explained how

the diving for pearls started the story of the great palace of treasures

under the waters which was guarded by dragons. As the pearl had the

reputation of shining by night, it is not surprising that it or some of

its surrogates should in course of time come to be credited with the

power of "revealing hidden treasures," the treasures which in the

original story were the pearls themselves. Thus the magic fern-seed and

other treasure-disclosing vegetables[292] are surrogates of the

mandrake, and like it derive their magical properties directly or

indirectly from the pearl.

The fantastic story of the dog and the mandrake provides the most

definite evidence of the derivation of the mandrake-beliefs from the

shell-cults of the Erythræan Sea. There are many other scraps of

evidence to corroborate this. I shall refer here only to one of these.

"The discovery of the art of purple-dyeing has been attributed to the

Tyrian tutelary deity Melkart, who is identified with Baal by many

writers. According to Julius Pollux ('Onomasticon,' I, iv.) and Nonnus

('Dionys.,' XL, 306) Hercules (Melkart) was walking on the seashore

accompanied by his dog and a Tyrian nymph, of whom he was enamoured. The

dog having found a _Murex_ with its head protruding from its shell,

devoured it, and thus its mouth became stained with purple. The nymph,

on seeing the beautiful colour, bargained with Hercules to provide her

with a robe of like splendour."[293] This seems to be another variant of

the same story.

[273: In Eastern Asia (see, for example, Shinji Nishimura, "The

Hisago-Bune," Tokio, 1918, published by the Tokio Society of Naval

Architects, p. 18, where the dragon is identified with the _wani_, which

can be either a crocodile or a shark); in Oceania (L. Frobenius, "Das

Zeitalter des Sonnengottes," Bd. I., 1904, and C. E. Fox and F. H. Drew,

"Beliefs and Tales of San Cristoval," _Journal of the Royal

Anthropological Institute_, Vol. XLV, 1915, p. 140); and in America (see

Thomas Gann, "Mounds in Northern Honduras," _Nineteenth Annual Report of

the Bureau of American Ethnology_, 1897-8, Part II, p. 661) the dragon

assumes the form of a shark, a crocodile, or a variety of other

animals.]

[274: Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," _op. cit.

supra_: W. Hayes Ward, "The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," _op. cit._:

and Robertson Smith, "The Religion of the Semites," p. 133: "In

Hadramant it is still dangerous to touch the sensitive mimosa, because

the spirit that resides in the plant will avenge the injury". When men

interfere with the incense trees it is reported: "the demons of the

place flew away with doleful cries in the shape of white serpents, and

the intruders died soon afterwards".]

[275: _Vide supra_, p. 38.]

[276: In Western mythology the dragon guarding the fruit-bearing tree of

life is also identified with the Mother of Mankind (Campbell, "Celtic

Dragon Myth," pp. xli and 18). Thus the tree and its defender are both

surrogates of the Great Mother. When Eve ate the apple from the tree of

Paradise she was committing an act of cannibalism, for the plant was

only another form of herself. Her "sin" consisted in aspiring to attain

the immortality which was the exclusive privilege of the gods. This

incident is analogous to that found in the Indian tales where mortals

steal the _amrita_. By Eve's sin "death came into the world" for the

paradoxical reason that she had eaten the food of the gods which gives

immortality. The punishment meted out to her by the Almighty seems to

have been to inhibit the life-giving and birth-facilitating action of

the fruit of immortality, so that she and all her progeny were doomed to

be mortal and to suffer the pangs of child-bearing.

There was a widespread belief among the ancients that ceremonies in

connexion with the gods must (to be efficacious) be done in the reverse

of the usual human way (Hopkins, "Religions of India," p. 201). So also

an act which gives immortality to the gods, brings death to man.

The full realization of the fact that man was mortal imposed upon the

early theologians the necessity of explaining the immortality of the

gods. The elixir of life was the food of the gods that conferred eternal

life upon them. By one of those paradoxes so dear to the maker of myths

this same elixir brought death to man.]

[277: Bohn's Edition, 1855, Vol. II, p. 433.]

[278: A Cretan scene depicts a man attacking a dog-headed sea-monster

(Mackenzie, _op. cit._, "Myths of Crete," p. 139).]

[279: A number of versions of this widespread fable have been collected

by Dr. Rendel Harris (_op. cit._) and Sir James Frazer (_op. cit._). I

quote here from the former (p. 118).]

[280: Josephus, "Bell. Jud.," VII, 6, 3, quoted by Rendel Harris, _op.

cit._, p. 118.]

[281: The dog-star became associated with Hathor for reasons which are

explained on p. 209. It was "the opener of the Way" for the birth of the

sun and the New Year.]

[282: When Artemis acquired the reputation as a huntress and her deer

became her quarry the dog was rationalized into the new scheme.]

[283: See, for example, Moret's "Mystères Égyptiens," pp. 77-80.]

[284: "Psyche," p. 244.]

[285: See, for example, Jung, _op. cit._, p. 268.]

[286: Nekhebit, the Egyptian Vulture goddess, was identified by the

Greeks with Eileithyia, the goddess of birth (Wiedemann, "Religion of

the Ancient Egyptians," p. 141). She was usually represented as a

vulture hovering over the king. Her place can be taken by the falcon of

Horus or in the Babylonian story of Etana by the eagle. In the Indian

Mahábhárata the Garuda is described as "the bird of life ... destroyer

of all, creator of all".]

[287: Quoted by Jung, _op. cit._, p. 530.]

[288: See Rendel Harris (_op. cit._) and Sir James Frazer (_op. cit._).]

[289: Jackson, _op. cit._]

[290: An interesting rationalization (of which Mr. T. H. Pear has kindly

reminded me) of this ancient Oriental belief is still alive amongst

British women. It is maintained that pearls "lose their lustre" unless

they are worn in contact with the skin. This of course is a pure myth,

but also an illuminating survival.]

[291: See Frazer, _op. cit._, p. 16, especially the references to the

"devil's candle" and "the lamp of the elves".]

[292: Rendel Harris, _op. cit._, p. 113: Other factors played a part in

the development of this legend of opening up treasure-houses. Both

Artemis and Hecate are associated with a magical plant capable of

opening locks and helping the process of birth. Artemis is a goddess of

the portal and her life-giving symbol in a multitude of varied forms is

found appropriately placed above the lintel of doors.]

[293: Jackson, _op. cit._, p. 195.]

The Octopus.

Aphrodite was associated not only with the cowry, the pearl, and the

mandrake, but also with the octopus, the argonaut, and other

cephalopods. Tümpel seems to imagine that the identification of the

goddess with the argonaut and the octopus necessarily excludes her

association with molluscs; and Dr. Rendel Harris attributes an equally

exclusive importance to the mandrake. But in such methods of argument

due recognition is not given to the outstanding fact in the history of

primitive beliefs. The early philosophers built up their great

generalizations in the same way as their modern successors. They were

searching for some explanation of, or a working hypothesis to include,

most diverse natural phenomena within a concise scheme. The very essence

of such attempts was the institution of a series of homologies and

fancied analogies between dissimilar objects. Aphrodite was at one and

the same time the personification of the cowry, the conch shell, the

purple shell, the pearl, the lotus, and the lily, the mandrake and the

bryony, the incense tree and the cedar, the octopus and the argonaut,

the pig, and the cow.

[Illustration: Fig. 21.--(a) A slate triad found by Professor G. A.

Reisner in the temple of the Third Pyramid at Giza. It shows the Pharaoh

Mycerinus supported on his right side by the goddess Hathor, represented

as a woman with the moon and the cow's horns upon her head, and on the

left side by a nome goddess, bearing upon her head the jackal-symbol of

her nome.

(b) The Ecuador Aphrodite. Bas-relief from Cerro Jaboncillo (after

Saville, "Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador," Preliminary Report, 1907,

Plate XXXVIII).

A grotesque composite monster intended to represent a woman (compare

Saville's Plates XXXV, XXXVI, and XXXIX), whose head is a

conventionalized Octopus, whose body is a _Loligo_, and whose limbs

are human.]

Every one of these identifications is the result of a long and chequered

history, in which fancied resemblances and confusion of meaning play a

very large part. But I cannot too strongly repudiate the claim made by

Sir James Frazer that such events are merely so many evidences of the

innate human tendency to personify nature. The history of the arbitrary

circumstances that were responsible for the development of each one of

these homologies is entirely fatal to this wholly unwarranted

speculation.[294] Tümpel claims[295] the Aphrodite was associated more

especially with "a species of _Sepia_". He refers to the attempts to

associate the goddess of love with amulets of univalvular shells "in

virtue of a certain peculiar and obscene symbolism".[296] Naturalists,

however, designate with the term _Venus Cytherea_ certain gaping

bivalve molluscs.

But, according to Tümpel (p. 386), neither univalvular nor bivalve

shells can be regarded as a real part of the goddess's cultural

equipment. There is no representation of Aphrodite coming in a shell

from across the sea.[297] The truly sacred Aphrodite-shell was entirely

different, so Tümpel believes: it was obviously difficult to preserve,

but for that reason more worthy of notice, for the small [Greek:

choirinai] (pectines), virginalia marina (Apuleius de mag. 34, 35, and

in reference thereto, Isidor. origg. 9, 5, 24) or spuria ([Greek:

sporia]) were only the commoner and more readily obtained surrogates:

the univalvular shells.

([Greek: monothyra] of Aristotle), such as those just mentioned, and the

other [Greek: ostrea] of Aphrodite, the Nerites (periwinkles, etc.), the

purple shell and the Echineïs were also real Veneriae conchae. Among the

Nerites Aelian enumerates (N.A. 14, 28): [Greek: Aphroditên de

syndiaitômenên en tê thalattê hêsthênai te tô Nêritê tôde kai echein

auton philon]. On account of their supposed medicinal value in cases of

abortion and especially as a prophylactic for pregnant women the [Greek:

Echenêis] (pure Latin re[mi]mora) was called [Greek: ôdinolytê][298]

(Pliny, 32, 1, 5: pisciculus!). According to Mutianus (Pliny, 9, 25

(41), 79 f.), it was a species of purple shell, but larger than the true

_Murex purpura_. From this the sanctity of the Echineïs to the Cnidian

Aphrodite is demonstrated: "quibus (conchis) inhaerentibus plenam ventis

stetisse navem portantem Periandro, ut castrarentur nobilis pueros,

conchasque, quae id praestiterint, apud Cnidiorum Venerem coli" (Pliny).

Tümpel then (p. 387) accuses Stephani of being mistaken in his

interpretation of Martial's Cytheriacae (Epign. II, 47, 1 = purple

shells) as the amulets of Aphrodite, and claims that Jahn has given the

correct solution of the following passages from Pliny (N.H., 9, 33 [52],

103, compare 32, 11 [53]): "navigant ex his (conchis) veneriae,

praebentesque concavam sui partem et aurae opponentes per summa aequorum

velificant"; and further (9, 30[49], 94): "in Propontide concham esse

acatii modo carinatam inflexa puppe, prora rostrata, in hac condi

nauplium animal saepiae simile ludendi societate sola, duobus hoc fieri

generibus: tranquillum enim vectorem demissis palmulis ferire ut remis;

si vero flatus invitet, easdem in usu gubernaculi porrigi pandique

buccarum sinus aurae".

Tümpel claims (pp. 387 and 388) that this quotation settles the

question. Aphrodite's "shell," according to him, is the _Nauplius_

(depicted as a shell-fish, with its sail-like palmulæ spread out to the

wind, but with the same sails flattened into plate-like arms for

steering), clearly "a species of _Sepia_," wholly like Aphrodite

herself, a ship-like shell-fish sailing over the surface of the water,

the concha veneria. [The analogy to a ship bearing the Great Mother is

extremely ancient and originally referred to the crescent moon carrying

the moon-goddess across the heavenly ocean.]

Elsewhere (p. 399) he discusses the reasons for the connexion of

Aphrodite with the "nautilus," by which is meant the argonaut of

zoologists.

But if Jahn and Tümpel have thus clearly established the proof of the

intimate association of Aphrodite with certain cephalopods, they are

wholly unjustified in the assumption that their quotations from

relatively modern authors disprove the reality of the equally close

(though more ancient) relationship of the goddess to the cowry, the

pearl-shell, the trumpet-shell, and the purple-shell.

It must not be forgotten that, as we have already seen, the primitive

shell-cults of the Erythræan Sea had been diffused throughout the

Mediterranean area long before Aphrodite was born upon the shores of the

Levant, and possibly before Hathor came into existence in the south. The

use of the cowry and gold models of the cowry goes back to an early time

in Ægean history.[299] And the influence of Aphrodite's early

associations had become blurred and confused by the development of new

links with other shells and their surrogates.

But the connexion of Aphrodite with the octopus and its kindred played a

very obtrusive part in Minoan and Mycenæan art; and its influence was

spread abroad as far as Western Europe[300] and towards the East as far

as America. In many ways it was a factor in the development of such

artistic designs as the spiral and the volute, and not improbably also

of the swastika.

[Illustration: Fig. 22.--(a) _Sepia officinalis_, after Tryon,

"Cephalopoda".

(b) _Loligo vulgaris_, after Tryon.

(c) The position usually adopted by the resting Octopus, after Tryon.]

Starting from the researches of Tümpel, a distinguished French

zoologist, Dr. Frédéric Houssay,[301] sought to demonstrate that the

cult of Aphrodite was "based upon a pre-existing zoological philosophy".

The argument in support of his claim that Aphrodite was a

personification of the octopus must be sharply differentiated into two

parts: first, the reality of the association of the octopus with the

goddess, of which there can be no doubt; and secondly, his explanation

of it, which (however popular it may be with classical writers and

modern scholars)[302] is not only a gratuitous assumption, but also,

even if it were based upon more valid evidence than the speculations

of such recent writers as Pliny, would not really carry the explanation

very far.

I refer to his claim that "les premiers conquérants de la mer furent

induits en vénération du poulpe nageur (octopus) parce qu'ils crurent

que quelque-uns de ces céphalopodes, les poulpes sacrés (argonauta)

avaient, comme eux et avant eux, inventé la navigation" (_op. cit._, p.

15). Idle fancies of this sort do not help us to understand the

arbitrary beliefs concerning the magical powers of the octopus.

The real problem we have to solve is to discover why, among all the

multitude of bizarre creatures to be found in the Mediterranean Sea, the

octopus and its allies should thus have been singled out for distinctive

appreciation, and also acquired the same remarkable attributes as the

cowry.

I believe that the Red Sea "Spider shell," _Pterocera_,[303] was the

link between the cowry and the octopus. This shell was used, like the

cowry, for funerary purposes in Egypt and as a trumpet in India.[304]

But it was also depicted upon a series of remarkable primitive statues

of the god Min, which were found at Coptos during the winter 1893-4 by

Professor Flinders Petrie.[305] Some of these objects are now in the

Cairo Museum and the others in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. They are

supposed to be late predynastic representations of the god Min. If this

supposition is correct they are the earliest idols (apart from mere

amulets) that have been preserved from antiquity.

Upon these statues, representations of the Red Sea shell _Pterocera

bryonia_ are sculptured in low relief. Mr. F. Ll. Griffith is

disinclined to accept my suggestion that the object of these pictures of

the shell was to animate the statues. But whether this was their purpose

or not, it is probably not without some significance that these

life-giving shells were associated with so obtrusively phallic a deity

as Min. In any case they afford concrete evidence of cultural contact

between Coptos and the Red Sea, and indicate that these particular

shells were chosen as symbols of that sea or its coast.

[Illustration: Fig. 5--Pterocera Bryonia. the Red Sea Spider-shell.

_Col._--the columella 1-7--the "claws".]

The distinctive feature of the _Pterocera_ is that the mantle in the

adult expands into a series of long finger-like processes each of which

secretes a calcareous process or "claw". There are seven[306] of these

claws as well as the long columella (Fig. 5). Hence, when the

shell-cults were diffused from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean (where

the _Pterocera_ is not found), it is quite likely that the people of the

Levant may have confused with the octopus some sailor's account of the

eight-rayed shell (or perhaps representations of it on some amulet or

statue). Whether this is the explanation of the confusion or not, it is

certain that the beliefs associated with the cowry and the octopus in

the Ægean area are identical with those linked up with the cowry and the

_Pterocera_ in the Red Sea.

I have already mentioned that the mandrake is believed to possess the

same magical powers. Sir James Frazer has called attention to the fact

that in Armenia the bryony (_Bryonia alba_) is a surrogate of the

mandrake and is credited with the same attributes.[307] Lovell Reeve

("Conchologia Iconica," VI, 1851) refers to the Red Sea _Pterocera_ as

the "Wild Vine Root" species, previously known as _Strombus radix

bryoniae_; and Chemnitz ("Conch. Cab.," 1788, Vol. X, p. 227) says the

French call it "Racine de brione femelle imparfaite," and refer to it as

"the maiden". Here then is further evidence that this shell (a) was

associated in some way with a surrogate of the mandrake (Aphrodite), and

(b) was regarded as a maiden. Thus clearly it has a place in the

chequered history of Aphrodite. I have suggested the possibility of its

confusion with the octopus, which may have led to the inclusion of the

latter within the scope of the marine creatures in Aphrodite's cultural

equipment. According to Matthioli (Lib. 2, p. 135), another of

Aphrodite's creatures, the purple shell-fish, was also known as "the

maiden". By Pliny it is called Pelogia, in Greek [Greek: porphyra]; and

[Greek: porphyrômata] was the term applied to the flesh of swine that

had been sacrificed to Ceres and Proserpine (Hesych.). In fact, the

purple-shell was "the maiden" and also "the sow": in other words it was

Aphrodite. The use of the term "maiden" for the _Pterocera_ suggests a

similar identification. To complete this web of proof it may be noted

that an old writer has called the mandrake the plant of Circe, the

sorceress who turned men into swine by a magic draught.[308] Thus we

have a series of shells, plants, and marine creatures accredited with

identical magical properties, and each of them known in popular

tradition as "the maiden". They are all culturally associated with

Aphrodite.

I shall have occasion (_infra_, p. 177) to refer to M. Siret's account

of the discovery of the Ægean octopus-motif upon Æneolithic objects in

Spain, and of the widespread use in Western Europe of certain

conventional designs derived from the octopus. M. Siret also (see the

table, Fig. 6, on p. 34 of his book) makes the remarkable claim that the

conventional form of the Egyptian Bes, which, according to Quibell,[309]

is the god whose function it is to preside over sexual intercourse in

its purely physical aspect, is derived from the octopus. If this is

true--and I am bound to admit that it is far from being proved--it

suggests that the Red Sea littoral may have been the place of origin of

the cultural use of the octopus and an association with Hathor, for Bes

and Hathor are said to have been introduced into Egypt from there.[310]

That the octopus was actually identified with the Great Mother and also

with the dragon is revealed by the fact of the latter assuming an

octopus-form in Eastern Asia and Oceania, and by the occurrence of

octopus-motifs in the representation of the goddess in America. One of

the most remarkable series of pictures depicting the Great Mother is

found sculptured in low relief upon a number of stone slabs from Manabi

in Central America,[311] one of which I reproduce here (Fig. 21_b_).

The head of the goddess is a conventionalized octopus; to that was added

a body consisting of a _Loligo_; and, to give greater definiteness to

this remarkable process of building up the form of the goddess,

conventional representations of her arms and legs (and in some of the

sculptures also the _pudendum muliebre_) were added. Thus there can

be no doubt of the identification of this American Aphrodite and

the octopus.

In the Polynesian Rata-myth there is a very instructive series of

manifestations of the dragon.[312] The first form assumed by the monster

in this story was a gaping shell-fish of enormous size; then it appeared

as a mighty octopus; and lastly, as a whale, into whose jaws the hero

Nganaoa sprang, as his representatives are said to have done elsewhere

throughout the world (Frobenius, _op. cit._, pp. 59-219).

Houssay (_op. cit. infra_) calls attention to the fact that at times

Astarte was shown carrying an octopus as her emblem,[313] and has

suggested that it was mistaken for a hand, just as in America the

thunderbolt of Chac was given a hand-like form in the Dresden Codex

(_vide supra_. Fig. 13), and elsewhere (_e.g._ Fig. 12).

If this suggestion should prove to be well founded it would provide a

more convincing explanation of the girdle of hands worn by the Indian

goddess Kali[314] than that usually given. If the "hands" really

represent surrogates of the cowry, the wearing of such a girdle brings

the Indian goddess into line, not only with Astarte and Aphrodite, but

also with the East African maidens who still wear the girdle of cowries.

Kali's exploits were in many respects identical with those of the

bloodthirsty Sekhet-manifestation of the Egyptian goddess Hathor. Just

as Sekhet had to be restrained by Re for her excess of zeal in murdering

his foes, so Siva had to intervene with Kali upon the battlefield

flooded with gore (as also in the Egyptian story) to spare the remnant

of his enemies.[315]

[294: Sir James Frazer, "Jacob and the Mandrakes," _Proc. Brit.

Academy_.]

[295: K. Tümpel, "Die 'Muschel der Aphrodite,'" _Philologus, Zeitschrift

für das Classische Alterthum_, Bd. 51, 1892, p. 385: compare also, with

reference to the "Muschel der Aphrodite," O. Jahn, _SB. d. k. Sächs. G.

d. W._, VII, 1853, p. 16 ff.; also IX, 1855, p. 80; and Stephani,

_Compte rendu pour l'an 1870-71_, p. 17 ff.]

[296: See Jahn, _op. cit._, 1855, T. V, 6, and T. IV, 8: figures of the

so-called [Greek: Choirinai] (from [Greek: Choiros] in the double sense

as "pig" and "the female pudendum"): Aristophanes, Eq. 1147; Vesp. 332;

Pollux, 8, 16; Hesch. s.v.]

[297: The fact that no graphic representation of this event has been

found is surely a wholly inadequate reason for refusing to credit the

story. Very few episodes in the sacred history of the gods received

concrete expression in pictures or sculptures until relatively late. A

Hellenistic representation of the goddess emerging from a bivalve was

found in Southern Russia (Minns, "Scythians and Greeks," p. 345).

Tümpel cites the following statements: "te (Venus) ex concha natam esse

autumant: cave tu harum conchas spernas!" Tibull. 3, 3, 24: "et faveas

concha, Cypria, vecta tua"; Statius Silv. 1, 2, 117: Venus to

Violentilla, "haec et caeruleïs mecum consurgere digna fluctibus et

nostra potuit considere concha"; Fulgent. myth. 2, 4 "concha etiam

marina pingitur (Venus) portari (I. HS:--am portare)"; Paulus Diacon. p.

52, "M. Cytherea Venus ab urbe Cythera, in quam primum devecta esse

dicitur concha, cum in mari esset concepta cet".]

[298: From [Greek: ôdino]--"to have the pains of childbirth".]

[299: See Schliemann, "Ilios," p. 455; and Siret, _op. cit_.]

[300: Siret, _op. cit. supra_, p. 59.]

[301: "Les Théories de la Genèse à Mycènes et le sens zoologique de

certains symboles du culte d'Aphrodite," _Revue Archéologique_, 3^ie

série, T. XXVI, 1895, p. 13.]