xvi Introduction. 
prove to be the source of the remarkable account of the 
necessity for obtaining the dog’s help to root up a man- 
drake, and the explanation of the danger of this operation 
to man. It is, in fact, yet one more link between the 
beliefs associated with shells and dragons and the birth of 
Aphrodite. 
In the appendix Mr. Jackson has collected some 
curious information relating to the association of a dog 
with the discovery of purple. Certain of the associated 
legends suggest that this may be another link in the com- 
plex chain of connexions between the beliefs regarding 
shells and those relating to the origin of Venus. 
Another factor which may have played some part in 
the development of this belief was the Southern Arabian 
legend that trees might be personified, usually as women, 
and that it was dangerous to touch them.’ It is probable 
that, when the use of the cowry and pearls spread from 
the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, the elements out of 
which the wonderful Cypriote legends were compounded 
travelled with them. 
The earliest conception of a deity arose out of these 
beliefs connected with the cowry. The first deities were 
personifications of the female principle and power of re- 
production. These ideas found expression in the most 
primitive theologies of Egypt and Babylonia, and later in 
those of Dravidian India and the Mediterranean, Hathor, 
Istar, the village deities of Southern India, and Aphrodite 
were probably sprung from a common ancestry. 
Elsewhere | have discussed* the events that created 
* See on this Schofi’s ‘* Commentary on the Periplus of the Erythrean 
Sea,” pp. 130-131. 
* “The Relationship of the Practice of Mummification to the Develop- 
ment of Civilisation,” to appear in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 
and separately under the title ‘‘ Incense and Libations’ (Manchester 
University Press). 
