xiv Introduction. 
as a girdle) he emphasises precisely the same features in 
the development of this belief as the history of the cultural 
use of the cowry also reveals. In both cases a fancied 
likeness to the organs of reproduction was supposed to 
confer upon the object—whether it was the cowry or the 
mandrake—the magical power of conferring fertility. In 
both cases this influence was supposed to be exerted upon 
women, if they wore the amulets upon their girdle. The 
link of both practices with Cyprus suggests the influence 
of one belief in originating the other. 
But though Dr. Rendel Harris has demonstrated that 
Aphrodite was a personification of the mandrake, this is 
by no means the whole of the story. It affords no 
explanation why Aphrodite was female, and only the 
slightest and somewhat fanciful reasons for the personifi- 
cation or the magical potency of the goddess. Nor has 
Dr. Rendel Harris given any reasons for the remarkable 
belief that it is necessary to tie a dog to the plant “to 
pull it up, which will give a great shreeke at the digging 
up: otherwise ifa man should do it, he should surely die 
in short space after.” ° 
If it be assumed that Aphrodite was born of the sea 
foam; and reached Cyprus as a cowry, which, for the 
reasons that this book aims at expounding, was already 
the symbol of womanhood, the source of fertility, the 
giver of life and resurrection, the whole of the wonder- 
ful story told by Dr. Rendel Harris assumes a new 
meaning. The cowry-beliefs were planted in Cyprus; 
and there, under the influence of those horticultural ideas 
which, according to him, were current in the Eastern 
Mediterranean, the plant that also presents grotesque 
likenesses to the reproductive organs was regarded as the 
impersonation of those powers which, for similar reasons, 
had been assigned to the cowry. 
* OP. ct., p. 6. 
ee _ 
