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 Caesarea".

[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 Archeol._, 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 stelae. See, for example, Maudslay's pictures of stele N, Plate 82 (Biologia Centrali-Americana; Archaeology) _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, "Mysteres Egyptiens," 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 Correres) 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 Graeco-Latin _margarita_, the Aramaeo-Syriac _margarita_, the Arabic _margan_, and the Turanian _margan_ are derived from the Persian _mar-gan_, 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