Chapter II

, p. 103).

The New Testament sets forth the ancient conception of birth and rebirth. When Nicodemus asks: "How can a man be born again when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born?" he is told: "Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh: and that which is born of the spirit is spirit" (John iii. 4, 5, and 6).

The phrase "born of water" refers to the birth "of the flesh"; and the mother's womb is the vessel containing "the water" from which the new life emerges. Plutarch states, with reference to the birth of Isis: "[Greek: tetarte de ten Isin en panygrois genesthai]". The great waters which produced all living things, the Egyptian god Nun and the goddess Nut, were expressed in hieroglyphic as pots of water. The goddess was identified with Hathor's celestial star-spangled cow, the original mother of the sun-god; and the word "Nun" was a symbol of all that was new, young, and fresh, and the fertilizing and life-giving waters of the annual inundation of the Nile. Hathor was the daughter of these waters, as Aphrodite was sprung from the sea-foam.

[332: _Archaeol. Survey of Egypt_, 1898, p. 3.]

[333: Compare the two-fold meaning of the Latin _testa_ as "shell" and "bowl".]

[334: Compare the association of shells with altars in Minoan Crete and the widespread use of large shells as bowls for "holy water" in Christian churches.]

[335: Miss Winifred M. Crompton, Assistant Keeper of the Egyptian Department of the Manchester Museum, has called my attention to a remarkable piece of evidence which affords additional corroboration of the view that Hathor was a development of the cowry-amulet. Upon the famous archaic palette of Narmer (Fig. 18), a sporran, composed of four representations of Hathor's head, takes the place of the original cowries that were suspended from more primitive girdles.

The cowries of the head ornament of primitive peoples of Africa and Asia (and of the Mediterranean area in early times--Schliemann's "Ilios," Fig. 685) are often replaced in Egypt by lotus flowers (W. D. Spanton, "Water Lilies of Egypt," _Ancient Egypt_, 1917, Part I, Figs. 19, 20, and 21). Upon the head-band of the statue of Nefert, which I have reproduced in