ning its true meaning and for lending me the literature relating
to this matter. Miss Winifred M. Crompton, the Assistant Keeper of the
Egyptian Department in the Manchester Museum, gave me very material
assistance by bringing to my attention some very important literature
which otherwise would have been overlooked; and both she and Miss
Dorothy Davison helped me with the drawings that illustrate this volume.
Mr. Wilfrid Jackson gave me much of the information concerning shells
and cephalopods which forms such an essential part of the argument, and
he also collected a good deal of the literature which I have made use
of. Dr. A. C. Haddon, F.R.S., of Cambridge, lent me a number of books
and journals which I was unable to obtain in Manchester; and Mr. Donald
A. Mackenzie, of Edinburgh, has poured in upon me a stream of
information, especially upon the folk-lore of Scotland and India. Nor
must I forget to acknowledge the invaluable help and forbearance of
Mr. Henry Guppy, of the John Rylands Library, and Mr. Charles W. E.
Leigh, of the University Library. To all of these and to the still
larger number of correspondents who have helped me I offer my most
grateful thanks.

During the three years in which these lectures were compiled I have
been associated with Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, F.R.S., and Mr. T. H. Pear in
their psychological work in the military hospitals, and the influence of
this interesting experience is manifest upon every page of this volume.

But perhaps the most potent factor of all in shaping my views and
directing my train of thought has been the stimulating influence of Mr.
W. J. Perry's researches, which are converting ethnology into a real
science and shedding a brilliant light upon the early history of
civilization.

G. ELLIOT SMITH.

9 December, 1918.

[1: "The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilisation in the East and in
America," _Bulletin of the John Rylands Library_, January-March, 1916.]

[2: Nathan Soederblom, "Les Fravashis Etude sur les Traces dans le
Mazdeisme d'une Ancienne Conception sur la Survivance des Morts," Paris,
1899.]

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 1

CHAPTER II. DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 76

CHAPTER III. THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 140

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE
Fig. 1.--The