goddesses has given rise to much rather aimless
discussion, for there can be no question of their essential homology
with Hathor and Aphrodite. Moreover, from the beginning, all
goddesses--and especially this most primitive stratum of fertility
deities--were for obvious reasons intimately associated with the
moon.[95] But the cyclical periodicity of the moon which suggested the
analogy with the similar physiological periodicity of women merely
explains the association of the moon with women. The influence of the
moon upon dew and the tides, perhaps, suggested its controlling power
over water and emphasized the life-giving function which its association
with women had already suggested. For reasons which have been explained
already, water was associated more especially with fertilization by the
male. Hence the symbolism of the moon came to include the control of
both the male and the female processes of reproduction.[96]

The literature relating to the development of these ideas with
reference to the moon has been summarized by Professor Hutton
Webster.[97] He shows that "there is good reason for believing that
among many primitive peoples the moon, rather than the sun, the planets
or any of the constellations, first excited the imagination and aroused
feelings of superstitious awe or of religious veneration".

Special attention was first devoted to the moon when agricultural
pursuits compelled men to measure time and determine the seasons. The
influence of the moon on water, both the tides and dew, brought it
within the scope of the then current biological theory of fertilization.
This conception was powerfully corroborated by the parallelism of the
moon's cycles and those of womankind, which was interpreted by regarding
the moon as the controlling power of the female reproductive functions.
Thus all of the earliest goddesses who were personifications of the
powers of fertility came to be associated, and in some cases identified,
with the moon.

In this way the animation and deification of the moon was brought about:
and the first sky deity assumed not only all the attributes of the
cowry, i.e. the female reproductive functions, but also, as the
controller of water, many of those which afterwards were associated with
Osiris. The confusion of the male fertilizing powers of Osiris with the
female reproductive functions of Hathor and Isis may explain how in some
places the moon became a masculine deity, who, however, sti