s of blood, blood substitutes, and shells, came to be
assimilated the one with the other.[259]

At first it was probably its more general power of averting death or
giving vitality to the dead that played the more obtrusive part in the
magical use of the shell. But the circumstances which led to the
development of the shell's symbolism naturally and inevitably conferred
upon the cowry special power over women. It was the surrogate of the
life-giving organ. It became an amulet to increase the fertility of
women and to help them in childbirth. It was, therefore, worn by girls
suspended from a girdle, so as to be as near as possible to the organ it
was supposed to simulate and whose potency it was believed to be able to
reinforce and intensify. Just as bracelets and necklaces of carnelian
were used to confer on either sex the vitalizing virtues of blood, which
it was supposed to simulate, so also cowries, or imitations of them made
of metal or stone, were worn as bracelets, necklaces, or hair-ornaments,
to confer health and good luck in both sexes. But these ideas received a
much further extension.

As the giver of life, the cowry came to have attributed to it by some
people definite powers of creation. It was not merely an amulet to
increase fertility: it was itself the actual parent of mankind, the
creator of all living things; and the next step was to give these
maternal functions material expression, and personify the cowry as an
actual woman in the form of a statuette with the distinctly feminine
characters grossly exaggerated;[260] and in the domain of belief to
create the image of a Great Mother, who was the parent of the universe.

[Illustration: Fig. 18 (a) The Archaic Egyptian slate palette of Narmer
showing, perhaps, the earliest design of Hathor (at the upper corners of
the palette) as a woman with cow's horns and ears (compare Flinders
Petrie, "The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty," Part I, 1900, Plate
XXVII, Fig. 71). The pharaoh is wearing a belt from which are suspended
four cow-headed Hathor figures in place of the cowry-amulets of more
primitive peoples. This affords corroboration of the view that Hathor
assumed the functions originally attributed to the cowry-shell.

(b) The king's _sporran_, where Hathor-heads (H) take the place of the
cowries of the primitive girdle.]

[Illustration: Fig. 19.--The front of Stela B (famous for the realistic
representations of the Indian elephant at its upper corners