, and two upon each foot.
Others were found in the Mentone caves, and are peculiarly important,
because, upon the same stratum as the skeleton with which they were
associated, was found part of a _Cassis rufa_, a shell whose habitat
does not extend any nearer than the Indian Ocean.[262]

[Illustration: Fig. 20.--Diagrams illustrating the form of cowry-belts
worn in (a) East Africa and (b) Oceania respectively.

(c) Ancient Indian girdle (from the figure of Sirima Devata on the
Bharat Tope), consisting of strings of pearls and precious stones, and
what seem to be (fourth row from the top) models of cowries.

(d) The Copan girdle (from Fig. 19) in which both shells and heads of
deities are represented. The two objects suspended from the belt between
the heads recall Hathor's sistra.]

These facts are very important. In the first place they reveal the great
antiquity of the practice of burying shells with the dead, presumably
for the purpose of "life-giving". Secondly, they suggest the possibility
that their magical value as givers of life may be more ancient than
their specific use as intensifiers of the fertility of women. Thirdly,
the association of these practices with the use of the shell _Cassis
rufa_ indicates a very early cultural contact between the people living
upon the North-Western shores of the Mediterranean in the Reindeer Age
and the dwellers on the coasts of the Indian Ocean; and the
probability that these special uses of shells by the former were
inspired by the latter.

This hint assumes a special significance when we first get a clear view
of the more fully-developed shell-cults of the Eastern Mediterranean
many centuries later.[263] For then we find definite indications that
the cultural uses of shells were obviously borrowed from the Erythraean
area.

Long before the shell-amulet became personified as a woman the
Mediterranean people had definitely adopted the belief in the cowry's
ability to give life and birth.

[258: As it is still called in the Semitic languages. In the Egyptian
Pyramid Texts there is a reference to a new being formed "by the vulva
of Tefnut" (Breasted).]

[259: Many customs and beliefs of primitive peoples suggest that this
correlation of the attributes of blood and shells went much deeper than
the similarity of their use in burial ceremonies and for making
necklaces and bracelets. The fact that the monthly effusion of blood in
women ceased during pregnancy seems to h