Levant assumed by the mandrake, just as we have already seen the
Southern Arabian conception of her as a tree adopted in Mycenaean lands.
Having replaced the sea-shell by a land plant it became necessary, in
adapting the legend, to substitute for the "sea-dog" some land animal.
Not unnaturally it became a dog. Thus the story of the dangers incurred
in the process of digging up a mandrake assumed the well-known
form.[279] The attempt to dig up the mandrake was said to be fraught
with great danger. The traditional means of circumventing these risks
has been described by many writers, ancient and modern, and preserved in
the folk-lore of most European and western Asiatic countries. The story
as told by Josephus is as follows: "They dig a trench round it till the
hidden part of the root is very small, then they tie a dog to it, and
when the dog tries hard to follow him that tied him, this root is easily
plucked up, but the dog dies immediately, as it were, instead of the man
that would take the plant away."[280] Thus the dog takes the place of
the dog-fish when the mandrake becomes the pearl's surrogate. The only
discrepancy between the two stories is the point to which Josephus calls
specific attention. For instead of the dog killing the thief, as the
shark (dog-fish) kills the stealer of pearls, the dog becomes the victim
as a substitute for the man. As Josephus remarks, "the dog dies
immediately, as it were, instead of the man that would take the plant
away". This distortion of the story is true to the traditions of
legend-making. The dog-incident is so twisted as to be transformed into
a device for plucking the dangerous plant without risk.

It is quite possible that earlier associations of the dog with the Great
Mother may have played some part in this transference of meaning, if
only by creating confusion which made such rationalization necessary. I
refer to the part played by Anubis in helping Isis to collect the
fragments of Osiris; and the role played by Anubis, and his Greek
_avatar_ Cerberus, in the world of the dead. Whether the association of
the dog-star Sirius with Hathor had anything to do with the confusion is
uncertain.[281]

There was an intimate association of the dog with the goddess of the
under-world (Hecate) and the ritual of rebirth of the dead.[282] Perhaps
the development of the story of the underworld-goddess Aphrodite's dog
and the mandrake may have been helped by this survival of the
associati