on of Isis with Anubis, even if there is not a more definite
causal relationship between the dog-incidents in the various legends.

The divine dog Anubis is frequently represented in connexion with the
ritual of rebirth,[283] where it is shown upon a standard in association
with the placenta. The hieroglyphic sign for the Egyptian word _mes_,
"to give birth," consists of the skins of three dogs (or jackals, or
foxes). The three-headed dog Cerberus that guarded the portal of Hades
may possibly be a distorted survival of this ancient symbolism of the
three-fold dog-skin as the graphic sign for the act of emergence from
the portal of birth. Elsewhere (p. 223) in this lecture I have referred
to Charon's _obolus_ as a surrogate of the life-giving pearl or cowry
placed in the mouth of the dead to provide "vital substance". Rohde[284]
regards Charon as the second Cerberus, corresponding to the Egyptian
dog-faced god Anubis: just as Charon received his _obolus_, so in Attic
custom the dead were provided with [Greek: melitoutia] the object of
which is usually said to be to pacify the dog of hell.

What seems to link all these fantastic beliefs and customs with the
story of the dog and the mandrake is the fact that they are closely
bound up with the conception of the dog as the guardian of hidden
treasure.

The mandrake story may have arisen out of a mingling of these two
streams of legend--the shark (dog-fish) protecting the treasures at the
bottom of the sea, and the ancient Egyptian beliefs concerning the
dog-headed god who presides at the embalmer's operations and
superintends the process of rebirth.

The dog of the story is a representative of the dragon guarding the
goddess in the form of the mandrake, just as the lions over the gate at
Mycenae heraldically support her pillar-form, or the serpents in Southern
Arabia protect her as an incense tree. Dog, Lion, and Serpent in these
legends are all representatives of the goddess herself, i.e. merely her
own _avatars_ (Fig. 26).

At one time I imagined that the role of Anubis as a god of embalming and
the restorer of the dead was merely an ingenuous device on the part of
the early Egyptians to console themselves for the depredations of
jackals in their cemeteries. For if the jackal were converted into a
life-giving god it would be a comforting thought to believe that the
dead man, even though devoured, was "in the bosom of his god" and
thereby had attained a rebirth in the