e of the water,
the concha veneria. [The analogy to a ship bearing the Great Mother is
extremely ancient and originally referred to the crescent moon carrying
the moon-goddess across the heavenly ocean.]

Elsewhere (p. 399) he discusses the reasons for the connexion of
Aphrodite with the "nautilus," by which is meant the argonaut of
zoologists.

But if Jahn and Tuempel have thus clearly established the proof of the
intimate association of Aphrodite with certain cephalopods, they are
wholly unjustified in the assumption that their quotations from
relatively modern authors disprove the reality of the equally close
(though more ancient) relationship of the goddess to the cowry, the
pearl-shell, the trumpet-shell, and the purple-shell.

It must not be forgotten that, as we have already seen, the primitive
shell-cults of the Erythraean Sea had been diffused throughout the
Mediterranean area long before Aphrodite was born upon the shores of the
Levant, and possibly before Hathor came into existence in the south. The
use of the cowry and gold models of the cowry goes back to an early time
in AEgean history.[299] And the influence of Aphrodite's early
associations had become blurred and confused by the development of new
links with other shells and their surrogates.

But the connexion of Aphrodite with the octopus and its kindred played a
very obtrusive part in Minoan and Mycenaean art; and its influence was
spread abroad as far as Western Europe[300] and towards the East as far
as America. In many ways it was a factor in the development of such
artistic designs as the spiral and the volute, and not improbably also
of the swastika.

[Illustration: Fig. 22.--(a) _Sepia officinalis_, after Tryon,
"Cephalopoda".

(b) _Loligo vulgaris_, after Tryon.

(c) The position usually adopted by the resting Octopus, after Tryon.]

Starting from the researches of Tuempel, a distinguished French
zoologist, Dr. Frederic Houssay,[301] sought to demonstrate that the
cult of Aphrodite was "based upon a pre-existing zoological philosophy".
The argument in support of his claim that Aphrodite was a
personification of the octopus must be sharply differentiated into two
parts: first, the reality of the association of the octopus with the
goddess, of which there can be no doubt; and secondly, his explanation
of it, which (however popular it may be with classical writers and
modern scholars)[302] is not only a gratuitous assumption, but also,