even if it were based upon more valid evidence than the speculations
of such recent writers as Pliny, would not really carry the explanation
very far.

I refer to his claim that "les premiers conquerants de la mer furent
induits en veneration du poulpe nageur (octopus) parce qu'ils crurent
que quelque-uns de ces cephalopodes, les poulpes sacres (argonauta)
avaient, comme eux et avant eux, invente la navigation" (_op. cit._, p.
15). Idle fancies of this sort do not help us to understand the
arbitrary beliefs concerning the magical powers of the octopus.

The real problem we have to solve is to discover why, among all the
multitude of bizarre creatures to be found in the Mediterranean Sea, the
octopus and its allies should thus have been singled out for distinctive
appreciation, and also acquired the same remarkable attributes as the
cowry.

I believe that the Red Sea "Spider shell," _Pterocera_,[303] was the
link between the cowry and the octopus. This shell was used, like the
cowry, for funerary purposes in Egypt and as a trumpet in India.[304]
But it was also depicted upon a series of remarkable primitive statues
of the god Min, which were found at Coptos during the winter 1893-4 by
Professor Flinders Petrie.[305] Some of these objects are now in the
Cairo Museum and the others in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. They are
supposed to be late predynastic representations of the god Min. If this
supposition is correct they are the earliest idols (apart from mere
amulets) that have been preserved from antiquity.

Upon these statues, representations of the Red Sea shell _Pterocera
bryonia_ are sculptured in low relief. Mr. F. Ll. Griffith is
disinclined to accept my suggestion that the object of these pictures of
the shell was to animate the statues. But whether this was their purpose
or not, it is probably not without some significance that these
life-giving shells were associated with so obtrusively phallic a deity
as Min. In any case they afford concrete evidence of cultural contact
between Coptos and the Red Sea, and indicate that these particular
shells were chosen as symbols of that sea or its coast.

[Illustration: Fig. 5--Pterocera Bryonia. the Red Sea Spider-shell.
_Col._--the columella 1-7--the "claws".]

The distinctive feature of the _Pterocera_ is that the mantle in the
adult expands into a series of long finger-like processes each of which
secretes a calcareous process or "claw". There are seven[306] of t