7: L. Siret, "Questions de Chronologie et d'Ethnographie Iberiques,"
1913, p. 18, Fig. 3.]

[328: Rivers, "History of Melanesian Society," Vol. II, p. 374; also
_Report Brit. Association_, 1912, p. 599.]

[329: M. Siret assigns the date of the appearance in Spain of the highly
conventionalized angular form of octopus to the time between the
fifteenth and the twelfth centuries B.C.; and he attributes it to
Phoenician influence (p. 63).]

[330: Cook, "Zeus," p. 346 _et seq._]

[331: This is well shown upon the Copan representations (Fig. 19) of the
elephant-headed god--see _Nature_, November, 25, 1915, p. 340.]

The Mother Pot.

In the lecture on "Incense and Libations" (Chapter I) I referred to the
enrichment of the conception of water's life-giving properties which the
inclusion of the idea of human fertilization by water involved. When
this event happened a new view developed in explanation of the part
played by woman in reproduction. She was no longer regarded as the real
parent of mankind, but as the matrix in which the seed was planted and
nurtured during the course of its growth and development. Hence in the
earliest Egyptian hieroglyphic writing the picture of a pot of water was
taken as the symbol of womanhood, the "vessel" which received the seed.
A globular water-pot, the common phonetic value of which is _Nw_ or
_Nu_, was the symbol of the cosmic waters, the god _Nw (Nu)_, whose
female counterpart was the goddess _Nut_.

In his report, "A Collection of Hieroglyphs,"[332] Mr. F. Ll. Griffith
discusses the bowl of water (a) and says that it stands for the female
principle in the words for _vulva_ and woman. When it is recalled that
the cowry (and other shells) had the same double significance, the
possibility suggests itself whether at times confusion may not have
arisen between the not very dissimilar hieroglyphic signs for "a shell"
(h) and "the bowl of water" (woman) (f).[333]

[Illustration: Fig. 6.

(a) Picture of a bowl of water--the hieroglyphic sign equivalent to _hm_
(the word _hmt_ means "woman")--Griffith, "Beni Hasan," Part III, Plate
VI, Fig. 88 and p. 29.

(b) "A basket of sycamore figs"--Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," Vol.
I, p. 323.

(c) and (d) are said by Wilkinson to be hieroglyphic signs meaning
"wife" and are apparently taken from (b). But (c) is identical with (i),
which, according to Griffith (p. 14), represents a bivalve shell (g,
from Plate III, Fig. 3), more usually pl