h seven heads, which like the strong
serpent of the sea (sweeps away) the foe".

In the Japanese story which I have quoted, the number of the dragon's
heads is given as _seven_ or _eight_; and de Visser is at a loss to know
why "the number eight should be stereotyped in these stories of
[Japanese] dragons".[421]

I have already emphasized the world-wide association of the
seven-headed dragon with storms. The Argonaut (usually called
"Nautilus" by classical scholars) was the prophet of ill-luck and the
storm-bringer: but, true to the paradox that runs through the whole
tissue of mythology, this form of the Great Mother is also a benevolent
warner against storms. This seems to be another link between the
seven-headed dragon and these cephalopoda.

I would suggest, merely as a tentative working hypothesis, that the
process of blending the seven _avatars_ of the dragon into a
seven-headed dragon may have been facilitated by its identification with
the _Pterocera_ and the octopus. We know that the octopus and the
shell-fish were forms assumed by the dragon (see p. 172): the confusion
between the numbers seven and eight is such as might have been created
during the transference of the _Pterocera's_ attributes to the octopus
(_vide supra_, p. 170); and the Babylonian reference to "the fish with
seven wings," which was afterwards rationalized into "a great serpent
with seven heads," seems to provide the clue which explains the origin
of the seven-headed dragon. If Hathor was a seven-fold goddess and at
the same time was identified with the seven-spiked spider-shell
(_Pterocera_), the process of converting the shell-fish's seven "wings"
into seven heads would be a very simple one for an ancient story-teller.
If this hypothesis has any basis in fact, the circumstance that the
beliefs concerning the _Pterocera_ must (from the habitat of the
shell-fish) have come into existence upon the shores of Southern Arabia
would explain the appearance of the derived myth of the seven-headed
dragon in Babylonia.

My attention was first called to the possibility of the octopus being
the parent of the seven-headed dragon, and one of the forms assumed by
the thunderbolt, by the design upon a krater from Apulia.[422] The
weapon seemed to be a conventionalization of the octopus. Though further
research has led me to distrust this interpretation, it has convinced me
of the intimate association of the octopus and the derived spiral
ornament with