or Ridgeway
has called attention to certain historical events which in his opinion
forced men to convert their jewellery into coinage. But the fact that
cowries were the earliest form of currency may have prepared the way for
the recognition of the use of gold for a similar purpose. Moreover, we
know that long before a real gold currency came into being rings of gold
were in Egypt a form of tribute and a sign of wealth. Cowries acquired
their significance as currency as the result of incidents in some
respects analogous to those which impelled the early Egyptians to make
gold models of the shells. In places in Africa far removed from the sea
where the practice has grown up of offering vast numbers of cowries to
brides on the occasion of their marriage (as fertility amulets) or of
putting the shells in the grave (to secure for the dead fresh vital
energy), the people offered their most treasured possessions, such as
their cattle, in exchange for the amulets which were believed to confer
such priceless social and religious boons. Cattle were therefore given
in exchange for cowries, or the shells were used for the purchase of
wives. When the new significance as currency developed a remarkable
confusion occurred. In many places cowries were placed in the mouth of
the dead to confer the breath of life: but when the cowries acquired the
new meaning as currency, the people who had lost all knowledge of the
original significance of this practice explained the cowries as money
with which to pay Charon's fare to the other world. Then, in many
places, the cowry was replaced by an actual metallic coin. Most scholars
fall into the same error as these ancient rationalists, and accept
their explanation of the _obolus_ as though it were the real meaning of
the act.

Another result of the use of gold models of shells as life-giving
amulets was that the metal also acquired the reputation of being a giver
of life,[439] which originally belonged merely to the shell or the
imitation of its form, whatever the substance used for making the model.

Thus gold came to share the same magical reputation as the cowry and the
pearl. It was also put to the same use: it was buried with the dead to
confer a continuation of existence.

Not only was Hathor called _Nub_, _i.e._ "gold" or the golden Hathor:
but the place where the funerary statue was made ("born") in Egypt was
called the "House of Gold" and personified as a goddess who gave rebirth
to t