ecific factors have deflected classical
scholars from the true path. In the search for the ancestry of
Aphrodite, they have concentrated their attention too exclusively upon
the Mediterranean area and Western Asia, and so ignored the most ancient
of the historic Great Mothers, the African Hathor, with whom (as Sir
Arthur Evans[236] clearly demonstrated more than fifteen years ago) the
Cypriote goddess has much closer affinities than with any of her
Asiatic sisters. Yet no scholar, either on the Greek or Egyptian side,
has seriously attempted to follow up this clue and really investigate
the nature of the connexions between Aphrodite and Hathor, and the
history of the development of their respective specializations of
functions.[237]

But some explanation must be given for my temerity in venturing to
invade the intensively cultivated domains of Aphrodite "with a mind
undebauched by classical learning". I have already explained how the
study of Libations and Dragons brought me face to face with the problems
of the Great Mother's attributes. At that stage of the enquiry two
circumstances directed my attention specifically to Aphrodite. Mr.
Wilfrid Jackson was collecting the data relating to the cultural uses of
shells, which he has since incorporated in a book.[238] As the results
of his search accumulated, the fact soon emerged that the original
Great Mother was nothing more than a cowry-shell used as a life-giving
amulet; and that Aphrodite's shell-associations were a survival of the
earliest phase in the Great Mother's history. At this psychological
moment Dr. Rendel Harris[239] claimed that Aphrodite was a
personification of the mandrake. But the magical attributes of the
mandrake, which he claimed to have been responsible for converting the
amulet into a goddess, were identical with those which Jackson's
investigations had previously led me to regard as the reasons for
deriving Aphrodite from the cowry. The mandrake was clearly a surrogate
of the shell or vice versa.[240] The problem to be solved was to decide
which amulet was responsible for suggesting the process of life-giving.
The goddess Aphrodite was closely related to Cyprus; the mandrake was a
magical plant there; and the cowry is so intimately associated with the
island as to be called _Cypraea_. So far as is known, however, the
shell-amulet is vastly more ancient than the magical reputation of the
plant. Moreover, we know why the cowry was regarded as femini