explained how a
pot came to symbolize a woman or a goddess, not merely in Egypt, but
also in Southern India, and in Mycenaean Greece, and, in fact, the
Mediterranean generally.[384] Hence the use of the term _dud_ for the
mandrake implies either (a) an identification of the plant with the
goddess who is the giver of life, or (b) an analogy between the form of
the mandrake-fruit and a pot, which in turn led to it being called a
pot, and from that being identified with the goddess.[385]

I should explain that when Professor Canney gave me this statement he
was not aware of the fact that I had already arrived at the conclusion
that the Great Mother was identified with a pot and also with the
mandrake; but in ignorance of the meaning of the Hebrew words I had
hesitated to equate the pot with the mandrake. As soon as I received his
note, and especially when I read his reference to the second meaning,
"basket of figs," in Jeremiah, I recalled Mr. Griffith's discussion of
the Egyptian hieroglyphic ("a pot of water") for woman, wife, or
goddess, and the claim made by Sir Gardner Wilkinson that this manner of
representing the word for "wife" was apparently taken from a
conventionalized picture of "a basket of sycamore figs".[386] The
interpretation has now clearly emerged that the mandrake was called
_duda'im_ by the Hebrews because it was identified with the
Mother Pot. The symbolism involved in the use of the Hebrew word also
suggests that the inspiration may have come from Egypt, where a woman
was called "a pot of water" or "a basket of figs".

When the mandrake acquired the definite significance as a symbol of the
Great Mother and the power of life-giving, its fruit, "the love apple,"
became the quintessence of vitality and fertility. The apple and the
pomegranate became surrogates of the "love apple," and were graphically
represented in forms hardly distinguishable from pots, occupying places
which mark them out clearly as homologues of the Great Mother
herself.[387]

But once the mandrake was identified with the Great Mother in the Levant
the attributes of the plant were naturally acquired from her local
reputation there. This explains the pre-eminently conchological aspect
of the magical properties of the mandrake and the bryony.

I shall not attempt to refer in detail to the innumerable stories of red
and brown apples, of rowan berries, and a variety of other red fruits
that play a part in the folk-lore of so many pe