n
Europe, and as far East as India. But in the Mediterranean area the pig
played a more prominent part than it did in Egypt.[423] In the latter
country Osiris, Isis, and especially Set, were identified with the pig;
and in Syria the place of Set as the enemy of Osiris (Adonis) was taken
by an actual pig. But throughout the Eastern Mediterranean the pig was
also identified with the Great Mother and associated with lunar and sky
phenomena. In fact at Troy the pig was represented[424] with the
star-shaped decorations with which Hathor's divine cow (in her role as a
sky-goddess) was embellished in Egypt. To complete the identification
with the cow-mother Cretan fable represents a sow suckling the infant
Minos or the youthful Zeus-Dionysus as his Egyptian prototype was
suckled by the divine cow.

Now the cowry-shell was called [Greek: choiros] by the Greeks. The pig,
in fact, was identified both with the Great Mother and the shell; and it
is clear from what has been said already in these pages that the reason
for this strange homology was the fact that originally the Great Mother
was nothing more than the cowry-shell.

But it was not only with the shell itself that the pig was identified
but also with what the shell symbolized. Thus the term [Greek: choiros]
had an obscene significance in addition to its usual meaning "pig" and
its acquired meaning "cowry". This fact seems to have played some part
in fixing upon the pig the notoriety of being "an unclean animal".[425]
But it was mainly for other reasons of a very different kind that the
eating of swine-flesh was forbidden. The tabu seems to have arisen
originally because the pig was a sacred animal identified with the Great
Mother and the Water God, and especially associated with both these
deities in their lunar aspects.

According to a Cretan legend the youthful god Zeus-Dionysus was suckled
by a sow. For this reason "the Cretans consider this animal sacred, and
will not taste of its flesh; and the men of Praesos perform sacred rites
with the sow, making her the first offering at the sacrifice".[426]

But when the pig also assumed the role of Set, as the enemy of Osiris,
and became the prototype of the devil, an active aversion took the place
of the sacred tabu, and inspired the belief in the unwholesomeness of
pig flesh. To this was added the unpleasant reputation as a dirty animal
which the pig itself acquired, for the reasons which I have already
stated.

I have a