Long before the shell-amulet became personified as a woman the Mediterranean people had definitely adopted the belief in the cowry's ability to give life and birth.
[258] As it is still called in the Semitic languages. In the Egyptian Pyramid Texts there is a reference to a new being formed "by the vulva of Tefnut" (Breasted).
[259] Many customs and beliefs of primitive peoples suggest that this correlation of the attributes of blood and shells went much deeper than the similarity of their use in burial ceremonies and for making necklaces and bracelets. The fact that the monthly effusion of blood in women ceased during pregnancy seems to have given rise to the theory, that the new life of the child was actually formed from the blood thus retained. The beliefs that grew up in explanation of the placenta form part of the system of interpretation of these phenomena: for the placenta was regarded as a mass of clotted blood (intimately related to the child which was supposed to be derived from part of the same material) which harboured certain elements of the child's mentality (because blood was the substance of consciousness).
[260] See S. Reinach, "Les Déesses Nues dans l'Art Oriental et dans l'Art Grec," Revue Archéol., T. XXVI, 1895, p. 367. Compare also the figurines of the so-called Upper Palæolithic Period in Europe.
[261] Chapter I.
[262] The literature relating to these important discoveries has been summarized by Wilfrid Jackson in his "Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture," pp. 135-7.
[263] Cowries were obtained in Neolithic sites at Hissarlik and Spain (Siret, op. cit., p. 18).
The Origin of Clothing.
The cowry and its surrogates were supposed to be potent to confer fertility on maidens; and it became the practice for growing girls to wear a girdle on which to suspend the shells as near as possible to the organ their magic was supposed to stimulate. Among many peoples[264] this girdle was discarded as soon as the girls reached maturity.