(c) Conventionalized lily—the prototype of the trident and the thunder-weapon.
(d) A water-plant associated with the Nile-gods.
The familiar representation of Horus (and his homologues in India and elsewhere) being born from the lotus suggests that the flower represents his mother Hathor. But as the argument in these pages has led us towards the inference that the original form of Hathor was a shell-amulet,[335] it seems not unlikely that her identification with the lotus may have arisen from the confusion between the latter and the cowry, which no doubt was also in part due to the belief that both the shell and the plant were expressions of the vital powers of the water in which they developed.
The identification of the Great Mother with a pot was one of the factors that played a part in the assimilation of her attributes with those of the Water God, who in early Sumerian pictures was usually represented pouring the life-giving waters from his pot (Fig. 24, h and l).
Fig. 24.
(a) and (b) Two Mycenæan pots (after Schliemann).
(a) The so-called "owl-shaped" vase is really a representation of the Mother-Pot in the form of a conventionalized Octopus (Houssay).
(b) The other vase represents the Octopus Mother-Pot, with a jar upon her head and another in her hands—a three-fold representation of the Great Mother as a pot.