its stunning reproductive capacity (the superfecundatio directed towards obtaining (maintaining) access to material was known since antiquity) on the other hand.”17 “Hare manifestations of the power and potency that imbues their amulets may have stood for the vital forces connected cosmos, thereby continuing their close association and inclusion with fertility …, alert quickness, and swiftness of the with the dynamics of the universe of which they are an integral animal, and are to be viewed as life-giving symbols.”18 part.” This idea is more fully developed in M. W. Helms’s Access (See Divinity Holding Hares, 77.AO.82, cat. no. 4, for to Origins: Affines, Ancestors and Aristocrats (Austin, 1998). additional discussion of the hare as a symbol.) The cowrie was associated with fertility and the sea, whose tides The mature cowrie has been likened in appearance to the are controlled by the moon, the effect of which on women was human eye and female genitalia, both powerful danger- well established. For this reason, among others, the moon is 19 associated with many female fertility divinities in the averting subjects. The cowrie shell has been used to Mediterranean, among them Artemis (with whom amber is also “replace” the eyes of the deceased and in Egypt and Italy closely linked). An amber cowrie could be seen as a material is especially important for women. The long and narrow manifestation of the dynamics of the universe. aperture on the underside of the cowrie recalls the external appearance of the vulva, and with the animal 2. An early outstanding example is the girdle formed of gold emerging from it, birth itself. The overall shape of the cowries belonging to Queen Mereret (Dynasty 12) in the Cairo shell may have been thought to intimate the shape of the Museum: see, for example, Andrews 1994, p. 42. womb, “so when beads of its shape formed an element of 3. Ibid. Amber scarabs were among the first carved amber objects a woman’s girdle, they were in exactly the right place to to appear in Italy in the Orientalizing period, with many ward off evil influences from the relevant bodily part of excavated examples. Although many demonic subjects of the wearer, especially if she were pregnant.”20 Egyptian and Near Eastern origin appear to have lost or changed their meaning as the visual forms were adapted in The function of a cowrie amulet would have been to Greece, Etruria, and elsewhere in Italy, the scarab seems never enhance the particular bodily functions of the organs it to have lost its original associations with the sun, life, and represented (the eyes or the genitalia) and to act as a regeneration. The early amber scarabs and scaraboids are substitute for them in the afterworld. The amber, itself evidence of this. See A. F. Gorton, Egyptian and Egyptianizing magic and regenerative, no doubt enhanced the fertility Scarabs: A Typology of Steatite, Faience and Paste Scarabs from properties of the cowrie, as did the image of the Punic and Other Mediterranean Sites (Oxford, 1996), p. 158, n. 65. proverbially fertile hare. That the hare and the cowrie are 4. For example, the precious metal cowries buried with the woman two animals in which the females are larger than the in Tomb 419 at Banzi (along with three amber profile head- males must have added to the amuletic aspects of the pendants): Magie d’ambra 2005, p. 126. pendant. In the tomb, the combination of hare and cowrie 5. I. Dall’Osso, Guida illustrata del Museo Nazionale di Ancona in a beautiful ornament-amulet might have been (Ancona, 1915), p. 303 (referred to by Waarsenburg 1995, p. 454, especially valuable for protection in rebirth or for the n. 1276). journey to the afterworld. In the beliefs of some in ancient Italy, this was a complicated voyage, part by land, part by 6. For the headband from Tomb 315 at Alianello-Cazzaiola sea, and part submarine.21 (Heraclea, Museo Nazionale della Siritide 209862), see I Greci in Occidente: Greci, Enotri e Lucani nella Basilicata meridionale NOTES (Naples, 1996), pp. 152–53, no. 2.12; and Ornamenti e lusso 2000, p. 17, fig. 10. 1. White 1992, p. 549, theorizing a source-distance gradient for 7. Magie d’ambra 2005, pp. 87–88 (discussed by S. Bianco). The Aurignacian-period personal ornaments, underlines that they amber was excavated from a woman’s tomb in the necropolis of were usually made of materials exotic to the regions in which Santa Maria di Anglona–Valle Sorigliano. they were found. This continues to hold true for the prehistoric period and the early historic period in Italy for amuletic and 8. Metropolitan Museum of Art 1992.11.13, Purchase, Renée and exotic materials, such as amber, ivory, and cowries. Shennan Robert A. Belfer Philanthropic Fund, Patti Cadby Birch, and The 1993, pp. 62–66, discusses amber’s value, especially in light of its Joseph Rosen Foundation Inc. Gifts, and Harris Brisbane Dick acquisition by political-religious elites living spatially distant Fund, 1992: Art of the Classical World 2007, pp. 295, 473, no. 343. from amber sources, and cites Helms 1988, p. 114: “Many exchanged items have inherent magical or religious significance 9. Unpublished. as ‘power-charged’ treasures acquired from extraordinary 10. These appear, from the photographs, to be similar to the realms outside their own heartland.” Indeed, as Helms 1988 London hare pendant: see K. A. Neugebauer, Antiken in concludes on p. 130, “the ultimate goal of those seeking [shields deutschem Privatbesitz (Berlin, 1938), no. 255. or shell or stones or holy incense, or amber] may well be 212 ANIMALS