SWINE. Among the Hebrews, Syrians, and Saracens swine's flesh was taboo, as indeed it was among all the Semites. The reason seems to be that the pig was at one time a sacred animal, especially as we are told that it possessed magical powers (Cazwini, I. 393, cited by Robertson Smith). " According to Al-Nadfm, the heathen Harranians sacrificed the swine and ate swine's flesh once a year. This ceremony is ancient, for it appears in Cyprus in connection with the worship of the Semitic Aphrodite and Adonis. In the ordinary worship of Aphrodite swine were not admitted, but in Cyprus wild boars were sacrificed once a year on April 2 " (Robertson Smith, R.S.). In Egypt, Osiris, Isis, and especially Set, were identified with the pig; and throughout the Eastern Mediterranean the pig was identified also with the Great Mother and associated with lunar and sky phenomena. " In fact at Troy the pig was represented 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 " (G. Elliot Smith, Dr.). The
Mesopotamian god Rimmon when worshipped as a tempest-god was known as " the pig." According to Elliot Smith, the use of the words xotpo3 by the Greeks, and porcus and porculus by the Romans, reveals the fact that the terms had the double significance of pig and cowry-shell. " As it is manifestly impossible to derive the word ' cowry ' from the Greek word for ' pig,' the only explanation that will stand examination is that the two meanings must have been acquired from the identifica tion of both the cowry and the pig with the Great Mother and the female reproductive organs. In other words, the pig-associations of Aphrodite afford clear evidence that the goddess was originally a personification of the cowry." In New Guinea the place of the sacrificial pig may actually be taken by the cowry-shell.