"As Cupid is indifferently said to have been produced from an egg
at a time when the whole world was in disorder, and from the womb
of the marine goddess Venus, the egg and the womb of that goddess
must denote the same thing. Accordingly we shall find that, on
the one hand, Venus is immediately connected with the symbolical
egg; and, on the other hand, that she is identical with Derceto
and Isis, and is declared to be that general receptacle out of
which all the hero-gods were produced. Now there can be little
doubt in what sense we are to understand this expression, when we
are told that the peculiar symbol of Isis was a ship; and when we
learn that the form assumed at the period of the deluge, by the
Indian Isi or Bhavani, who is clearly the same as the Egyptian
Isis, was the ship Argha, in which her consort Siva floated
securely on the surface of the ocean. Venus, therefore, or the
Great Mother, the parent of Cupid from whom all mankind
descended, must be the Ark: consequently, the egg, with which she
is connected, must be the Ark also. Aristophanes informs us that
the egg out of which Love was born, was produced by Night in the
bosom of Erebus. But the Goddess Night, as we learn from the
Orphic poet, was the very same person as Venus; and he celebrates
her as the parent of the Universe, and as the general mother both
of the hero-gods and of man. The egg therefore produced by Night
was produced by Venus: but Venus and the egg meant the same
thing: even that vast floating machine, which was esteemed an
epitome of the world, and from which was born that Deity who is
also literally said to have been set afloat in an ark. Sometimes
the order of production was inverted; and, instead of the egg
being produced by Night or Venus, Venus herself was fabled to