ABSTRACT
A myth of ancient Greece tells how the womb as mother in a state of frustration and anger wanders the body of woman causing disease with suffocation. An even older myth with the same Mediterranean origins tells how the mother in a state of grief and anger wanders the earth and sea searching for the maiden taken from her. The account of the earth wanderer, the myth of Eleusis, is told by the poet Homer, though Heroditus suggests that it appeared earlier in Egypt. That of the body wanderer, the myth of hysteria and the wandering womb, is told by the physician Hippocrates, though recorded earlier in Egyptian papyri.
