ABSTRACT
The concept of water as a sacred substance is ubiquitous in religious history: cultures located on alluvial plains made sacrifices and propitiary gifts to their river gods. Water has been used in baptisms, libations, holy ablutions, fertility rites, for blessing and protection from the 'evil eye' and for mortuary rituals. Archaeologists have argued persuasively that many prehistoric monuments are connected with water, noting that in many cases avenues link Neolithic stone circles to water sources. The parting of the Red Sea offers a perfect homologue of male sexual dominance of women and male dominion over nature, and few images could symbolise the triumph of culture over nature so powerfully as that of God's son walking on the water. The consistency of the meanings encoded in water enables an unproblematic flow of ideas from cosmological explanation to another. In each transition, water retains its core meanings as the source of 'life' and of the spiritual and social 'essence' of human being.
