Divination by Water.

The ancients attached special sanctity and power to water, and in many countries, e.g. in Egypt, water was declared to be the “father of the gods.” The Babylonian and Egyptian cosmogonies make it to be the original home of the gods, and the primeval watery abyss was the dwelling-place both of the powers of light and darkness. The Copts said that water and the wheat plant and the Throne of the Father stand in one category, and they are the equals of the “Son of God ” (Budge, Coptic Apochrypha,p. 246). And the Ethiopians believed that the three Persons of the Trinity lived in name only in the primeval World-Ocean until They pronounced their own names, when they became Persons. The Babylonian Water-god was called Ea, his name meaning the “house of water ”; he lived in the subterranean deep which surrounds the earth, and he was the source of wisdom and learning and the personification of all knowledge. It is therefore easy to understand why the Babylonians made divination by water, and why omens derived from the state and appearance of the rivers of their country were held to be of supreme importance. As the god of wisdom and knowledge he was able to inform the enquirer into the future better than any other god. The early Egyptian texts make Nu or Nenu the god of the World-Ocean, but it was Ḥapi, the Nile god, the incomprehensible and unknowable god, whose form could neither be delineated nor described, who was the Egyptian equivalent of Ea.