As soil is the material substance of life, water is literally its essence. In a symbolic sense, water is life. A spring of water bubbling up fro the ground seems indeed to be alive, and one can easily perceive why it has always inspired animistic and divine associations. It was ‘living water’ to the Hebrews, ‘running water’ to the Arabs. "And with water we have made all living things", states the Koran. The Egyptian priests posited that the earth itself was created out of the primordial waters of Nun, and that such waters still lay everywhere below the soil. Noticing that the delta was being augmented by the Nile, the Egyptians could easily come to believe that their land was being produced by the river’s water, transmu- ted into solid earth. A similar notion was prevalent among the Mesopotamians. According to a Babylonian legend, all the world was originally sea, until Marduk bound a rush mat upon the face of the waters and piled soil on it. This is reminiscent of the Hebrew Bible’s depiction of the initial state of chaos, when "the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters". The Greeks also believed that the earth continued to be surrounded by the endless expanse of primeval waters extending beyond the sea.

The Sumerian word for water was a, which also signifies sperm, or generative power: the masculine element that fructifies earth. Among the rivers and springs that are held sacred in many countries, most notable are the Nile, the Ganges, and the Jordan. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, as well as in many of the Eastern religions, water is regarded not only as a physical cleansing agent but also as a source of spiritual purification and renewal.

Daniel Hillel: Out of the Earth, Civilization and the life of

the soil, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1991.