Evolution of Water Supply Through the Millennia

Front matter

©2019 The Author(s)

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Contents

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Chapter 2 L. W. Mays, M. Sklivaniotis and A. N. Angelakis 2.1. Prolegomena. assis rats eee bero Reduce eek or ua edes E RUD dels Rod NOUS RR ae 19 2.2. NeolithicAge rs or ble]pRLeRREA CU UeeRPpenb bebe bead beaches 21 2.39 Bronze Age ...sicusssse gus ees RR wee eld RR eed ode kab AERE Ré Ru E Ra rena 22 2.7 RomanPerod sic se eda bee aapi inian cack ke EE Fed RR RR n WDR RE RE Rs 28 2.7.2 Water consumption siseasi ii iee a d a se 32 28 Byzantine Pernod 2... co Lese bineta ek E bead eGo P ERR MR Rem 33 2.10 Modem: TIMES csset repe bred feli dead deb ed Dod ed @ tae n n BA 36 2.10.[1 17th centüty 2. ccved ne ceee ull ea ba wanna bee bade deta RET GR adus 36 2.10.2- 18th centüry. i. ise Lern bead eet vob be CODE oed dresden il etus 37 2.10.3 9th centüry. «csse ick eR be REA rar UR Ree RETE es 37 2.10.4. 20th centüry - iix seo roe exea heh qp gos oe Pee Oeo Rod een 39 2.11 EpilOQue: ic neces cbe eme eerie mes ead SE edie c or a cing 40 References i ellececibs4lsm eau ehe SRG ARA a anaE a Ea EN AS Bee eee 40 Chapter 3 Joanna M. Pope, Mark H. Weir and Joan B. Rose SPEC" 43 3.2.3 The language of infectious disease... 6... eee 50 3.3.2 Life of the Schisfosoma «2... cee a mh eee med 52 3.6 Arsenic Exposure in Bangladesh: “Safe” Drinking Water Solutions: i.a sca pe iosia Gaba dak eter dead e Saeed idR uten: 60

Chapter 1 Ancient gods and goddesses of water

L. W. Mays and A. N. Angelakis

1.14 INTRODUCTION: MYTHOLOGY, GODS AND GODDESSES

Water is the beginning of everything Thales of Miletus (636—546 BC)

To ancient civilizations and cultures, water was considered as a potential destructive element, but also a necessity to life, next to food, safety and hygiene; usually some deity was associated with water. Also, water was important for purifying the body and for cleaning. Dieties associated with water or various bodies of water were important in almost all mythologies. Deities and religious beliefs prescribed its uses, collection and purification. Minoans, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, and the American Indians all had gods and goddesses for water irrigation of crops as well as water purity. Temples water delivery systems were often built to honour these gods and certain elements were incorporated to honour the god. Also gods and/or goddesses were associated with making rain in order to face severe droughts (Haland, 2007). Water deities were usually more important among civilizations when a sea or an ocean, or a great river was important.

Gods and goddesses have had a significant influence on the human society since the ancient times. This Chapter explores some of the ancient gods and goddesses of rain, water, rivers, and sea. The gods are considered collectively as a “pantheon” of a particular mythology. Many ancient societies had a “Creator God" and many lower levels of gods and goddesses. Most ancient societies had a belief system that was "polytheistic," meaning they worshipped many gods. They believed that there was a god for every aspect (or element) of the Earth such as the sun, the moon, wind, lightning, rain, water, etc. In many ancient cultures the moon was seen as gentle and feminine in contrast to the sun which was seen as masculine. Ancient Egyptians believed that the gods and goddesses maintained the balance of chaos and order on earth. Some ancient gods and goddesses are still worshipped today, such as Chac, the Mayan god of rain. Gods and goddesses could be aspects of one another and could have shifting roles and levels of importance such as the Vedic gods in the Vedic religion in India.

Gods and goddesses have been depicted by various cultures in many different ways. For example ancient Indian gods and goddesses have been depicted with many arms showing a sign of great power, with multiple

Downloaded from https://iwaponline.com/ebooks/book-pdf/523726/wio9781780401041.pdf bv IWA Publishina user heads, and with combined human and animal characteristics. Sun gods were often depicted with attributes of wheels, while sky gods were depicted as hammers to symbolise thunder. Ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses took on many human and animal forms. The gods of the ancient Greeks were almost all conceived of as being human in form. Other gods, such as those at the founding of Rome, were numina (divine manifestations, faceless, and formless) but no less powerful. For the Romans everything in nature was thought to be inhabited by numina, explaining the large number of deities in the Roman pantheon. Gods and goddesses of the Tibetan Buddhism take on a variety of forms ranging from the fierce to the peaceful. Goddesses, in some cultures, are associated with earth, motherhood, love, and the household, while in other cultures, they rule over war, death, and destruction as well as healing.

In the following sections the major water gods and goddesses in several ancient civilizations and/or religions are presented and discussed. Emphasis is given to Mesopotamians and Egyptians, to the Bronze era, to Hellenistic and Roman civilizations, to the Celtic and Hindu mythologies and to the ancient Mesoamericans (e.g. Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas).

1.2 ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN MYTHOLOGY

In Mesopotamia humans were created to alleviate the gods from the hard work they had to do. Mesopotamia, "the land between the rivers," that is the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, is in the Fertile Crescent. During the time of ancient Mesopotamia urban civilization grew, the wheel was invented, arts and sciences flourished, writing was pioneered, and humankind began to create a record of the past. All life originated with water for these people (Woolf, 2005).

Water was ever present in all aspects of Mesopotamian life, including religion, politics, law, economy, international affairs, war, etc. Enuma Elish is the Babylonian creation myth recorded on seven clay tablets in Old Babylonian. The Enuma Elish indicated that in the beginning water already existed, distinguishing between Apsu, conceived as a male god of freshwater (sweet) waters, and Tiamat, his spouse, a goddess of salt water. Also, Apsu denotes the freshwater upon which the earth floated. As underground waters, Apsu may be reached when laying the foundations of a temple, and also appears naturally in pools and marshes (Jacobsen, 1946). The Apsu is the domain of one of the most important gods in the Mesopotamian pantheon, Enki (Sumerian) and later Ea (Akkadian), who was depicted with cascade of water emanating from his shoulders, or holding a vase from where water emerges, as shown in Figure 1.1a. Enki, as master of the fresh water was a creator god, a wise god, always ready to help humans. The god Murdak (Figure 1.1b) was recognised as the son of Ea. His powers and attributes were passed to him from Ea and another god, Enlil.

Tablet I from the Atra-Hasis epic about the creation and early history of man begins: “When the gods like men / bore the work and suffered the toil...'. The heavy work included digging and maintenance of canals. But the lesser gods did not tolerate this state of affairs, and they rebelled (*... they set fire to their tools, / fire to their spades they put / and flame to their hods ..."). As a result, mankind was created: *... Let the birth-goddess create offspring / and let man bear the toil of the gods ...”. And men ‘with picks and spades they built the shrines, / they built the big canals' banks / for food of the peoples, for sustenance of the gods’. However, “Twelve hundred years had not yet passed’, the peoples multiplied and with their noise disturbed the gods who decided to exterminate mankind. At this point, Enki intervened and alerted one man, Atra-Hasis, who was instructed on how to escape from the plan of the gods and let mankind survive. Tablet II refers to one of the ways the gods attempted to eradicate mankind from the earth: ‘... Adad (god of weather) should withhold his rain, / and below, the flood should not come up from the abyss / .... / let the fields diminish their yields ...". Famine arose not only from the drought, but also because the soil became unsuitable for agriculture due to salinisation: ‘... the black fields became white, / the broad plain was choked with salt ...'. Not succeeding with famine (due

Downloaded from https://iwaponline.com/ebooks/book-pdf/523726/wio97817804010441.pdf bv IWA Publishina user to Enki's intervention), the gods decided on a devastating flood that ‘tear up the mooring poles’ and ‘make the dykes overflow’. Tablet III describes that ‘for seven days and seven nights / came the deluge, the storm, the flood".

Figure 1.1 Mesopotamian gods. (a) Enki (Sumerian) or Ea (Akkadian) and (b) Marduk, considered as the son of Enki (Source: Wikipedia Commons, in public domain).

The Sumerian version of the flood (Lambert & Millard, 1999) explicitly says that construction and maintenance of water channels was a god’s decision '... he (the god) did not stop the yearly flood, but dug the ground and brought the water, / he established the cleaning of the small canals and the irrigation ditches ...’.

1.3 ANCIENT EGYPT MYTHOLOGY

Ancient Egyptian civilization was centred about its highly complex religion (Woolf, 2005). In ancient Egypt all aspects of human life were reflected in the divine world and the range of associations held by the deities and goddesses (Oakes & Gahlin, 2003). They believed that the balance of order and chaos in the universe could only be maintained by the gods and goddesses and their representative on earth (the king or the pharaoh). Ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses took on many different human and animal different forms. For example Aker the earth god, appeared as two lions back-to-back on a tract of land with lion or human heads at either end. Anat, the goddess of war appeared as a woman with a lance, axe and shield. Many of the deities were worshipped in temples and shrines throughout Egypt. Hundreds of deities were in the Egyptian pantheon. Many of these originated as local gods who became the central focus of important cults and others borrowed from different cultures.

For thousands of years the people of Egypt have owed their very existence to a river that flowed mysteriously and inexplicably out of the greatest and most forbidding desert in the world (Hillel, 1994). The ancient Egyptians depended upon the Nile not only for their livelihoods, but they also considered the Nile to be a deific force of the universe, to be respected and honoured if they wanted it to treat them favourably. Its annual rise and fall were likened to the rise and fall of the sun, each cycle equally

Downloaded from https://iwaponline.com/ebooks/book-pdf/523726/wio978 1780401041 .pdf bv IWA Publishing user important to their lives, though both remaining a mystery. Since the Nile sources were unknown up until the 19th century, the ancient Egyptians believed it to be a part of the great celestial ocean, or the sea that surrounds the whole world. Shown in Figure 1.2 is Hapi — the Nile god, first shown as one god and then as two gods, portrayed with breasts to show his capacity to nurture.

Figure 1.2 Egyptian gods associated with the Nile River: (a) Hapi shown as one god with breasts (Source: Illustration from the Encyclopaedia Biblica, a 1903 publication, now in the public domain), (b) Hapi shown as a pair of gods symbolically tying together upper and lower Egypt (Source: Wikipedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons, GNU Free Documentation Licence), and (c) Sobek, god of crocodiles who created the Nile by Jeff Dahl (Source: Wikipedia, under GNU Free Documentation Licence, Version 1.2).

Ancient Egyptians considered the sun (the dominant factor in Egyptian life) to be a potent life force along with the annual inundation of the Nile, which was responsible for the successful harvests. Re or Ra, meaning "the Sun," was the pre-eminent god of solar and appeared as a ram or falcon head with sun disc and cobra headdress. The cult centre for Re was in Heliopolis. For further reading on ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses refer to Wilkinson (2003).

1.4 THE BRONZE ERA

The Minoan civilization (ca. 3200-1100 BC) was based on the island of Crete, a very fertile land. The importance of religion of the Cretans is somewhat sketchy because they built no great temples or carved statues of gods. However the Cretans did leave behind many other items such as small shrines, and representations of sacred birds, trees, bulls, and snakes. They also built lustral basins (rooms possibly set aside for cult worship), temple repositories, double-axes, and sacral horns. They also used sacred caves and shrines set aside on mountain peaks. Religious scenes are shown in Figure 1.3 and lustral basins are shown in Figure 1.4a.

Goddesses seem to have had the dominant role in Cretan religion as they played a dominant role in their society (Graham, 1987). A so-called Poppy goddess, with three incised poppy seeds on her head that was found at a small ritual shrine suggests that opium was used to induce religious ecstasy (Freeman, 2004). Referring to Figure 1.4b women had a dominant role as they had elaborate costumes indicating their importance. The colourful frescos of women found in palaces may indicate a more feminine influence than other societies of the ancient times. In fact archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes in her book, The Dawn

Downloaded from https://iwaponline.com/ebooks/book-pdf/523726/wio97817804010441.pdf bv IWA Publishina user of the Gods (London, 1968) argued that Minoan Crete was essentially a feminine society. Also Minoan ritual included the possible sacrificing of children (Freeman, 2004).

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Figure 1.4 Lustral basins: (a) North lustral basin at Knossos (Evans thought that these basins were used for purification ceremonies and that Knossos palace was a sacred place) and (b) Lustral basin at Kato Zakros (with permission of L.W. Mays).

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1.5 GREEK MYTHOLOGY

Hydros (or Hydrus) was the protogenos of the primordial waters. In the Orphic Theogonies Water was the first being to emerge at creation alongside Creation (Thesis, goddess of creation) and Mud. The primordial mud solidified into Gaia (Earth) and with Hydros produced Kronos (time) and Ananke (compulsion). These two in turn caught the early cosmos in the coils, and split it apart to form the god Phanes (creator of life), and the four ordered elements of Heaven (fire), Earth, Air and Sea (water). The Orphic Rhapsodies later discarded the figures the Kronos and Ananke, and have Phanes instead born directly from Hydros and Gaia [Homer, Iliad 14. 200 ff (trans. Lattimore) Greek epic C8th BC].

In Greek mythology the Twelve Olympians were the principal gods of the Greek pantheon, residing atop Mount Olympus. There were, at various times, fourteen different gods recognised as Olympians, though never more than twelve at one time. In Greek mythology, the twelve gods and goddesses ruled the universe from atop Greece's Mount Olympus. These Olympians, all related to one another, had come to power after their leader, Zeus, overthrew his father, Kronos, leader of the Titans. Later the Romans adopted most of these Greek gods and goddesses, but with new names.

1.5.1 Olympian gods and goddesses

Achelous (Figure 1.5), named after the Achelous River (largest river in Greece), was the chief of all river deities. The name is pre-Greek and the meaning unknown. Every river had its own river spirit. Tethys was a Greek deity who oversaw the fresh water rivers of the world and the mother and grandmother of thousands of other deities.

Figure 1.5 Achelous was often reduced to a bearded mask, an inspiration for the medieval Green Man. Shown is floor mosaic of Achelous in Zeugma, Turkey (Source: Wikipedia Commons, in public domain).

Tethys (Figure 1.6) was a goddess who most probably was a primordial deity in Archaic Greece, but who was seen in Classical myths as the deity responsible for the fresh water rivers of the world and the progenitor of thousands of water deities. Tethys was described in classical myths as the deity responsible for the fresh water rivers of the world and the progenitor of thousands of water deities. Tethys was considered as an embodiment of the waters of the world making her also a counterpart of Thalassa, the embodiment of the sea.

Demeter (Figure 1.7), the goddess of earth, agriculture, water and fertility, was the second daughter of the major Titans Rhea and Cronus, after Hestia, the goddesses of the hearth. Demeter was a peace-loving deity and the source of all growth and life; she was the goddess who provided all nutrition on the earth and taught

Downloaded from https://iwaponline.com/ebooks/book-pdf/523726/wio97817804010441.pdf bv IWA Publishina user mortals how to cultivate the earth and ease life. Demeter was most appreciated for introducing wheat to mankind, making man different from animals.

Figure 1.6 Mosaics of Tethys: (a) Mosaic from Phillopolis that dates to the mid-fourth century (Source: Wikipedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons, GNU Free Documentation Licence) and (b) Mosaic on the floor at the bathhouse of Garni with the image of Tethys, constructed between the first and third centuries AD (Source: Wikipedia Commons, in public domain).

Figure 1.7 Demeter: (a) Votive relief of Demeter, on the left, during a ritual holding a sceptre in her left hand offering wheat to Triptolemos, son of the Eleusinian King Keleos, for bestowing on mankind. On the right Persephone, with a mantle and holding a torch, blesses Triptolemos with her right hand. This is the largest and most known votive relief (ca. 440—430 BC), which was found in Eleusis, and now resides in the Archaeological Museum of Athens, Greece. The relief was apparently famous in antiquity and was copied in the Roman period with one copy now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York. (with permission of A. N. Angelakis) and (b) Demeter and Metanira. Detail of the belly of an Apulian red-figure hydria, ca. 340 BC (Source: Wikipedia Commons, in public domain).

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1.5.2 Zeus or Poseidon of rain

The ancient Greeks worshipped Zeus or Poseidon (Figure 1.8) god of rain and in colloquial speech one can say "Zeus is raining" (Haland, 2007). Children in Ancient Greece sang: "Rain, rain, o dear Zeus, on the fields of the Athenians." According to the tradition, Zeus was the god of rain (Hes. Op. 488).

Figure 1.8 Poseidon (a) Poseidon holding a trident (Corinthian plaque, 550—525 BC) from Penteskouphia at Louvre Museum, photographed by Marie-Lan Nguyen, Jastrow (2006) (Source Wikipedia Commons, in public domain); (b) Bronze statue of Zeus or Poseidon (from Archaeological Museum of Athens). It is certainly the work of a great sculptor of the early Classical period ca. 460 BC (with permission of A. N. Angelakis); and (c) Head of Poseidon, photographed by Marie-Lan Nguyen, Jastrow (Source: Wikipedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic licence).

Fully-fledged rain-magic is found in the cult of Zeus Lykaios in Arkadia, where nevertheless one of the Nymphs who reared him also has something to say: if a severe drought lasts a long time the priest of Zeus will go to the spring of the Nymph Hagno, make a sacrifice, and let the blood run into the spring (Haland, 2007). Then, after prayer, he dips a branch from an oak (the sacred tree of Zeus) into the water, and forthwith a vapour will rise up from the spring like a mist, ‘and a little way off the mist becomes a cloud, collects other clouds, and makes the rain drop on Arkadian land, (Haland, 2009).

Among the ancient Greeks, a king is often a magician in the service of the gods. Part of his duty is to bea weather-king. He is *making the weather", and this means that he is making rain, for example by shaking rattles or by other means trying to make thunder and lightning. In ancient Thessaly, when the land suffered from drought, they shook a bronze wagon by way of praying the god for rain, and it was said rain came. This was a traditional public ceremony for the making of rain (Haland, 2007).

According to (Haland, 2009) *Greece had been withering under a drought: neither inside the isthmus (of Corinth) nor outside it would rain, until they sent to Delphi to discover the reasons and ask for relief. The Pythian priestess told them to placate Zeus, but, if he were to listen, it had to be Aiakos who made the ritual supplication. They sent men from every city to beseech Aiakos son of Zeus; he sacrificed and prayed to Panhellenic Zeus, and brought rain to Greece; so the Aiginetans made the portraits of the ambassadors' (Haland, 2007).

1.5.3 Nymphs

In Greek mythology a nymph was a female minor nature deity typically associated with a particular location or landform. Nymphs were generally regarded as divine spirits who animated nature, and were usually

Downloaded from https://iwaponline.com/ebooks/book-pdf/523726/wio97817804010441.pdf bv IWA Publishina user depicted as beautiful, young maidens who loved to dance and sing. Water nymphs (Hydriades or Ephydriades) included freshwater nymphs (naiads or naides) who presided over fountains, wells, springs, streams, and brooks, but not rivers. Naiads (see Figure 1.9) were either daughters of Poseidon or various Oceanids, who were the patrons of a particular spring, river, sea, lake, pond, pasture, flower or cloud. Oceanids were the three thousand daughters of Oceanus and Tethys. Water nymphs associated with particular springs were known all through Europe at locations with no direct connection with Greece.

Figure 1.9 A naiad, a water nymph approaches the sleeping Hylas by Artist John William Waterhouse, 1893. In Greek mythology, Hylas, the son of Hercules, was kidnapped by nymphs of the spring of Pegae (Source: Wikipedia Commons, in public domain).

Limnades or leimenides were naiads that lived in freshwater lakes, whose parents were river or lake gods. Pegaeae were naiads that lived in springs and were often considered daughters of the river gods (Potamoi). They established a mythological relationship between a river and its springs. Crinaeae were naiads associated with fountains or wells. Eleionomae were naiads associated with living in marshes and often misled travellers with their illusions that were images of a traveller's loved ones. They also lured young, virgin boys seducing them with their beauty (see Figure 1.9).

1.6 ROMAN MYTHOLOGY

The Etruscans were a continuous population during the Mediterranean Iron Age in the second half of the first millennium BC, located in the Po Valley and some of its alpine slopes, southward along the west coast of Italy. The Estruscans were at their peak around 500 BC, having a significant maritime power with a presence in Sardinia and the Aegean Sea. They had a distinct language and culture during the period of earliest European writing and worshipped a pantheon of twelve gods. In fact they were very dedicated to religion, doing nothing without proper consultation with the gods and signs from them. These practices were later taken over by the Romans. Roman mythology definitely took on many Greek things, including the Greek gods. The Dii Consentes, a group of twelve gods were especially honoured by the Romans. The number of twelve gods came from the Etruscans; however the Dii Consentes were identified with the Greek Olympian gods, even though the original character of the Roman gods was different.

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One of the twelve Roman gods was Neptunus. In Roman mythology and religion Neptune (Neptunus) was the god of fresh water (from rivers and springs) and the sea (see Figure 1.10). Similarly to Poseidon, Neptune was also worshipped as a god of horses, under the name Neptunus Equester, a patron god of horse-racing. The festival of Neptunalia is celebrated on July 23. Hadrian, the emperor, ordered the construction of the Pantheon as a sanctuary dedicated to all the gods. Roman temples were the main centers of religion serving as symbolic homes for the gods, which were represented by statues.

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Figure 1.10 Neptunus or Neptune (a) [Source: Wikipedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons, GNU Free Documentation Licence] and (b) Mosaic at the Museo archeologico regionale di Palermo, (Photo by Giovanni Dall'Orto, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic licence).

Cloacina (cloaca: “sewer” or *drain") was the goddess of sewers who presided over the Cloaca Maxima (“Great Drain"), which was the main trunk of the system of sewers in Rome. She was originally derived from Etruscan mythology. The Romans placed a great deal of faith and trust in her for the wellbeing of Rome's sewers (and workers) which was very important to their desired way of life and good health through sanitation. The Shrine of Venus Cloacina was a small sanctuary on the Roman Forum, honouring the divinity of the Cloaca Maxima, the spirit of the *Great Drain" or Sewer of Rome. Two images of the “Shrine of Venus Cloacina” in the Forum are shown in Figure 1.11.

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Figure 1.11 Two images of the "Shrine of Venus Cloacina" in the Forum Romanum from Hülsen, Christian (1906), The Roman Forum — Its History and Its Monuments, Ermanno Loescher and Co: Publishers to H. M. the Queen of Italy, p. 138.

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Roman mythology also included nymphs. A couple examples of naiads include Albunea and Appias. Albunea was a prophetic nymph or Sibyl, who was a naiad who lived in the sulphuric spring near Tibur (Tivoli). Appias was one of the Crinaeae, who was a naiad who lived in the Appian Well outside the temple to Venus Genitrix in the Roman Forum.

Finally, in the left side of the crypt of the famous Cathedral in Bari, Italy, which was built between the late 12th and late 13th centuries, one sarcophagus contains the relics of Saint Columba, recently restored, who is related to the rain and fire. She was pagan and became Christian when she was 16-years old. She escaped from Spain (257—273 AD) due to Emperor Adriano's persecution (Figure 1.12). She went to Sens in France where she was kept and imprisoned anyway. The legend says that a prison officer tried to rape her but a bear from the nearby amphitheatre saved her. Then, she was sent to the stake but a strange rain saved her from fire. That's why people pray for her in the case of water being needed to extinguish a fire. She was killed later due to Emperor Aureliano's persecution.

Figure 1.12 Saint Columba di Sens (Spain 257 AC-Sens 273 AC) in the crypt of the Cathedral, Bari, Italy (with permission of A. N. Angelakis).

1.7 CELTIC MYTHOLOGY

Celtic mythology is the mythology of Celtic polytheism, or the religion of the Iron Age Celts. In Europe, as early as the Bronze Age, the association between water and spiritual power was evident. The reverence for water was a hallmark of the Celtic religion, as rivers and springs were very important in Celtic myth. The ancient Celtics had a great deal of trust for the curative powers of springs. Springs were therefore sites of great sanctuaries. Sequana was the goddesses of the Seine River in France. She was often depicted in a duck-shaped boat. Her sacred place was among the springs at the headwaters of the Seine River in Burgundy. Goddess Sulis Minerva had her sanctuary at the ancient springs of Bath, England. Lakes were important sites for ritual activities.

Arausio was a local Celtic water god who gave his name to the town of Arausio (Orange) in southern Gaul. Dea Icaunis was the goddess of the Yonne River in Gaul in Gallo-Roman religion. In Celtic mythology, Condatis (waters meet) was a deity associated with the confluences of rivers (in particular the Tyne and the Tees). He was worshipped primarily in northern Britain and in Gaul. Latis was the anglo-Celtic goddess associated with water. She was originally a lake goddess who became a goddess of ale and mead. There were many other gods and goddesses related to specific rivers in the Celtic mythology.

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1.8 HINDU/VEDIC MYTHOLOGY

As in other mythologies, deities associated with water or various bodies of water are known in Hindu mythology. As already mentioned, water deities were common in civilizations (e.g. Hindu) in which the sea or ocean, or a great river played an important role in their development. Thus, Varuna was the Lord of the oceans and Apam Napat was the god of fresh water, such as in rivers and lakes (Darian, 2001).