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Report n°5 : "Water : symbolism and culture"

The culture of water, yesterday and today

In Farsi, the first word in the dictionary is ab, water, and abadan (82) -derived from it- means civilised.

There is no civilisation, then, without water, which has presided over all of man's activities since time immemorial: in Afghanistan, a canal has been dated with certainty to the Bronze Age; Jericho, the world's most ancient city, founded in the Judean desert 8,000 years before Christ, owes its very existence to the freshwater springs that form tiny natural lakes in the vicinity of the Dead Sea; Knossos in Crete had running water nd paved streets 3,500 years before Christ; Hammurabi, who reigned over the Akkadians, Babylonians and Sumerians, ordered the digging of canals and codified water laws as early as 1730 BC.

Houses in the Carthaginian period were systematically built with one or more water cisterns fed from the impluvium on their terraces. The insides of these cisterns were even lined with strong waterproof mortar. Carthaginian houses often had their own well, and underground water was captured to supply public water fountains, some of which were monumental in size, such as the so-called "thousand amphora" fountain discovered at the site of Carthage in 1919. At the Punic site of Kerkouane, on Tunisia's Cap Bon, all the houses feature remarkable bathrooms fitted with hip-baths (83). Finally, excellent underground pipes have been discovered in the ruins of Kouriou in Cyprus, eloquent testimony to the sophistication of the irrigation system at the dawn of the Christian era.

Lastly, Aristotle in his Meteorologia, a treatise on earth sciences, drew a distinction between natural waters, automata, and those in which the hand of man was involved, cheirometa; for the Greek philosopher, there is a line between water from springs, rivers and seas and water which, in order to be captured, required "works of art and engineering" and gave rise to the flowering of Greco-Roman techniques of channelling water to create public baths, fountains, cisterns, aqueducts and temples, dedicated to gods of healing such as Mercury, Apollo, Diana or Hercules, especially in the vicinity of hot springs.

In reality, every human civilisation throughout history has been closely linked to and heavily dependent on water and water systems. Mother Nature cannot be dissociated from the liquid element, and the views that civilisations have taken of water have given rise to a rich symbolism to be found in every field, from religious beliefs to art and poetry, by way of urban design, architecture, the layout of roads and lines of communication.

The culture of water is not a concept to be relegated to the storehouse of history; far from it. "Water and culture are both fluids -one concrete, one immaterial- which bind the members of human society together" wrote Jean-Louis Oliver of the Académie de l'Eau, since water is a powerful cement in the organisation and social cohesion of human communities. This is why whenever any group has sought to destroy another people and bend them to its will, it has first attempted to wipe out (84) their water culture and its material infrastructure. Raised to the status of a touchstone value, water has always reflected three dimensions -sacred, social and economic- even though variations over time and space may be observed (85).

This culture finds its place not only in Egyptology and Sinology; an attentive observer may spot it at work in today's world too, since the culture of water, whether we like it or not, forms our attitudes and our values. Do not these values make constant reference to future generations? To common goods? To the principle of sustainability? Does notwater still capture our imagination, our feelings, our fears and our unspoken thoughts, otherwise how do we explain our enthusiasm for the possibility of water on Mars or other planets, our fascination with everything to do with the sinking of the Titanic or the lost expedition of La Pérouse? How are we to cast off the emotional gravity and weight of the element that makes up our very cells and our bodily fluids, and which saw us grow within the womb?

Advances in science and technology have made possible many things, including the production of hydroelectric power, industrial development, river navigation, irrigation, water supply and waste water treatment for towns and vast urban metropolises, desalination of brackish and salt water; in turn, this has enabled a large proportion of mankind to enjoy a lifestyle and conditions of comfort, health and security scarcely ever seen before in history. Paris and London only arrived at populations of a million in the wake of Pasteur's revolutionary work, and when they acquired running water and a network of sewers. Yet repercussions of this kind may go far beyond sanitation and health. Erik Swyngedow, a town-planner and geographer based at the University of Oxford, demonstrated that the modernisation of the Spanish state went hand in hand with fundamental changes in the way water was used, and that water culture, water policy and water engineering played a key role in the formation of Spanish society. "Little or nothing in the contemporary social, economic and ecological landscape of Spain can be understood without explicit reference to the evolving position of water as it appears before our eyes (86), " he writes. Very few of our contemporaries truly appreciate our enormous dependence on water, which has become an "invisible" aspect of our way of life. Yet it takes 18 litres of water to produce a litre of petrol, and 1,300 litres to produce a microchip. To cite the example of France alone, the heat wave in the summer of 2003 affected the working of the country's nuclear power stations and the winter floods of December 2003 also created problems for the Cruas nuclear power station (87) in the Ardèche since the cooling water taken from the river contained too much debris from trees and vegetation. Even an industry at the cutting edge of modern technology like nuclear power is dependent on water.

We are a very long way from the paradigm of "domination and mastery over Nature", and how derisory seems the gesture of the Doge of Venice who ritually cast a ring into the sea each year as "a symbol of real and perpetual rule"!

Social, economic and cultural development and even political stability and continuity (88) are closely linked to the water supply available to the population. China's Prime Minister, Zhu Rongji, acknowledged in an interview with Le Monde (18 August 2001) that "the shortage of water is a serious obstacle to China's economic and social development". The obstacle is all the greater in that China's water culture has always held governments responsible for water management. In the past, when China suffered from natural disasters or the rivers flooded, itwas seen as proof that the Emperor was no longer worthy of the position he held;many a dynasty was brought down by flooding (89)!

(82) Philip Ball, "H2O. A biography of water", Phoenix, London, 2004. The author also points out that the English word "abode" is derived from the Farsi word, abad. It is noteworthy that in Chinese ideograms, the two characters representing Chinese and French both share the same key, that of water. Why the water key? The character which represents Chinese, pronounced han, was originally the name of a river. The character pronounced fa that was chosen to represent French means the law; in ancestral times, flowing water incarnated the natural law of life (François Cheng, "Le dialogue", Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 2002, p.94). For Jacques Berque, the ideograms that translate legal concepts all begin with what is known as the "water radical" so much do all these concepts of social organisation presuppose waterworks" (L'Orient second, Gallimard, Paris,1970).

(83) Ammar Mahjoubi and Hédi Slim, "La maîtrise de l'eau à l'époque antique", El Madar, review of the Cité des Sciences de Tunis, special edition,1993.

(84) a- Peter N.Spotts, "Watering Eden", Christian Science Monitor in Courrier International no.649, 10-16 April 2003, p.61
b- "Les experts au chevet des marais d'Irak", Le Figaro, 22 February 2005.

(85) a- Georges Vigarello, "Le propre et le sale. L'hygiène du corps depuis le Moyen Age", Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1985
b- Sabine Barles, "La ville délétère.Médecins et ingénieurs dans l'espace urbain", Editions Champ Vallon, Seyssel, 1999)

(86) Quoted by Pierre Cornut in his doctoral thesis in geography, Free University of Brussels, November 1999.

(87) The high temperatures led to a rise in river water temperatures, hence the temperature of cooling water discharged into the environment rose above the level considered likely to impact on local flora and fauna. A decree of 12 August 2003 allowed the authorised limits to be exceeded on an occasional and limited basis. No negative impact was observed.

(88) To cite just one example, Joseph Ki - Zerbo reports that "in February 1974, the Parliament (of Burkina-Faso) was dissolved, political activities banned and the Constitution abrogated in the wake of a military coup d'état. The country was prey to political tension driven by the drought raging for years in the Sahel''in "A quand l'Afrique? Entretiens avec René Holenstein", Editions de l'Aube, Paris, 2004). It is noteworthy, too, that Algeria's Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was founded in the wake of water riots in 1988 (Hugues Le Masson, "Le marché de l'eau dans les PVD", Revue des Ingénieurs (Mines), no.386, June 2000, p.21-22).

(89) Marie-France Caïs, Marie-José Del Rey and Jean-Pierre Ribaut, "L'eau et la vie.Enjeux, perspectives et visions culturelles", Editions Charles-Léopold Mayer, Paris, 1999.