Lesser water deities
Besides the cult honouring Neptune and the nymphs, springs and rivers were the object of a cult focussed on their genie – probably none other than the heir to Berber water genies. There is however no tangible evidence allowing for the claim that there were Berber water gods eventually supplanted by Roman gods. It remains that water was deified which explains how inscriptions happened to be addressed not just to water genies but to the very waters of springs and rivers. Any spring was perceived as divine, with or without the adjunct of an intermediary supernatural power. These deified waters became acknowledged by the name of « aquae »
followed by a geographic epithet. Such a term would as a rule refer to natural thermo-mineral spa waters, whether hot or cold, with medical applications. Thanks to a letter from Seneca to his friend Lucilius, we know that for the ancients, waters, if endowed with physical and curative proprieties, were also sacred (« thermal water springs are the object of a cult »
Epistulae, IV, 41, 3). In Timgad, near the great pool set in the temple's sanctuary, the spring bears an inscription which confirms that this spring was recognised as beneficial and that the temple was a very well attended pilgrimage site.
Some wells were also endowed with a sacred quality. The Roman era did no more than push a still primitive cult into the public sphere. It is the case on the site of Castellum Dimid in the Hodna region in Numidia: a single well, deep inside an underground passage exhibits traces of a script sacred to the Romans. However it is not possible to establish whether this well enjoys healing proprieties. Stelae dedicated to the gods of health give cause to believe it: one of the stelae carries an inscription to Apollo[1], Asclepius[2] and Hygieia[3]. Apollo is well known as a healing god, Asclepius is the deity of medicine and Hygieia is a personification of health: these gods had taken over the persona of a healing water genie that the Romans merged with their curing gods.
The cult of rivers was widespread among all the peoples of the ancient world. The river in its physical reality was god and its waters were considered divine. The rites characterising this cult are varied. J. Toutain tells of a rite practiced in Troad where maids bathed in the Scamander River[4] on the eve of their wedding day singing the verse « take my virginity, oh Scamander »
as a sacred incantation. Such an invocation could only be addressed to the waters of the river in which their bodies were immersed. In North Africa, it is worth mentioning the festival celebrated by the people of the Djerid in Southern Tunisia in the month of May. Among the rites observed figures the local women's bathing in the river. They undo their hair and cleanse themselves. The girls express this wish « Pharaoh, Pharaoh, let my hair grow and my backside swell »
in a practice intended to stimulate fecundity.
The fertilising energy sought in sacred bathing should be enacted not only in women but also and above all in the earth, the wellspring of all wealth. There are question marks over the Argei ritual – whether intended to encourage growth or induce rain – mentioned by Ovid and during which wicker figures were thrown in the Tiber. Dionysius of Halicarnassus says that they substituted for human victims of yore. As for the divinity to whom those victims were immolated, it was undoubtedly a river god. In North Africa there are no references to similar practices but others have been observed, sometime at a later date. Such are the immolation of fowls to honour the genie, or the rite consisting in throwing in the river waters offering intended for the deity, notably coins. This is a rite harking back to the ancient times when the river deities had not yet acquired any anthropomorphic features and when the divine element was supposed to lie with the very waters of the stream. Accordingly entering the waters was violating this character and trespassing into the divinity's realm, forbidden to humans; anyone breaching this taboo would be deserving of the supreme punishment that is death. Similar “superstitions[5]” pervade Berber legends which assert that the vicinity of rivers and springs is fraught with danger because of the local genies who can visit terrible accidents on unwary humans. Broadly speaking if we have no epigraphs directed at the rivers it is because the inscriptions appeal to their genies.
Magic rites and ceremonies aimed at obtaining rains survived well into more recent times. The best known legend is that of Tislit N Unzar[6]. Anzar is the beneficent element fostering vegetal growth and growing the crops. In order to obtain rain, Anzar must be asked to set off its fertile action and the rites devised to obtain rain seem to echo an early mythological personification of the parched earth. The pagan origins can probably be traced back to an African divinity, Caelestis[7] who boasts among others the power of granting rains, as promised by her soothsayers at times of drought. This is in evidence in the inscription found in Sakiet Sidi Youssef in Tunisia « you set on their way clouds and win, you, Juno ... and thus, by means of rain, you stop the sky from crashing to the earth »
. Thus, the ceremony performed by African native people appears reminiscent of ancient practices.
