Veronica Strang explores the role of serpentine water beings as guardians of treasures.
Drawing examples from a major comparative study of water deities in
diverse cultural and historical contexts (Strang 2023), this paper explores how and why
these serpentine beings have a historically recurrent role as the guardians of cultural
treasures. Appearing ubiquitously in early human histories, water deities are supernatural
personifications of the powers of water and its generative capacities. They surface in
cosmic origin stories as world creators; they act as hydro-theological generators of human
life and consciousness; they bring hydrological cycles of life surging through ecosystems,
and they are authoritative sources (and sometimes enforcers) of social and material order.
Water beings are therefore literally essential figures in all processes of production and
reproduction and in the generation of wealth and health. This paper suggests that this
central generative role leads to a consistent relationship with materials and objects
similarly valorised as representing wealth and generative capacity, and therefore defined
as treasure. There is an intrinsic logic in having elemental wealth-creating beings extend
their powers to control and protect material culture encapsulating the same meanings.
Indeed, such objects are often used to venerate these water deities themselves. Thus the
shared role of water beings as wealth generators across diverse cultural and historical
contexts is echoed in a similarly recurrent role as serpentine treasure guardians.
