Deep Histories: the ground-waters of serpentine treasure guardians (Oxford Treasure Seminar Series)

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.