This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Humanities  • Humanities, Other  • Alert me on articles by topic

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Not Available Not Available Model of a Boat, Middle Kingdom, Dynasties XII-XIII, c 1990-1633 BC. Wood, gesso, paint, twine. 77.5 x 52.0 x 104.0 cm. Courtesy of the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh (http://www.ncartmuseum.org); gift of Mr and Mrs Gordon Hanes.

From Antiquity, the river has been accorded mystical status. It is an object of coexisting opposites, simultaneously giving and taking. In its power are both the origin and the end of life; its length is the measure of a man's days, its twistings and turnings the vicissitudes of that life. At the end it is a way of passage to another life where the cycle of birth, journey, and rebirth begins again. To those who live along its banks, its cycles are obvious, like those of the moon; it is a bringer of life and a bringer of death in a most tangible, immediate fashion: . . . [Full Text of this Article]