The symbol is usually shown as a fountain enclosed in a hexagonal structure capped by a rounded dome and supported by eight columns.
The font probably represents the octagonal Lateran Baptistery in Rome, consecrated by Pope Sixtus III (432-440), which was iconographically associated with the fountain of the water of life mentioned in Revelation 21:6.
The best examples date from the Carolingian period: the Godescalc Evangelistary made to commemorate the Baptism of the son of Charlemagne in 781, and in the Soissons Gospels.
Andreas confesses about what happened with the fish, and he is whipped for it, but he denies that he drank any and does not mention that he stored some, and asks Alexander over why he should worry about the past.
[9][10] In the sixth or seventh century, a Syriac language Christian text known as the Song of Alexander was composed and spuriously attributed to the poet Jacob of Serugh.
It contains a slightly revised version of the narrative of Alexander's search for the water of life, compared to its appearance in the Greek Romance.
[11][12] Unlike the earlier Romance, the version in the Song draws on Christian iconography, where bathing in the fountain is represented in baptismal terminology, and the fish symbolizes Jesus who rises from the dead.
[11] Yet another version appears a little earlier, in Tractate Tamid 32a-32b of the Babylonian Talmud which was composed in the late fifth or sixth century.
The Talmud also recounts an alternative version of the story where instead of washing his face, he traces the source of the fountain to the entrance of the Garden of Eden and demands to be let in on account of his status as a king.