In peopling the Universe with spirits, the Babylonians, like other ancient folks, betrayed that tendency to symbolize everything which has ever appealed to the human mind.  Our painters and poets and sculptors are greatest when they symbolize their ideals and ideas and impressions, and by so doing make us respond to their moods.  Their “beauty and their terror are sublime”.  But what may seem poetic to us, was invariably a grim reality to the Babylonians.  The statue or picture was not merely a work of art but a manifestation of the god or demon.  As has been said, they believed that the spirit of the god inhabited the idol; the frown of the brazen image was the frown of the wicked demon.  They entertained as much dread of the winged and human-headed bulls guarding the entrance to the royal palace as do some of the Arab workmen who, in our own day, assist excavators to rescue them from sandy mounds in which they have been hidden for long centuries.

When an idol was carried away from a city by an invading army, it was believed that the god himself had been taken prisoner, and was therefore unable any longer to help his people.

In the early stages of Sumerian culture, the gods and goddesses who formed groups were indistinguishable from demons.  They were vaguely defined, and had changing shapes.  When attempts were made to depict them they were represented in many varying forms.  Some were winged bulls or lions with human heads; others had even more remarkable composite forms.  The “dragon of Babylon”, for instance, which was portrayed on walls of temples, had a serpent’s head, a body covered with scales, the fore legs of a lion, hind legs of an eagle, and a long wriggling serpentine tail.  Ea had several monster forms.  The following description of one of these is repulsive enough:—­

    The head is the head of a serpent,
    From his nostrils mucus trickles,
    His mouth is beslavered with water;
    The ears are like those of a basilisk,
    His horns are twisted into three curls,
    He wears a veil in his head band,
    The body is a suh-fish full of stars,
    The base of his feet are claws,
    The sole of his foot has no heel,
    His name is Sassu-wunnu,
    A sea monster, a form of Ea.

R.C.  Thompson’s Translation.[79]

Even after the gods were given beneficent attributes to reflect the growth of culture, and were humanized, they still retained many of their savage characteristics.  Bel Enlil and his fierce son, Nergal, were destroyers of mankind; the storm god desolated the land; the sky god deluged it with rain; the sea raged furiously, ever hungering for human victims; the burning sun struck down its victims; and the floods played havoc with the dykes and houses of human beings.  In Egypt the sun god Ra was similarly a “producer of calamity”, the composite monster god Sokar was “the lord of fear".[80] Osiris in prehistoric times had been “a dangerous god”, and some of the Pharaohs sought protection against him in the charms inscribed in their tombs.[81] The Indian Shiva, “the Destroyer”, in the old religious poems has also primitive attributes of like character.