The Sumerian gods never lost their connection with the early spirit groups.  These continued to be represented by their attendants, who executed a deity’s stern and vengeful decrees.  In one of the Babylonian charms the demons are referred to as “the spleen of the gods”—­the symbols of their wrathful emotions and vengeful desires.  Bel Enlil, the air and earth god, was served by the demons of disease, “the beloved sons of Bel”, which issued from the Underworld to attack mankind.  Nergal, the sulky and ill-tempered lord of death and destruction, who never lost his demoniac character, swept over the land, followed by the spirits of pestilence, sunstroke, weariness, and destruction.  Anu, the sky god, had “spawned” at creation the demons of cold and rain and darkness.  Even Ea and his consort, Damkina, were served by groups of devils and giants, which preyed upon mankind in bleak and desolate places when night fell.  In the ocean home of Ea were bred the “seven evil spirits” of tempest—­the gaping dragon, the leopard which preyed upon children, the great Beast, the terrible serpent, &c.

In Indian mythology Indra was similarly followed by the stormy Maruts, and fierce Rudra by the tempestuous Rudras.  In Teutonic mythology Odin is the “Wild Huntsman in the Raging Host”.  In Greek mythology the ocean furies attend upon fickle Poseidon.  Other examples of this kind could be multiplied.

As we have seen (Chapter II) the earliest group of Babylonian deities consisted probably of four pairs of gods and goddesses as in Egypt.  The first pair was Apsu-Rishtu and Tiamat, who personified the primordial deep.  Now the elder deities in most mythologies—­the “grandsires” and “grandmothers” and “fathers” and “mothers”—­are ever the most powerful and most vengeful.  They appear to represent primitive “layers” of savage thought.  The Greek Cronos devours even his own children, and, as the late Andrew Lang has shown, there are many parallels to this myth among primitive peoples in various parts of the world.

Lang regarded the Greek survival as an example of “the conservatism of the religious instinct".[82] The grandmother of the Teutonic deity Tyr was a fierce giantess with nine hundred heads; his father was an enemy of the gods.  In Scotland the hag-mother of winter and storm and darkness is the enemy of growth and all life, and she raises storms to stop the grass growing, to slay young animals, and prevent the union of her son with his fair bride.  Similarly the Babylonian chaos spirits, Apsu and Tiamat, the father and mother of the gods, resolve to destroy their offspring, because they begin to set the Universe in order.  Tiamat, the female dragon, is more powerful than her husband Apsu, who is slain by his son Ea.  She summons to her aid the gods of evil, and creates also a brood of monsters—­serpents, dragons, vipers, fish men, raging hounds, &c.—­so as to bring about universal and enduring confusion and evil.  Not until she is destroyed can the beneficent gods establish law and order and make the earth habitable and beautiful.