listen to no prayer nor supplication.—­As wild horses they are born in the mountains,—­they are the enemies of Ba,—­they are the agents of the gods;—­they are evil, they are evil—­and they are seven, they are seven, they are twice seven.”  Man, if reduced to his own resources, could have no chance of success in struggling against beings who had almost reduced the gods to submission.  He invoked in his defence the help of the whole universe, the spirits of heaven and earth, the spirit of Bel and of Belit, that of Ninib and of Nebo, those of Sin, of Ishtar, and of Bamman; but Gibir or Gibil, the Lord of Fire, was the most powerful auxiliary in this incessant warfare.  The offspring of night and of dark waters, the Anunnaki had no greater enemy than fire; whether kindled on the household hearth or upon the altars, its appearance put them to flight and dispelled their power.

[Illustration:  142.jpg STRUGGLE BETWEEN A GOOD AND AN EVIL GENIUS.]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

“Gibil, renowned hero in the land,—­valiant, son of the Abyss, exalted in the land,—­Gibil, thy clear flame, breaking forth,—­when it lightens up the darkness,—­assigns to all that bears a name its own destiny.  —­The copper and tin, it is thou who dost mix them,—­gold and silver, it is thou who meltest them,—­thou art the companion of the goddess Ninkasi—­thou art he who exposes his breast to the nightly enemy!—­Cause then the limbs of man, son of his god, to shine,—­make him to be bright like the sky,—­may he shine like the earth,—­may he be bright like the interior of the heavens,—­may the evil word be kept far from him,” and with it the malignant spirits.  The very insistence with which help is claimed against the Anunnaki shows how much their power was dreaded.  The Chaldean felt them everywhere about him, and could not move without incurring the danger of coming into contact with them.  He did not fear them so much during the day, as the presence of the luminary deities in the heavens reassured him; but the night belonged to them, and he was open to their attacks.  If he lingered in the country at dusk, they were there, under the hedges, behind walls and trunks of trees, ready to rush out upon him at every turn.  If he ventured after sundown into the streets of his village or town, he again met with them quarrelling with dogs over the offal on a rubbish heap, crouched in the shelter of a doorway, lying hidden in corners where the shadows were darkest.  Even when barricaded within his house, under the immediate protection of his domestic idols, these genii still threatened him and left him not a moment’s repose.* The number of them was so great that he was unable to protect himself adequately from all of them:  when he had disarmed the greater portion of them, there were always several remaining against whom he had forgotten to take necessary precautions.  What must have been the total of the subordinate genii, when, towards the IXth century before our era, the official census of the invisible beings stated the number of the great gods in heaven and earth to be sixty-five thousand!**