More frequently a priest, accustomed from childhood to the office, possessed the privilege of asking the desired questions and of interpreting to the faithful the various signs by means of which the divine will was made known.  The spirit of the god inspired, moreover, whatever seemed good to him, and frequently entered into objects where we should least have expected to find it.  It animated stones, particularly such as fell from heaven; also trees, as, for example, the tree of Eridu which pronounced oracles; and, besides the battle-mace, with a granite head fixed on a wooden handle, the axe of Ramman, lances made on the model of Gilgames’ fairy javelin, which came and went at its master’s orders, without needing to be touched.  Such objects, when it was once ascertained that they were imbued with the divine spirit, were placed upon the altar and worshipped with as much veneration as were the statues themselves.

[Illustration:  153.jpg A protecting amulet.]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the terra-cotta figurine of
     Assyrian date now in the Louvre.

Animals never became objects of habitual worship as in Egypt:  some of them, however, such as the bull and lion, were closely allied to the gods, and birds unconsciously betrayed by their flight or cries the secrets of futurity.* In addition to all these, each family possessed its household gods, to whom its members recited prayers and poured libations night and morning, and whose statues set up over the domestic hearth defended it from the snares of the evil ones.** The State religion, which all the inhabitants of the same city, from the king down to the lowest slave, were solemnly bound to observe, really represented to the Chaldaeans but a tithe of their religious life:  it included some dozen gods, no doubt the most important, but it more or less left out of account all the others, whose anger, if aroused by neglect, might become dangerous.  The private devotion of individuals supplemented the State religion by furnishing worshippers for most of the neglected divinities, and thus compensated for what was lacking in the official public worship of the community.

* Animal forms are almost always restricted either to the genii, the constellations, or the secondary forms of the greater divinities:  Ea, however, is represented by a man with a fish’s tail, or as a man clothed with a fish-skin, which would appear to indicate that at the outset he was considered to be an actual fish.

** The images of these gods acted as amulets, and the fact of their presence alone repelled the evil spirits.  At Khorsabad they were found buried under the threshold of the city gates.  A bilingual tablet in the British Museum has preserved for us the formula of consecration which was supposed to invest these protecting statuettes with divine powers.

If the idea of uniting all these divine beings into a single supreme one, who would combine within himself