ts 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!**

* The presence of the evil spirits everywhere is shown,
among other magical formulas, by the incantation in
Rawlinson, _Cun, Ins. W. As._, vol. ii. pi. 18, where we
find enumerated at length the places from which they are to
be kept out. The magician closes the house to them, the
hedge which surrounds the house, the yoke laid upon the
oxen, the tomb, the prison, the well, the furnace, the
shade, the vase for libation, the ravines, the valleys, the
mountains, the door.

** Assurnazirpal, King of Assyria, speaks in one of his
inscriptions of these sixty-five thousand great gods of
heaven and earth.

We are often much puzzled to say what these various divinities, whose
names we decipher on the monuments, could possibly have represented. The
sovereigns of Lagash addressed their prayers to Ningirsu, the valiant
champion of Inlil; to Ninursag, the lady of the terrestrial mountain:
to Ninsia, the lord of fate; to the King Ninagal; to Inzu, of whose real
name no one has an idea; to Inanna, the queen of battles; to Pasag, to
Galalim, to Dunshagana, to Ninmar, to Ningishzida. Gudea raised temples
to them in all the cities over which his authority extended, and he
devoted to these pious foundations a yearly income out of his domain
land or from the spoils of his wars. "Gudea, the 'vicegerent' of
Lagash, after having built the temple Ininnu for Ningirsu, constructed a
treasury; a house decorated with sculptures, such as no 'vicegerent'
had ever before constructed for Ningirsu; he constructed it for him,
he wrote his name in it, he made in it a