dim way man always felt the unity of the animal world.
Animals resembled one another, and man had some features in common with
animals. What more natural than to conclude that at some period, the
animals were composite creatures, and that even mankind and the animal
world were once blended together.

The prevailing religious and semi-mythological ideas, accordingly, enter
as factors in the significance that was attached to infants or to the
young of animals, serving as illustrations of 'hybrid' formations.

Omens from the Actions of Animals.

The same order of ideas, only still further extended, may be detected in
the sacredness attached to certain animals by so many nations of
antiquity. It is now generally admitted that this 'sacredness' has two
sides. A sacred animal may be 'taboo,' that is, so sacred that it must
not be touched, much less killed or eaten; and, on the other hand, its
original sanctity may lead people to regard it as "unclean," something
again to be avoided, because of the power to do evil involved in the
primitive conception of 'sacredness.'[659]

The swine and the dog are illustrations of this double nature of
sanctity among the Semites. The former was sacred to some of the
inhabitants of "Syria."[660] The Babylonians, as we have seen, abstained
from eating it on certain days of the year, while the Hebrews and Arabs
regarded it as an absolute 'taboo.'

The dog to this day is in the Orient an "unclean" animal, and yet it is
forbidden to do dogs any injury. If, then, we find the Babylonians
attaching significance to the movements of this animal, it is obvious
that by them, too, the dog was regarded as, in some way, sacred. It was
an 'animal of omen,' sometimes good, at other times bad. A tablet
informs us[661] that:

If a yellow dog enters a palace, it is a sign of a distressful
fate for the palace.

If a speckled dog enters a palace, the palace[662] will give
peace to the enemy.

If a dog enters a palace and some one kills him, the peace of
the palace will be disturbed.

If a dog enters a palace and crouches on the couch, no one will
enjoy that palace in peace.

If a dog enters a palace and crouches on the throne, that palace
will suffer a distressful fate.

If a dog enters a palace and lies on a large bowl, the palace
will secure peace from the enemy.

There follow omens in case dogs enter a sacred edifice:

If a dog enters a tem