the figures even of those gods of whose names
they are the least doubtful. The Assyrians and Chaldaeans, like other
nations of antiquity, had what we should now call their _figured
mythology_, but we are still imperfectly acquainted with it. Even for those
whom we may call the most exalted personages of the Chaldaean Olympus,
scholars have hardly succeeded in illustrating the texts by the monuments
and explaining the monuments by the texts; and we are yet far from being
able to institute a perpetual and standard comparison as we have done in
the case of Egypt and still more in that of Greece, between the divine
types as they appear in religious formulae and in the national poetry, and
the same types when embodied by the imagination of the artist.

A long time may elapse before a mythological gallery for Chaldaea, in which
all the important members of the Mesopotamian pantheon shall take their
places and be known by the names they bore in their own day, can be formed,
but even now the principles upon which they were represented by art may be
stated. The images of the various gods were built up in great part by the
aid of combinations similar to those made use of in realizing the minor
demons. A natural bent towards such a method of interpretation was perhaps
inherited from the days in which the _naive_ adoration of all those animals
which help or hurt mankind formed a part of the national worship; again,
certain animals were, by their shapes and constitution, better fitted than
others to personify this or that quality which, in its fulness, was
considered divine. It was natural, therefore, that the artist should, in
those early days, have indicated the powers of a deity by forms borrowed
from the strongest, the most beautiful, or the most formidable of animals.
Nothing could suggest the instantaneous swiftness of a god better than the
spreading wings of an eagle or vulture, or his destructive and irresistible
power better than their beaks and talons, the horns and dewlap of the bull,
or the mane and claws of the lion.

The sculptor had, therefore, a good reason for employing these forms and
many others offered to him by the fauna of the regions he inhabited. He
introduced them into his work with skill and decision, and obtained
composite types by their aid which we may compare to those of Egypt. But
there were some differences which deserve to be remembered. The human face
received more consideration from the Mesopotamian