[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 Chaldæans 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.